Tibetan mega-dam begins operation

Terra Daily via AFP: China has begun generating electricity from Tibet's biggest ever hydropower project, state-run media reported, the latest dam development on Himalayan rivers which has stoked fears in neighbouring India.

The first generating unit of the 9.6 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) Zangmu Hydropower Station, which stands more than 3,300 metres above sea level, went into operation on Sunday, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

The dam on the Yarlung Zangbo river -- known as the Brahmaputra in India, where it is a major waterway -- will be 116 metres (381 feet) high when completed next year, according to reports.

It will have a total generating capacity of 510,000 kilowatts, Xinhua said, making it the largest dam ever built on the Tibetan plateau.

"The hydropower station will solve Tibet's power shortage, especially in the winter," Xinhua quoted an official from the Tibet Electric Power Co. as saying. India has previously expressed concern about damming the Brahmaputra, one of the largest Himalayan rivers and a lifeline to some of India's remote, farm-dependent northeastern states....

An aerial view of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet, shot by Akarsh Simha, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

Tibetan plateau warmest in 2000 years, poses risk of natural disasters

Anu Passary in Tech Times: Concerns surrounding global warming are constantly growing and fears of environmentalists are not unwarranted, as a new study reveals that the Tibetan plateau has been the warmest in the last 2000 years.

The Tibetan plateau's glacier supplies water to several million people in Asia and the study conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' (CAS) Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research reveals that the plateau had been warmer in the last five decades when compared to any period in the past two millennia. "Over the past 50 years, the rate of temperature rise has been double the average global level," according to the report on the website of Science and Technology Daily per Reuters.

There's no silver lining either as researchers opine that the plateau will get more humid and hotter with the passage of time in the coming decades. This will in turn result in the shifting of glaciers and increase in desertification.

What's worrying is that the glacier retreat may upset water supply to Asian rivers that originate in the plateau like India's Brahmaputra, China's Yangtze Kiang and Yellow River, as well as the Mekong and Salween. The hazards of natural disasters like landslides and heavy floods will likely increase because of the warmer climate.

Earlier in May 2014, scientists revealed that Tibetan glaciers had shrunk 8,000 square kms or nearly 15 percent in the last three decades. However, there is a silver lining as according to the report, the ecosystem of the Tibetan plateau (which is at an elevation of 4,500 meters) has seen an overall improvement thanks to the expansion of the forest area as well as the temperate zone. Moreover, the damage to the wetlands has reduced since 2000....

A Tibetan glacier in autumn, shot by Jan Reurink, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Recent decades likely wettest in four millennia in Tibet

A press release from the University of East Anglia: Recent decades may have been the wettest in 3,500 years in North East Tibet – according to climate researchers at the University of East Anglia (UK) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Lanzhou, China). Researchers looked at 3,500-year-long tree ring records from North East Tibet to estimate annual precipitation. They found that recent decades have likely been the wettest on record in this semi-arid region.

The precipitation records have been reconstructed using sub-fossil, archaeological and living juniper tree samples from the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau. They reveal a trend towards wider growth rings, implying moister growing conditions – with the last 50 years seeing increasing amounts of rainfall. Notable historical dry periods occurred in the 4th Century BC and in the second half of the 15th Century AD.

Dr Tim Osborn from UEA’s Climatic Research Unit said: “Our collaboration with scientists from China has been very fruitful, leading to what is currently the longest tree-ring-width record in the cold and arid north-eastern Tibetan Plateau. Not only is the record very long, it is based on samples from more than 1000 trees, some of which have an individual lifespan of more than 2000 years. These are among the longest-lived trees in the world.”

Not only are these trees long-lived, but they are useful for understanding how climate has changed. The widths of the tree rings show a close correspondence with observations from rain gauges over the last 55 years, such that tree rings in wetter years tend to be wider than tree rings in drier years.

Dr Osborn said: “The most recent few decades have, on average, the widest rings in the 3,500-year record which suggests that this may have been the wettest period, perhaps associated with global warming during the last century. Indeed, over the last two thousand years when the Northern Hemisphere is warm it appears to be wetter in the Mountains of North East Tibet. This suggests that any further large-scale warming might be associated with even greater rainfall in this region – though we note that other factors could also have contributed to the increased ring widths.”....

Flooding near an airport in Tibet, shot by ignat, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Meltwater from Tibetan glaciers floods pastures

A press release from the University of Zurich: The earth is warming up, the glaciers are shrinking. However, not all meltwater is causing sea-level rise as feared. In Tibet, as measurements taken by an international team of researchers including the University of Zurich reveal, a significant proportion of the meltwater remains on land. The consequences are, however, equally negative: it can cause lakes without an outlet to overflow and flood valuable pastureland.

Glaciers are important indicators of climate change. Global warming causes mountain glaciers to melt, which, apart from the shrinking of the Greenlandic and Antarctic ice sheets, is regarded as one of the main causes of the present global sea-level rise. Tibet’s glaciers are also losing mass clearly, as scientists from the universities of Zurich, Tubingen and Dresden reveal using satellite-based laser measurements. Over the last decade, the research team has detected a “clear loss in mass of around 16 gigatons a year in around 80 percent of the Tibetan glaciers,” says Tobias Bolch, a glaciologist from the University of Zurich involved in the study – that’s more than four times the volume of water in Lake Zurich and around six percent of the total loss in mass of all the glaciers on Earth.

However, the measurements also bore some positive news: Some glaciers in the central and north-western part of the Tibetan Plateau have actually grown in mass. While the glaciers in the monsoon-influenced southern and eastern part of the plateau h
ave melted significantly, the scientists recorded a neutral or even slightly positive result in the continental central and north-western area of the country. Nonetheless, as Bolch notes, “On average, the entire region is clearly characterized by a loss in mass.”

At a first glance, the evidence that not all of the meltwater flows into the ocean via the large Asian currents and causes the sea level to rise seems positive. “However, flooding is still a problem,” says Bolch. After all, a large proportion of the melt – around two gigatons a year, as scientists have quantified for the first time – flows into lakes without an outlet on the plateau, causing them to burst their banks. “In many regions, this means that valuable pasture areas become submerged,” explains the glaciologist.

Stretching over an area of around 40,000 square kilometers, the Tibetan Plateau’s glaciers account for over a third of High Asia’s ice cover and are about twenty times the size of the ice surface of the Alps. For their study, the international team of researchers evaluated satellite-based laser measurements of the glacier surfaces on the Tibetan Plateau between 2003 and 2009. “Thanks to these measurements, we were able to gauge the temporal changes of the glacier heights and – combined with a detailed glacier inventory – changes in mass of the glaciers in Tibet, which are extremely difficult to access,” say Tubingen scientists Niklas Neckel and Jan Kropacek, explaining the measuring technique....

Midui glacier in Tibet, shot by Jan Reurink, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Chinese dams on Brahmaputra worry India

Hindustan Times: Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Nabam Tuki said on Saturday he would ask the central government to look into China constructing three hydropower projects on the Brahmaputra river in Tibet. "China building the three dams will affect the interest of people in the downstream areas. We will soon move New Delhi to take up this issue with China in the interest of the people," Tuki said. He added: "It is a cause of concern for us but we are not certain how big these dams are..."

The 2,906-km-long Brahmaputra - called Tsangpo in Tibet - is one of Asia's longest rivers that traverses 1,625 km through Tibet, 918 km in India and 363 km in Bangladesh before flowing into the Bay of Bengal. China's plan to build the dams over the Brahmaputra river and diverting water into its arid provinces has been opposed by state governments in India's northeast.

Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh requesting him to take up the matter regarding the construction of the three dams on the Brahmaputra with Beijing. "We can't do anything if China is building dams. Our concern is that the lives of the people in the downstream should not be affected by the dams," Tuki said.

China announced plans to build three dams - Dagu, Jiacha and Jiexu - on the river last month as part of its aggressive plan to provide energy and water needs for its 1.3 billion people. The Chinese government said that the hydropower dams would not impact flood control efforts or the ecological environment in downstream regions.

Experts said that if the projects were carried out, they would have devastating consequences on the lives of millions of people in India and Bangladesh....

Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet. In India it becomes very wide and is called Brahmaputra. A beautiful shot by Luca Galuzzi (Lucag), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

The Kosi river basin: Reducing flood risk

Prevention Web: Extending across Tibet (China), Nepal and India the Kosi River represents the largest river basin in Nepal. The Kosi River is a powerful river system with a history of shifting directions and causing havoc in Nepal and India. Such is the potential damage that can be caused by the Kosi, it has become known as the “Sorrow of Bihar.” Thousands of families in Nepal and millions in India continue to live in fear that at any moment, the Kosi River might burst its banks and create widespread suffering.

Communities along the Kosi flood plains do not have to think too far back to remember the power and impact a flood can have. In 2008, the Kosi River broke out of its embankment near Paschim Kusaha Village in Sunsari district of Nepal. The ensuing flood affected 70,000 families and displaced 7,000 families in Nepal, while affecting another 3.5 million people in India. The breach of the embankments and ensuing flood were not caused by the monsoon rains.  In fact, the monsoon was below average during that time, so the potential impacts could have been far worse.

The 2008 Kosi River flood is a stark reminder of Nepal’s vulnerability to floods and the need to address this vulnerability through disaster risk reduction and preparedness rather than a focus on relief.

In 2011, the Government of Nepal officially launched the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC). The NRRC is a unique institutional arrangement that brings together humanitarian, development and financial partners to reduce Nepal’s vulnerability to natural disasters. Based on the National Strategy for Disaster Risk Management (NSDRM) and additional consultations, the NRRC established 5 flagship priorities for disaster risk reduction....

The Kosi River flooded in 2008 in Bihar, India, shot by Kumarrakajee, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Tibetan glaciers shrinking rapidly

Jane Qiu in Nature: The majority of glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and in the surrounding region are retreating rapidly, according to a study based on 30 years of satellite and field measurements. The research by Yao Tandong, a glaciologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Tibetan Research in Beijing, and his colleagues is published today in Nature Climate Change. It “is the most comprehensive survey to date in the region”, says Tobias Bolch, a glaciologist in the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

The Tibetan plateau and the bordering mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, the Karakoram, the Pamir and the Qilian make up a vast region known as the Third Pole, home to 100,000 square kilometres of glaciers that supply water to about 1.4 billion people in Asia.

The status of the glaciers has been a point of contention. Earlier this year, an analysis of 7 years' worth of measurements taken by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission suggested2 that high-altitude Asian glaciers on the whole are losing ice only one-tenth as fast as previously estimated, and that glaciers on the Tibetan plateau are actually growing.

Yao and his colleagues analysed satellite measurements of the lengths and surface areas of about 7,100 glaciers. They also studied changes in the mass balance — the difference between accumulation and loss of ice — of 15 glaciers that they have painstakingly measured for decades.

 “The majority of the glaciers have been shrinking rapidly across the studied area in the past 30 years,” says Yao. And the rate of retreat has been accelerating. But embedded in this general trend, says Yao, is a large variation in different parts of the Third Pole. For instance, glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating faster on average than those in the Karakoram and the Pamir....

Laigu glacier in Tibet, shot by Jiangmy, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

A dustier Tibet?

Eli Kintisch in New Scientist: Sediments taken from the bottom of a lake on the Tibetan Plateau suggest that changes in wind patterns caused by global warming may be making the area dustier. That trend could accelerate the melting of crucial glaciers in the Himalayas and affect already imperiled water supplies.

Jessica Conroy, a graduate student in paleoclimatology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and colleagues collected sediment cores from the bottom of Kiang Lake in southwestern Tibet using equipment suspended from rafts. The cores track the history of climate in the region back to 1050 C.E. According to Conroy, who presented the data here at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union on 15 December, the amount of fine-grained dust in the lake sediment increased over the 20th century. Finer dust arrives from distant desert regions hundreds of kilometers away, suggesting stronger winds with the power to deliver the material.

Scientists have previously noted the rise of dust in the region but attributed it to the increase in agriculture, grazing, and other relatively local developments. Data Conroy presented showed that dusty periods coincide with summers when a Northern Hemisphere atmospheric phenomenon called the Arctic Oscillation is in a "positive phase." A positive phase of this pattern in the summer leads to stronger winds in desert areas to the north of the lake as well as south of the Himalayas….

Kiang Lake in 1938, from the Bundesarchiv

Glaciers in Tibet were never really large

Science Daily: The Tibetan Plateau is the largest and highest mountain region on Earth with glaciers whose meltwater provides the water supply for more than 1.3 billion people through several of the largest rivers in Asia. In a thesis in Physical Geography from Stockholm University, Jakob Heyman shows that the glaciers in Tibet have remained relatively small and have not been much larger than today for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years back in time.

The study deals with the growth and decay of glaciers in Tibet far back in time, with the aim of attaining better knowledge of glaciations and their link to climate variations. The results show that the glaciers in Tibet have varied in size but that they have been fairly small far back in time. In several places the glaciers seems to have been similar in size to today's glaciers or just slightly larger during the entire last Ice Age. Considering that Tibet, often called the roof of the world or the third pole, is where the largest number of glaciers outside the polar regions are located, this is remarkable.

"At the same time as huge ice sheets covered northern Europe and North America during the last Ice Age twenty thousand years ago, the glaciers in Tibet were not much larger than today," says Jakob Heyman.

…"If today's temperature in Tibet were to decrease by five degrees or more, which is not much for an Ice Age cycle, a large ice sheet would probably start growing. No ice sheet seems to have existed in Tibet, and the cooling can therefore not have been that strong," says Jakob Heyman…..

Tibet's Midui glacier, shot by Jan Reurink, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Tibet temperature 'highest since records began' say Chinese climatologists

Jonathan Watts in the Guardian (UK): The roof of the world is heating up, according to a report today that said temperatures in Tibet soared last year to the highest level since records began. Adding to the fierce international debate about the impact of climate change on the Himalayas, the state-run China Daily noted that the average temperature in Tibet in 2009 was 5.9C, 1.5 degrees higher than "normal".

It did not define "normal", but Chinese climatologists have previously drawn comparisons with an average over several decades. "Average temperatures recorded at 29 observatories reached record highs," Zhang Hezhen, a Lhasa resident and specialist at the regional weather bureau told the newspaper. "It's high time for all of us to take global warming seriously and think about what we can do to save the earth."

The average rose in both summer and winter, which is unusual as most of mountain warming has previously been observed in the winter. A monitoring station at the foot of Mt Everest also recorded a new record high temperature of 25.8 degrees, which was 0.7C warmer than the previous peak.

Amid the worst drought in decades, Lhasa experienced its first temperature above 30C since records began in 1961, the report said. Rainfall in Tibet fell to its lowest level in 39 years, affecting nearly 30,000 hectares of cropland - an eighth of Tibet's arable land….

A satellite image of Tibet, via NASA

Kathmandu, a vulnerable city

Ramesh Prasad Bhushal in the Himalayan: Kathmandu has been listed among the 15 most vulnerable cities of the world due to the impact of climate change. The International Institute for Environment and Development based in London, recently published a report — Climate Change and the Urban Poor — listing the capital among the most vulnerable cities of the world. The list includes 12 cities from Africa and three from south Asia.

Kathmandu of Nepal, Thimphu of Bhutan, Harare of Zimbabwe, Kampala of Uganda, Lusaka of Zambia and Blantyre of Malawi are the high altitude and inland vulnerable cities, according to the report. It adds that the most vulnerable coastal cities are Khulna of Bangladesh, Maputo of Mozambique, Dar es Salam of Tanzania, Mombassa of Kenya and Cotonou of Benin. The vulnerable dry land cities are Nouakchott of Mauritania, Diourbel of Senegal, Bamako of Mali and Khartoum of Sudan.

The report adds, “There are 64 squatter settlements in Kathmandu and the total population of squatters has been estimated at 14,500, most of who live along riverbanks or on steep slopes.” Only two per cent of the world’s land is in the low elevation coastal zone, the area adjacent to the coast that is less than ten metres above the mean sea level. But this zone is home to 10 per cent of the world’s population, adds the report….

A street in Kathmandu, shot by Pavel Novak, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

Qinghai-Tibet Plateau warming will bring serious problems, experts warn

People's Daily Online (China): The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is growing warmer and experts warn, if the trend continues, it will cause environmental deterioration and water shortages. "The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is among the regions worst hit by global warming. In turn, this will have a deleterious effect on global climate and also the livelihood of Asian people," said Qin Dahe, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a former head of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA). He was also the first Chinese person to cross the South Pole.

The temperature in the Tibet Autonomous Region has risen by an average of 0.32 degrees Celsius every 10 years from 1961 to 2008, much higher than China's national warming rates of 0.05 to 0.08 degrees. Tibet's average temperature in July this year was the highest since 1951, according to CMA data.

Rain in western and southern Tibet lessened by between 30 to 80percent compared to the same period in previous years. "Due to global warming, glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are retreating extensively at a speed faster than in any other part of the world. In the short term, this will cause lakes to expand and bring floods and mudflows.

"In the long run, glaciers are vital lifelines for Asian rivers such as the Indus and the Ganges. Once they vanish, water supplies in those regions will in peril," Qin said….

Charlie fong released this image of a glacier in the Qinghai plateau into the public domain

Melting glaciers on China's Qinghai-Tibet plateau water source 'worrisome'

Xinhua: Chinese scientists said Wednesday glaciers that serve as water sources on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau are melting at a "worrisome speed," having receded 196 square km over the past nearly 40 years. The decline is equal to about one-fourth of the area of New York City.

Xin Yuanhong, senior engineer in charge of a three-year field study of glaciers in the region, said glaciers at the headwaters of the Yangtze, China's longest river, cover 1,051 square km, down from 1,247 square km in 1971. "The reduction means more than 989 million cubic meters of water melted away," said Xin, whose team surveyed the glaciers between June 2005 and August 2008. That much water would fill Beijing's largest reservoir.

The team found the glacier tongue of Yuzhu Peak of Kunlun Mountain fell by 1,500 meters over the past nearly 40 years. The retreat rate is close to that of the Quelccaya Glacier in Peru, the world's largest tropical ice mass. The eastern side of the glaciers in the Tanggula Mountain Pass saw the fastest melt rate, with the front receding 265 m annually. The average annual retreat speed was 7.57 m when compared with the figures for 1970. Xin attributed the accelerated melting to global warming…

Kunlun Mountain, shot by B_cool from SIN, Singapore, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License