Silk Road threatened by melting glaciers

Catherine Brahic in New Scientist: The Chinese gateway to the ancient Silk Road is being flooded – and the culprit, researchers say, is climate change. Melting glaciers sitting above the Hexi corridor in Gansu province, once an important trading and military route into Central Asia, are fuelling dramatic regional floods.

The finding illustrates a major problem for the coming century: around the world, arid regions that sit next to glaciers will suffer a spate of floods, then dry up completely when the glaciers melt away.

Once the eastern gateway to the Silk road, the Hexi corridor is sandwiched between the Qilian mountains to the southwest, and lower mountains bordering the Gobi desert to the northeast. "This is an extremely arid area, with an average annual precipitation of about 125 millimetres," says Chi-Yuen Wang, a geologist and hydrologist at the University of California at Berkeley….

Zhang Qian leaving emperor Han Wudi around 130 BCE, for his expedition to Central Asia. Mogao Caves, high Tang Dynasty, circa 8th century CE.