China will start backing up its shrinking glaciers with 59 meltwater reservoirs this year as the cost of climate change hits home in the world’s most populous nation.
The far west region of Xinjiang, home to many of the planet’s highest peaks and widest ice fields, will carry out the 10-year engineering project, which aims to catch and store glacier run-off that might otherwise trickle away into the desert.
Behind the measure is a concern that city residents in the region will run out of water supplies once the glaciers in the Tian, Kunlun and Altai mountains disappear.
Anxiety has risen along with alpine temperatures, which are rapidly diminishing the ice fields. The 3,800m Urumqi No. 1 Glacier, the first to be measured in China, has lost more than 20 percent of its volume since 1962, the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute said. Others in the Tian range have lost similar amounts of ice.
To deal with the consequences, Xinjiang will set aside 200 million yuan (US$28 million) for each of the next three years. In this first phase, 29 reservoirs will be built, mostly in the southern Tian, with a combined capacity of 21.8 billion cubic meters of water, Xinhua news agency reported.
Wang Shijiang, director of the Xinjiang Water Resource Department, told the agency that the mountain reservoir system was designed to “intercept” meltwater, which has increased in volume over the past 20 years as a result of global warming.
Xinjiang, and its capital of Urumqi, is particularly dependent on a steady supply of meltwater from glaciers that act as solid reservoirs storing precipitation in the winter and releasing it in the summer.
The natural alpine water tanks have begun leaking more than usual in recent years as temperatures rise, prompting the search for an artificial alternative. In some areas they have broken altogether, causing mountain floods that destroy homes and crops.
Few of Urumqi’s 2 million residents are aware of the problem because, in recent years, water supplies have surged thanks to the extra meltwater and increased rainfall.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
Ugandan wildlife authorities have reintroduced rhinos into a remote protected area where they were once poached into extinction, an event seen by conservationists as a milestone in efforts to support the recovery of a species threatened by poaching. On Tuesday, two southern white rhinos from a private ranch in the East African country were reintroduced into Kidepo Valley National Park in the country’s northeast. Two more rhinos in metallic crates arrived on Thursday. There have been no rhinos in the park since 1983, the result of poaching. However, a private ranch in central Uganda — the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary — has been
LAW CONSTRAINTS: The US has been pressing allies to send warships to open the Strait, but Tokyo’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution Japan could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz if a ceasefire is reached in the war on Iran, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi said yesterday. “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up,” Motegi said. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider.” Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Tokyo to use its Self-Defense Forces overseas if an attack,
RSS