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.
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