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Beijing: Global warming could wipe out large areas of glaciers in the Himalayas and surrounding highlands, threatening livelihoods across much of Asia, climate scientists said in Beijing yesterday.
Rising temperatures fuelled by greenhouse gases from industry and agriculture have already shrunk glaciers on the mountains dividing China and South Asia, experts say.
But one author of a benchmark UN report on climate change said more rapid melting could severely disrupt river flows and rainfall patterns across Asia.
"If the rate of temperature rises does not change, glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau will rapidly shrink, perhaps from 500,000 square kilometres in 1995 to 100,000 square kilometres in 2030," Wu Shaohong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told a news conference.
Glaciers across the Himalayas and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are a major source for key rivers, such as the Yangtze in China, the Mekong in Indochina and the Ganges in India.
Uncertainty surrounds how fast global warming might shrink glaciers, Wu told reporters after the briefing to explain forecasts issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this month.
Another senior Chinese climate scientist, Qin Dahe, gave a lower estimate, saying that about one-quarter of glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau could melt away by mid-century.
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