Increased Rainfall & Melting Swell Size Of Tibetan Lakes - Xinhua

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LHASA, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Gesang Cering habitually wakes up at midnight to check whether his house or sheepfold is flooded again, as he has often seen water oozing, or sometimes even spouting out from ground since year 2000, particularly in winter. He has also noticed that lake Naigri Puencog, some eight kilometers from his home village in Nagqu Prefecture, northern Tibet, often swells. "The pasture near the lake is flooded from time to time; in winter, it's often covered with ice," the man said.

Many local herders have witnessed similar situations: in many lake areas, water springs out of formerly dry places, roads are flooded, and alkali is found no more in what used to be alkaline lakes. Even the oldest people in the village cannot explain the abnormal phenomenon. Some say it's inauspicious and invite lamas to perform Buddhism rituals, hoping to dispel the evil spirits.

"It's actually caused by global warming," said Bendo, a senior engineer with Remote Sensing Application Research Center of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Bendo and his colleagues have been studying the floods in Nagqusince Aug. 2005. They conducted site surveys to five lakes in the prefecture and analyzed changes in the sizes of the lakes over the past two decades with remote sensing mapping. "We found rises in rainfall as well as in air and ground temperatures in lake areas but declines in water evaporation, exposure to sunlight, and thickness of snow and frozen earth," he said. "We therefore decided global warming caused the lakes to swell."

Bendo said the average water level in Naigri Puencog and two other inland lakes rose by 12.6 meters in the recent two decades, flooding an average 40.8 square kilometers of pasture, cropland and roads.

EDIT

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/11/content_4411358.htm