China - The Sky Darkens - Le Monde (Impressive, Concise Summary)

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The rise in temperatures is more pronounced in the great loess plains of the north than in the south of the country. According to predictions for the 21st century drawn up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, rainfall will continue to increase in the south and decline in the north, where drought, which is already reducing yields, will directly threaten agriculture and undermine economic development. China’s glaciers retreated by 21% during the 20th century. A doubling in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would affect the distribution of major crops. China’s food-producing potential will be reduced by 10% as a result of climate change and extreme climatic events (1).

A national assessment of climate change indicates that “there is an increasing trend of sea level rise along China’s coast since the 1950s and this trend has become significantly more obvious in the past few years. The sea level currently has a rate of rise of 1.4-2.6mm per year” (2). Chinese scientists predict a rise of 31-65cm in sea levels along China’s coasts between now and 2100, increasing erosion and the contamination of ground water by salt, and threatening the megalopolis of Shanghai.

As temperatures rise in the western mountains, the sources of China’s great rivers, the Huang He (Yellow River) and the Yangtze, are drying up at an alarming rate. The inhabitants of the Qumolai district, near the sources of the Yangtze, anticipate to have to buy water to survive. Since 2000, 128 out of 136 wells there have run dry, leaving 80% of the population dependent on water tankers. In this region, 18 rivers that once fed the Yangtze are now identifiable only by their dried-up beds. The drying up of the Huang He is more extreme. A recent study reports that of 4,077 lakes in the Maduo district, through which the river initially flows, 3,000 have disappeared: as a result 600 homes, 3,000 people and 119,000 cattle are without immediate access to water (3). The region where the Huang He and the Yangtze rise, the Qinghai province of Tibet, in western China, is called Sanjiangyuan, the source of three rivers. The third river is the Mekong, which irrigates southeast Asia. Almost a quarter of the water in the Yangtze and half that in the Huang He comes from this region, also known as China’s water-tower.

Scientists attribute the recent unprecedented rise of temperatures in the Sanjiangyuan region to global climate change. According to Greenpeace (4), the average temperature in this area has increased by 0.88C over the last 50 years, causing the glaciers to retreat, melting the permafrost (5), affecting rain regimes and increasing evaporation rates. Human activity has accelerated the degradation of this increasingly fragile environment. The population of the region more than quadrupled from 130,000 in 1949 to 610,000 in 2003. Overgrazing, the inevitable consequence of the need to feed so many, is damaging grasslands and reducing the ecosystem’s capacity to retain water. Mining and the intensive cultivation of the herbs used in Chinese medicine are aggravating the situation.

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http://mondediplo.com/2006/04/13chinapollution

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1. Beijing hit by eighth sandstorm

The Chinese capital, Beijing, has been hit by its eight - and worst - sandstorm of the year.

Millions of residents woke to find their city covered in a thin film of yellow dust after the storm blew in from the border of China and Mongolia.

....

Such storms occur annually, but experts say desertification in western China is increasing their frequency in the east.

Scientists blame poor farming practices and drought for the expanding desert, which now covers a third of the vast country.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4915690.stm