Drones to monitor China's melting glaciers "at a shocking rate"

• Climate crisis The Monte Perdido glacier: 2,000 years in the Pyrenees and only a few decades to disappear

On the arid northeast edge of the Tibetan Plateau, popularly known as the Third Pole of the World, glaciers are melting.

Above all,

.

The data from the Chinese Academy of Sciences say so: the retreat of glaciers was 50% faster between 1990 and 2010 than between 1956 and 1990.

"Since the 1950s, average temperatures have risen 1.5 degrees Celsius in the area," said

, director of a glacier monitoring station in Qilian

, in early autumn

.

"The largest glacier in the 800-kilometer mountain range has shrunk by about 7% since the 1950s, when researchers established China's first monitoring station to study it," the expert noted.

Qin explained that the foot of a 20-square-kilometer glacier known as Laohugou No. 12, had retreated

since the measurements began, and the melting accelerated at a record rate in recent years.

A few weeks ago, Chinese scientists announced that they have launched the first real-time glacier monitoring system in the southern province of Yunnan.

It will help provide a detailed analysis of how they are melting away from global warming.

The system has been installed on the Baishuihe No.1 Glacier, on the Yulong Snow Mountain.

Tianshan GLACIER

Images: (2001) John Novis / (2018) Tie Gao-Greenpeace

The new program consists of modules using the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), laser distance measurement, cameras, meteorology equipment, ice temperature testing equipment and seismographs.

"It also includes drones with thermal imaging cameras to learn more precisely

. All the information we detect in real time includes ice earthquakes, temperature pressure and humidity," he explained to the Chinese newspaper Global Times

professor at the Chinese Antarctic Center for Topography and Cartography (CACSM) of Wuhan University, who has led the project developed jointly with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

His team plans to add more functions to the system and expand it to the Sichuan provinces and the Tibet region. "It can be used as an early warning system to monitor glacier-related geological hazards. To install it in remote areas, we have to overcome many difficulties such as relatively erratic power supply and unstable signal transmission since monitoring in real time is based on the 4G network, "explains Yang.

"China's remote glaciers are melting at a shocking rate," said

, an expert with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"The melting in the mountains could peak in a decade, after which it would decrease drastically because the glaciers are smaller and there are fewer and fewer. That could bring a major water crisis," Shen warns.

Halong glacier

Images: (2005) Tianshan Glaciological / (2018) Tie Gai-Greenpeace

Right now, according to the latest data compiled in a graph produced by

, the Changmabao Hydrological Station, which is next to the Shule River, north of the Tibetan Plateau, shows an increase in the amount of water entering the river each year. "Across the region, meltwater from glaciers is pooling in lakes and causing devastating floods," explains

, Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy activist.

If we go to the Himalayas, where China shares a border of more than 3,300 kilometers with India, a report by the Institute of Energy and Resources, based in New Delhi, assures that climate change had a strong influence on rainfall over the Himalayas and the

response of

.

This affects the runoff pattern of rivers that drain from watersheds.

"The Himalayan cryosphere is the lifeblood of three major river basins originating in the Indian and Nepalese part of the mountains," the report reads.

"These rivers are the source of life and livelihood for more than 500 million people on the Indo-Gangetic Plains. Any variability in their flow pattern can have far-reaching consequences."

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