By Wu Yuehui, People’s Daily
Following a mudslide at Gyirong Port, located along the China-Nepal border in southwest China’s Xizang autonomous region, experts have weighed in on whether climate change was a contributing factor.
According to one specialist, the disaster is closely tied to global warming. Rising temperatures have accelerated the melting of glaciers. The combined effects of glacial retreat, local geological and geomorphological conditions, and broader climatic factors are believed to have been the primary triggers.
The disaster was further complicated by a chain reaction involving ice and rock collapses. These cascading events, together with the inherent difficulties of managing cross-border disaster prevention, make risk reduction in high-altitude regions particularly challenging.
Climate change is continuously reshaping the cryosphere and its ecosystems, environment, and disaster patterns worldwide. On the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, glaciers are shrinking and retreating at an accelerating rate, creating an important backdrop for the increasing frequency of geological disasters in the region.
Drawing on more than six decades of data from three comprehensive glacier inventories conducted in China, researchers have gained a clear picture of this shrinking trend. These findings provide a solid data foundation for monitoring and early warning systems.
The first inventory recorded a total glacier area of 51,000 square kilometers on the plateau. By the second inventory, that figure had declined to 44,000 square kilometers. According to the most recently completed third inventory, the plateau’s glacier area has now dropped to 39,000 square kilometers.
Kang Shichang, director and researcher at the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Chengdu, southwest China’s Sichuan province, said that glaciers across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have shrunk by 24 percent in area over the past 60 years, a decline of nearly a quarter.
“The retreat has been particularly pronounced in the southern part of the plateau. In areas including the Gangdise Mountains, Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains, and Himalayas, glaciers have shrunk by about 40 percent over the past 60 years. The main driver of this dramatic change is global warming,” Kang said.
The ongoing melting of glaciers has directly led to a substantial increase in both the number and size of glacial lakes across the plateau. This has greatly heightened the risk of glacial lake outburst floods, landslides, and other disasters. There are now more than 14,000 glacial lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, covering a combined area of over 1,100 square kilometers. Overall, these lakes continue to expand rapidly, with associated disaster risks steadily accumulating.
Nie Yong, another researcher at the same institute, said glacial lakes across the plateau have expanded markedly in recent decades, with the most pronounced growth occurring in the Himalayan region along China’s southern border. The area of glacial lakes in the region is expanding by an average of about 1% annually. These continuously expanding lakes have become the primary source of geological disaster risks in high-altitude areas.