Global warming drying up major Chinese rivers

BEIJING - CHINESE scientists have warned that rising temperatures are draining wetlands at the head of the country's two longest rivers, choking their flow and endangering water supplies to hundreds of millions of people.

The warning occurs as millions of people along central China's flood-ravaged Huai River, a major tributary of the Yangtze River, are bracing themselves for more heavy rains this week.

Aerial photographs and satellite images had shown that wetlands on the frigid Qinghai-Tibet plateau, which feed the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, had shrunk more than 10 per cent over the past four decades, the China Daily said yesterday, citing the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a key government think-tank.

'The wetlands at the origin of the Yangtze have suffered the most, contracting by 29 per cent,' the paper said.

CAS researcher Wang Xugen said the wetlands had a key role in regulating the flow of the rivers providing water for hundreds of millions of people and nearly half of China's farmland.

'The shrinking of the wetland on the plateau is closely connected with global warming,' the paper quoted the researcher as saying.

The drop in water flow comes despite an increase in the amount of rain in the region.
Last month, CAS warned that rising temperatures could wipe out the plateau's glaciers by the end of the century, triggering more intense droughts, sandstorms and desertification.

Meanwhile, Changchun, capital of north-east Jilin province, became the latest city to be hit by an algae outbreak, said Xinhua news agency.

The outbreak has squeezed water supplies from a reservoir feeding the city's seven million residents, Xinhua reported.

REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

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