China confirms its southern glaciers are disappearing

By Christina Larson, Science Insider
BEIJING—Glaciers in China that are a critical source of water for drinking and irrigation in India are receding fast, according to a new comprehensive inventory. In the short term, retreating glaciers may release greater meltwater, “but it will be exhausted when glaciers disappear under a continuous warming,” says Liu Shiyin, who led the survey for the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute in Lanzhou.
In 2002, Chinese scientists released the first full inventory of the country’s glaciers, the largest glacial area outside of Antarctica and Greenland. The data came from topographical maps and aerial photographs of western China’s Tibet and Xinjiang regions taken from the 1950s through the 1980s. That record showed a total glacial area of 59,425 square kilometers. The Second Glacier Inventory of China, unveiled here last week, is derived from high-resolution satellite images taken between 2006 and 2010. The data set is freely available online.

Liu and his colleagues calculated China’s total glacial area to be 51,840 square kilometers—13% less than in 2002. That figure is somewhat uncertain because the previous inventory used coarser resolution images that may have mistaken extensive snow cover for permanent ice, says Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was not involved in the project.

Methodological quibbles aside, the latest inventory flags a marked retreat of glaciers in the southern and eastern fringes of the Tibetan Plateau. “We found the fastest shrinking glaciers are those in the central upper reach of the Brahmaputra River, between the central north Himalaya [and] the source region of the tributary of the Indus River,” Liu says.

Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, applauds the openness in sharing data, which hasn’t always been the norm in China. “It is highly useful that the colleagues from China have made their data set available to the community. It will feed directly into global efforts to compile a worldwide glacier inventory and is a major improvement,” he says. “It will, for example, greatly support the effort of global glacier modeling to improve our understanding of glaciers’ response to climate change.” [tibet.net]
23/12/14

NASA Photographs Show Eastern Basin of Aral Sea Totally Dried

New NASA photographs taken by satellite show Central Asia' once-vibrant Aral Sea shrinking to levels possibly not seen in centuries.
The images taken in August by the Terra satellite show that the sea's eastern basin, on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, completely empty, the first time in modern times, said Philip Micklin, a well-known geographer and professor emeritus of Western Michigan University and an Aral Sea expert.

"And it is likely the first time it has completely dried in 600 years, since medieval desiccation associated with diversion of the Amu Darya [river] to the Caspian Sea," he told NASA.
By some accounts, the destruction of the sea is considered one of the world's worst environmental catastrophes.

• Once the fourth largest sea in the world, the Aral has been shrinking since the 1960s when the Soviet Union undertook a major irrigation project to supply the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. 

The region's two main rivers — the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya — were tapped to irrigate water-intensive crops like cotton and others in the arid Central Asian desert.

The desert bloomed in many places, but at the expense of the lake, which has shriveled, destroying ecosystems, decimating a vibrant fishing industry and leaving dozens of communities suffering from poverty and environmentally-induced disease.
Micklin said lower rain and snow fall in the mountains to the east this year  considerably reduced the flow into the Amu Darya feeding the lake.
Uzbekistan continues to use the river for its economically-important cotton industry.
As the water receded, the sea has split into two separate sections: the North, or Small, Aral Sea, located within Kazakhstan; and the South, or Large, Aral Sea. The latter split into western and eastern basins.

• “As the lake dried up, fisheries and the communities that depended on them collapsed,” NASA noted in its statement that accompanied the publication of photographs. “The increasingly salty water became polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. Blowing dust from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, became a public health hazard.”

The continual loss of water has also contributed to a change in the regional climate, making winters colder and summers hotter and drier, the statement said.

The photos of the drying lake were taken in August of this year by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite.
In an effort to save the lake, in 2005 a World Bank-funded dam was built in Kazakhstan, which has helped to partially restore the northern section, albeit at a fraction of its former size and volume.
http://www.voanews.com/content/nasa-photographs-show-eastern-basin-of-aral-sea-totally-dried/2471680.html
3/10/14
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Central Anatolian basin’s aquifers dry out. (the most arid winters and springs in recent years)

The Konya Basin’s aquifers have dried out, Forestry and Water Affairs Minister Veysel Eroğlu said in a written statement July 30, as the country has experienced one of the most arid winters and springs in recent years.

The basin, which is also used to irrigate the Central Anatolian Konya’s lowlands, the largest in the country, has formally entered a hydrological drought, said Eroğlu responding to parliamentary questions.


Eroğlu said they are planning to cope with the drought by reducing the irrigation at the plantations in the area and choosing plants that require relatively less water to grow. The Konya’s lowlands are one of the main areas that produce sugar beets, which require considerable amounts of water to grow.

“Turkey is not a country rich in water. Considering the quantity of water per capita, it is in fact a country that experiences water scarcity. The quantity of potable water per capita in Turkey is around 519 cubic meters,” Eroğlu said.

The hydrological drought in Konya could threaten the economy in the area, which is based on agriculture and farming. Despite the minister’s admission about water scarcity, the government’s environmental policy is severely criticized by ecologists, particularly for privileging energy investments over protecting nature.

• The recent construction of dozens of hydroelectric plants on small streams that are important for the country’s ecological balance has raised massive outcry as many experts warn that the practice could cause droughts in several rivers, resulting in land erosion in many parts of the country. 

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com
31/7/14
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Related:

• En 2040 no habrá agua suficiente para la población mundial (si seguimos haciendo lo que hacemos hoy)

• Turkish activists make the ‘big jump’ to free rivers from dams (Turkey faces losing 80 percent of its biodiversity)