Tibetan glaciers are shrinking, but with regional variations

Nature : Glaciologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Tibetan Research in Beijing have compiled 30 years of glacier measurements taken in the Tibetan plateau and have shown that the majority of the 7100 glaciers studied have shrunk over that time. The research contradicts conclusions drawn from data gathered by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment ( GRACE) satellite earlier this year. According to Yao Tandong, one of the glaciologists, the discrepancy arises because GRACE cannot discriminate between ice and liquid water and could not, therefore, detect the increased area of glacial lakes caused by melting glaciers. Yao also explained GRACE‘s finding that glaciers in some areas were stable or growing by pointing to the increased strength of westerlies, the dominant snow-bringing climate pattern in those areas. By contrast, in areas that showed the most glacial loss, snow-bringing monsoons had weakened.