Scientists: Ice in northwest China will disappear by mid-century

Scientists from China announced that the small ice in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which is no more than half a square kilometer in area, will disappear by the middle of this century.

China Daily reports that according to experts at the Xinjiang-Tianshan National Glacier Monitoring and Research Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the disappearance of this ice is inevitable and should be expected, "regardless of the climate scenario and the amount of precipitation," because it is linked to global warming.

The newspaper indicates that most of the ice in this region, which covers an area of ​​about 2 square kilometers, will melt completely by the middle of the twenty-first century, and only a third of the other ice, which covers an area of ​​10 square kilometers, will remain.

"The total area of ​​ice in Xinjiang has decreased by 11.7 percent in 50 years due to global warming. The rate of decrease in different regions ranges from 8.8 percent to 34.2 percent," said Wang Feiting, director of the station.

He points out that the acceleration of the melting of large ice is leading to an increase in water flow, and is expected to reach its peak in 2050 and then begin to decline. As for the small ice areas, they will disappear within the next 10-20 years.

It is worth noting that ice is the main source of water in the northwestern regions of China, where according to official data there are more than 20,600 ice in the Xinjiang region (about 42 percent of the national total), with a total area of ​​22,600 square kilometers.