Although reliable figures are often missing, considerable detrimental changes due to shrinking glaciers are universally expected for water availability in river systems under the influence of ongoing global climate change. We estimate the contribution potential of seasonally delayed glacier melt water to total water availability in large river systems.
The world's rivers are in crisis including in North America and Europe where governments have invested trillions of dollars to clean up freshwater supplies, a study showed Wednesday.
"Threats to human water security and biological diversity are pandemic," Charles Vorosmarty of the City University of New York, co-lead author of the report in the journal Nature, told Reuters.
The Himalayan glaciers that feed Asia's five largest rivers are in no danger of disappearing by 2035, as claimed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report. In fact, only the glaciers that melt into the Ganges are shrinking, according to the most detailed analysis yet of how climate change will affect key Asian glaciers.
BEIJING: Researchers in China have documented what they describe as the rapid retreat of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, the source of many of the subcontinent
The water level in China's longest river, the Yangtze, is at a record low. Water levels in some areas have fallen to the lowest in 142 years, officials said. On January 8, the Yangtze water level
Weeks after Chinese officials warned of a potential environmental catastrophe, the government has announced that it needs to relocate at least four million more people away from the Three Gorges Dam
