Global warming threatens Tibetan rail link
June 23, 2005An official from China's National Climate Center warned warmer winter and summers in a fragile environmental region will ruin a rail link to Tibet by 2050.
Luo Yong, deputy director of the center said Tuesday temperatures may climb as much as 6 degrees Fahrenheit in the Sanjiangyuan region of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.
According to Thursday's China Daily, the unique sensitivity to temperature changes in the Sanjiangyuan region is seen by many climatologists as a tripwire for global climate change that includes warming trends for China and East Asia.
Such warming, Luo said, could cause permafrost to melt and threaten the railway within 45 years. The rail link to Tibet is expected to start trial operations in 2006. Since the early 1960s, when the Qinghai-Tibet Highway was formed, permafrost on both sides of the roadbed has retreated as much as 5.6 miles and the area of frozen soil decreased about 13 percent.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International
-
Glimmers of green hope for Asian cities
Jun 21, 2011 |
5 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Eugene-Springfield face Upper Willamette climate threats
Mar 03, 2009 |
3 / 5 (5) |
0
-
Climate change to increase tropical disease range
8 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
-
Study shows global glaciers, ice caps, shedding billions of tons of mass annually
Feb 08, 2012 |
4.3 / 5 (7) |
8
-
Quantifying climate impacts: New comprehensive model comparison launched
Feb 07, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (31) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
More news stories
Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago
(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...
21 hours ago |
4.3 / 5 (12) |
12
|
Could Venus be shifting gear?
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
17 hours ago |
5 / 5 (7) |
7
|
NASA budget will axe Mars deal with Europe: scientists
US President Barack Obama's budget proposal to be submitted next week for 2013 will cut NASA's budget by 20 percent and eliminate a major partnership with Europe on Mars exploration, scientists said Thursday.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
20 hours ago |
5 / 5 (2) |
18
Two new moons for Jupiter
Advances in technology have lead to the discovery of new planets outside of our Solar System, and now even new moons in our own backyard.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
17 hours ago |
4 / 5 (1) |
7
Mars Science Laboratory computer issue resolved
(PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers have found the root cause of a computer reset that occurred two months ago on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and have determined how to correct it.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
18 hours ago |
4.7 / 5 (6) |
3
|
Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)
The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.
Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets
Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.
New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission
Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. They’re a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel — such as an optical fiber o ...
New power source discovered
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.
Small modular reactor design could be a 'SUPERSTAR'
(PhysOrg.com) -- Though most of today's nuclear reactors are cooled by water, we've long known that there are alternatives; in fact, the world's first nuclear-powered electricity in 1951 came from a reactor ...
The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males
A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...
