The average annual temperature in southwest China's Tibet autonomous region is rising at a speed of 0.3 degree Celsius every ten years, higher than the growth rate of the country and world, a latest research shows.

 

The "Tibet's Climate under the Global Warming Trend", conducted by the the Tibet Meteorological Bureau, says the temperature rise is most obvious in the west of the region, followed by its southeastern part.

 

Tibet, with its glaciers and high altitude, has been regarded as a sensitive region to the effects of global warming.

 

"The regional climate shows a warming trend under the global warming background," said Zhang Hezhen, a senior engineer with the bureau.

 

Currently, China's average temperature is rising at 0.4 degree Celsius every 100 years, while a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed the average surface temperature of the globe has risen 0.74 degree Celsius in the past 100 years.

 

Eleven of the 12 warmest winters since 1850 occurred between 1995 and 2006, according to the IPCC.

 

Last winter, average temperatures in different parts of Tibet were 0.5 to 2.8 degrees Celsius higher than normal years. The whole region's average temperature was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than normal last winter.

 

The region's average temperature in the winters of 2006 and 2001 was 3.0 and 1.7 degrees Celsius higher than normal years. Four of the five warm winters in the past 35 years in Tibet occurred after 2000.

 

In Lhasa, the average decade temperature had risen from 7.7 degrees Celsius in the 1970s to 8.4 degrees Celsius in the 1990s. The rise is speeding since 2000, with the city's average temperature in the past six years reaching 8.9 degrees Celsius.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2007)