Influenced by the impact of global warming, more and more regions of the world are experiencing explosive growth in aridity. Prof. Yuan Xing from Nanjing University of Information Engineering has pointed out that due to the impact of climate change, China? South flooding and north drought? The pattern is being broken. The El Ni?o phenomenon will continue to occur in the future, and the trend of drought will continue to grow.
The arid and rainy climate of northwest China has long been the biggest obstacle to the region's economic development, and Xinjiang, located in the interior of northwest China, is a typical example. Here the climate is dry, rainfall is scarce, coupled with the world's second largest desert Taklamakan Desert influence, perennial yellow sand sky.
As we all know, precipitation is caused by warm and humid air masses over the oceans, blown by the monsoon winds and drifted to various places. The warm and humid air masses in the northwest are precisely blocked by the towering Himalayas, which creates a different climatic environment on both sides of the mountain. When warm and humid air from the Indian Ocean meets the blockage of the Himalayas as it travels north, the airflow accumulates on the south side of the mountain, forming clouds and thus precipitation. Areas such as Nepal in the southern Himalayas are thus moisturized by rain.
For the northern regions, the heavy mountain ranges of the Tibetan Plateau prevent the air currents, even if they have superb climbing ability, from dehydrating many times during the climb and eventually turning into dry air, and do not bring water vapor to the inland areas. In only a few water vapor corridors, such as the Yarlung Tsangpo River Grand Canyon and the Linzhi and Chamdo regions of Tibet, the water vapor can only moisturize the nearby land, allowing it to show vitality that is different from the bitter cold of Tibet. Losing momentum, the water vapor simply can't step farther into northwestern regions such as Xinjiang.
In order to solve this problem, many scientists have put forward a variety of ideas. 1954, just returned to China Qian Xuesen has proposed, the Yarlung Zangbo River basin excess rainfall from the air? The cloud state? In 1998, scientists hiking across the Yarlung Tsangpo River Grand Canyon, also proposed the idea of establishing a water vapor channel on the Tibetan Plateau, and even two famous scientists wrote a letter to the central government suggesting the implementation of the air? The cloud adjustment?
The Indian Ocean warm and humid airflow will be led across the Tibetan Plateau, wetting the Northwest.
But the most daring still counts the private entrepreneur Mou Qiqi proposed, blowing open the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean warm and humid air flow into the desert of northwest China's vision. Putting aside the problem of engineering difficulty, this idea can work? In fact, to solve the problem is not the Himalayas, but it is located in the Tibetan Plateau. The average altitude of the Tibetan plateau is about 4,000 meters, and even without the Himalayas, such a high altitude can block water vapor.
From a geographical point of view, the existence of the Tibetan plateau does have a profound impact on China's climate. The Middle East and Africa, which are at the same latitude as southern China, are all deserts, and only the southern part of China has abundant precipitation. Because of the existence of the Tibetan plateau, so that the arid westerly wind belt had to move northward, China's northwestern region to have today's arid and rainy landscape.
But southern China has escaped becoming a desert. The crushing of the plates allowed the uplifted Tibetan Plateau to retain large amounts of water vapor and form numerous glaciers on the plateau, which feed rivers of great significance to China, such as the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers.
But there is no guarantee that the passage, when it does open up, will not disrupt the climate of China as a whole. At that time, a lot of snow and glaciers in the Himalayas would melt quickly, making it impossible for people to live in the river valleys and canyons of Tibet, and more weirs would be formed by rainfall and flooding, affecting the cultivation of farmland.
Water vapor travels long distances into deeper regions, geometrically increasing the volume of water in several major water systems on the Loess Plateau, which leads to more soil erosion. And rely on this air mass of India and Nepal and other regions, because the air mass can not meet the cold, precipitation is reduced, the Ganges River and other water systems, water volume has been reduced dramatically, the temperature began to fall. The resultant big changes in all kinds of climate are something that no country can afford.
The environmental system we live in now is actually very fragile, and any massive human intervention will lead to more natural disasters. Looking back at many ancient civilizations, it was the large population and thus destruction of the environment that led to the complete disappearance of the entire civilization. Don't be tempted to change nature, but to adapt to it is the only way to develop in the long run.