Few people have ever imagined there would be sapphirine pools studded a glacier. The pool formed on an ice sheet is a kind of glacial landforms, which is embraced as amazing scenery by tourists, but worried vigilantly by the glaciologists.
On a prospecting tour to the northwest China's Glacier No. 1 on Tianshan Mountain, an explorative team from the CAS Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute encountered a 15-meter-long, 4-meter-high nude ice cliff in the northwest of the source area on the glacier top. To their surprise, the south-facing ice cliff overlooked an approximately 30-m² pool sprawling on the glacial sheet, which according to the experts is at least 1.5 m deep and formed by the summer ablation. Since it was in winter, the water surface was frozen, and people could walk on it.
Stepping to further research in the source area, the scientists found that there was a distinct dust layer under the snow pack supposedly due to summer ablation. In addition, a snow-free region of about 15 m² on the top of the ice cliff presented with the glacier ice barely exposed to the sun, suggesting intensive melting. The scientists detailed that the tail of the summit of the south-facing east branch of the Glacier No. 1 is receiving a large amount of sunshine, leading to partially glacial melting and also directly causing the formation of the melt water pool.
The lake was regarded as a signal indicating that the whole glacier may be seeing an accelerated process of ablation and will disappear in a relatively short time, warns Pro. Li Zhongqin. It's the right time to reconsider our living style and producing mode in order to protect the environment, which is already fragile enough. During the 38 years from 1962 to 2000, the No. 1 glacier shrunk 0.22 km², and the retreat is on expressway due to the resultant reaction of all kinds of factors including global warming-up.
Added by Pro. Li, the Glacier No.1 is of significant research value. It's among the China's long-term observed glaciers, one of the typical central Asian's arid & semi-arid glaciers enlisted in the World Glaciers Inventory, and the top 10 representative glaciers worldwide recorded by the World Glacier Monitoring Service.
This discovery enriches the environmental research materials and will facilitate the study in various fields ranging from the ecological changes to the economic development within the Urumqi River drainage area.
The fairy-tale image of a meltwater pool nestling on a thawing glacier is actually an alarming signal sent by the on-going ominous trend of global warming-up.
