Tianshan Mountain Glacier Shrinks 14% – Lanzhou Evening Post

More to melt, and less water for an already dry northwestern region. Translated from Lanzhou Evening Post via sina.com (photo: Tianshan Mountain, via wikipedia.org):

Global warming, a 40-year research concludes, has helped largely to melt almost 14% of the #1 glacier for Urumqi River source at Tianshan Mountain in Xinjiang, shrinking by .27 square kilometer from 1.95 in 1959. The rate of melting is going to accelerate.

The glacier was composed of two “tongues” on the east and west. In 1993, the tongues parted with each other and became independent. [Full Text in Chinese]