Tibet's plateau city Lhasa embraces summer for first time

Lhasa, the capital Tibet has for the first time entered summer, the regional climate centre of the remote Himalayan region of China announced Thursday, apparently due to the impact climate change. Lhasa, with an average elevation of 3,650 metres above sea level, has seen its average temperature to 22 degrees Celsius on June 23 and the temperature remained above that figure between June 25 and 29, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

According to the national standard on the division of seasons in China, it marks that the city entered summer on June 23, the first time since the city's meteorological data was first collected in 1981. Cold drinks and fans have become popular products, a rare scene in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

Tibet had seen high temperatures and little rainfall since the beginning of June. The average temperature in the region in June was 13.7 degrees Celsius, 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than the previous record, meteorological data showed. On June 24, six observatories in the Himalayan region registered record-high temperatures from the same period, with the temperature in Gyaca, under the jurisdiction of the city of Shannan, soaring to 32.6 degrees.

"It is possible for individual cities in Tibet to embrace summer in the context of climate change, but this is a rare case and Lhasa now still belongs to the traditional none-summer area," Shi Lei, deputy head of the regional climate centre commented. Previously, Chinese scientists have warned that glaciers in Tibet have been melting fast due to the impact of climate change.

Last month, a study by a researcher at Columbia University in the US found that melting of the Himalayan glaciers has doubled since the start of the 21st century due to rising temperatures. The losing over a vertical foot and half of the ice each year potentially threatened the water supply for hundreds of millions of people in countries including India, the study said.