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The 18,044-foot massif of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain towers over Xeusong village in southern China, where the glaciers draw tourists, and their meltwater irrigates the terraced fields below. Like many glaciers in the region, Jade Dragon’s Baishui Glacier has lost 60 percent of its mass and retreated 820 feet up the mountain between 1982 and 2018, because of steadily warming global temperatures. Such ice fields typically act as frozen reservoirs, storing water in the winter and releasing it slowly throughout the spring and summer when crops need it most. The Baishui Glacier feeds the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, whose watershed produces a third of China’s food. In a warmer world, less meltwater in summer spells trouble for countries like China, which needs to feed nearly 20 percent of the world’s people with only 7 percent of the global freshwater supply.

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STNMTZ_20061031_8822.TIF
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©2006 George Steinmetz
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The 18,044-foot massif of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain towers over Xeusong village in southern China, where the glaciers draw tourists, and their meltwater irrigates the terraced fields below. Like many glaciers in the region, Jade Dragon’s Baishui Glacier has lost 60 percent of its mass and retreated 820 feet up the mountain between 1982 and 2018, because of steadily warming global temperatures. Such ice fields typically act as frozen reservoirs, storing water in the winter and releasing it slowly throughout the spring and summer when crops need it most. The Baishui Glacier feeds the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, whose watershed produces a third of China’s food. In a warmer world, less meltwater in summer spells trouble for countries like China, which needs to feed nearly 20 percent of the world’s people with only 7 percent of the global freshwater supply.

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