LANZHOU, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Rising temperatures have exacerbated shrinkage of glaciers in western China in the past 50 years, Chinese scientists have found.

    China's glaciers are mainly distributed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and neighboring areas. These areas boast 46,377 glaciers.

    About 82 percent of the glaciers in west China have been shrinking in the past 50 years as the temperature rose by 0.2 degrees Celsius per 10 years, according to the research results published by the Cold and Dry Zone Environment and Engineering Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

    Scientists with the institute selected 5,000 glaciers in the region and used remote sensing and geographic information system methods to monitor their changes in the past 50 years, said Liu Shiyin, an expert with the institute, who participated in the monitoring program.

    The 5,000 glaciers account for one-fourth of the total acreage of glaciers in western China.

    Liu said only a small number of glaciers were expanding and about 82 percent of the monitored glaciers shrank by 4.5 percent in the past 50 years.

    Glaciers in the central and northwestern parts of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau shrank slowly and those in the neighboring areas were shrinking faster, Liu said.

    Liu said, 95 percent of the 170 glaciers on the northwestern slope of the Qilian Mountains have shrunk by 4.9 meters each year on average, and only 10 glaciers expanded during the 1956-2000 period.

    Almost all the glaciers on the northern slope of and 69 percent of glaciers on the southern slope the Tianshan Mountains, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, are receding, and the glacier acreage shrank by 10 percent on the Pamirs in the past 50 years.

    Glaciers on the northern slopes of the Kunlun Mountains and the Himalayas were also shrinking, Liu said.

    Monitoring results show that water flow in some rivers in northwest China's dry regions has been increasing, a result possibly brought about by melting glaciers, Liu said.

    However, Liu warned, if glaciers continued to melt fastly, water sources for local rivers would reduce and that would impose serious impact on local production and the life of local people.