The big melt

  Glaciers in the high heart of Asia feed its greatest rivers, lifelines for two billion people. Now the ice and snow are diminishing. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

National Geographic

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC — The gods must be furious.

It's the only explanation that makes sense to Jia Son, a Tibetan farmer surveying the catastrophe unfolding above his village in China's mountainous Yunnan Province. "We've upset the natural order," the devout, 52-year-old Buddhist says. "And now the gods are punishing us."

This geologic colossus — the highest and largest plateau on the planet, ringed by its tallest mountains — covers an area greater than western Europe, at an average altitude of more than two miles.

But a crisis is brewing on the roof of the world, and it rests on a curious paradox: For all its seeming might and immutability, this geologic expanse is more vulnerable to climate change than almost anywhere else on Earth.

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