Chinanews, Lanzhou, September 5 – According to research meteorologists in Gansu Province, continuous warming has caused the glaciers in the Qilian Mountains, a range straddling the provincial boarder between Qinghai and Gansu provinces, might melt away around 2050.Nowadays, the snowline in the mountains keeps rising by 2 – 6.5 m every year. The 1,970-sq-km glaciers on the Qilian Mountains are the major water sources for the Shiyang, Hei and Shule rivers, which are the lifeline to 5 million people in northwest China. These days, the water from Qilian Mountains glaciers has dropped by one billion cubic meters every year.The population explosion in Gansu should also be blamed for the degradation of the glaciers, as excessive grazing there has contributed a lot to the desertification of Qilian Mountain range, which is also deadly to the glaciers.