I was in Dunhuang this summer- Water situation- NW China

I spent 3 weeks this summer on Silk Road tour of the ancient Silk Road towns and Buddhist ruins, starting from Dunhuang and then doing full circle around the Taklamakan Desert. It rains an average of 1/2 inch per year in this part of the world (Himalaya, Tien Shin, and Pamir mountain ranges surround it and block the clouds).

The main industry of the oases towns is agriculture, fed by mountain snow melt irrigation to west of Dunhuang and underground in Dunhuang. Climate change is devastating for them. What impressed me is the stark change one sees as one enters an irrigated oases from a desert road. One moment the road is surrounded by rocky or sandy desert, the next moment as one enters an irrigated oases, it's green and full of plant and animal life.

No water, no life, it's that simple. That is the lesson for us to learn. Climate forecast models show southern half of US will get warmer and drier (with the exception of the coasts). We do not want to live in a world like that of NW China, we need to start making changes now.

You can see the same kind of change between desert and irrigated areas in the American southwest.