(YANG SHOUDE)

Sanjiangyuan, the origin of China's three major waterways—Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers, is continuing to heat up and become wetter as a result of global warming, recent monitoring data showed.

The headwaters area, on the remote Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, has seen its temperature rise 1.98 degrees Celsius and an increase in rainfall between 1961 and 2012.

Due to rising temperature, the maximum depth of local permafrost has decreased by an average of 12 cm every 10 years, indicating that most glaciers there are melting.