Scientists have drilled into a glacier in west China's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to collect 400-meter ice samples for research into climate changes.

Under the project led by Yao Tandong, an academician with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it took the team 40 days to collect the ice samples from the top of the Dund Glacier.

They took three ice samples with a total length of 396 meters drilling from an altitude of 5,320 meters above sea level on top of the glacier, and another three samples of 45 meters long in total from an altitude of 4,950 meters above the sea level.

The samples have been sent to the institute's lab in Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region.

They also set up a meteorological station at the top of the glacier.

Only the polar regions have more glaciers than the plateau. Scientists believe glaciers can offer insight into climate changes.

Although scientists generally believe glaciers on the plateau are melting due to global warming, the glacier appears to have remained stable without any obvious retreating since the first scientific drill by a Sino-America team in 1987.

source: Xinhua