The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a 970,000 square mile area around five times the size of mainland France, stretching from Western China to Pakistan, that includes areas of Nepal, India, eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan."A major concern is that permafrost has become unstable and is thawing nearly everywhere in response to the rapidly warming climate, which is rising at more than 3-times the global average warming rate across high northern latitudes," John S. Kimball, a systems ecologist at the University of Montana, told Newsweek.On the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, in particular, freshwater alpine lakes and glacial and permafrost melt feed the three longest rivers in Asia and are a major water source for about 20 percent of the world's population."For the entire northern region, we expect between 50-230 billion tons of carbon to be released to the atmosphere as the climate warms," Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at Northern Arizona University, told Newsweek."The exact amount depends on whether society reduces human emission or not, with the lower values corresponding to a world where overall warming is kept below 2 degrees C."The positive feedback cycle of warming and permafrost thaw may also include wildfires, which research has found to be increasing in Arctic permafrost soils."