China's official news agency 'Xinhua' on June 17, 2014, quoted the  Institute of Tibetan Plateau Studies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as saying that "long-term remote sensing and ground monitoring shows that over the past 30 years, the permafrost area of ??1.5 million square kilometers was reduced to 1.26 million square kilometers." Mentioning that experts point out that global warming is the direct cause of  the permafrost degradation, the Xinhua report said 'geographical conditions in the world's highest Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are significantly affected by global warming'. Data shows that there has been a big change in the last 30 years in the plateau's elevation range of 4000-5000m height with the annual average temperature rising 1.8 ?, far higher than the national average.