Global warming has caused "26 warm winters" in China since 1986, and by the middle of this century some 1 billion Asians will face water shortage.

That is the grim reality of climate change, alarmed scientists said in Beijing yesterday.

In North China, the temperature rise has been much higher than the national and global average. In the past 100 years, as the global temperatures edged up by 0.74 C, the temperature in North China climbed 1.4 C in only 50 years.

Ding Yihui, a senior scientist from China Meteorological Administration (CMA), told the Seminar on Low Carbon Economy and China's Energy and Environmental Policy that China needs to take immediate action to curb carbon dioxide emission.

China's annual carbon dioxide emissions measure about 1.4 billion tons a year, while the United States releases about 2 billion tons.

Concurrently, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) Work Group II under the United Nations held its Asian session yesterday afternoon in Beijing.

IPCC reported that by the middle of this century, more than 1 billion Asians will face water shortage, as farm crop yields increase by 20 percent in East and Southeast Asia but decrease by 30 percent in Central and South Asia.

If the speed of temperature rising is unchanged, the glacier coverage on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau will shrink from 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers by 2030.