Abstract: On the Tibetan Plateau, there are more than 36 793 glaciers with an area of 49 873.44 km2 and volume of 4 561 km3. They account for 79.5% of the total glacial number, 84% of the total glacial area and 81.6% of the total glacial volume in China. With the climate warming since the 20th century, particularly the rapid warming since the 1980 s, most glaciers are retreating. The first half of the century was characterized with a transition period from glacial advance to glacial retreat. The intensive retreat started from the 1950s to the 1960 s.There was stable or even advancing phenomena between the 1960s and the 1970 s. After the 1980 s, glacial retreat started again and became more intensive in the 1990s.There are more than 10 rivers originate from the Tibetan Plateau with the Asia’s seven most important rivers including the Yongtze River, Yellow River, Ganges River, Indus River, Yarlung Zangbo River, Nujiang River. The runoffs of the seven rivers have shown an unstable changing with the retreat of the glaciers. They tend to increase, particularly in the winter half year because of more glacial meltwater supply. As glaciers continuously retreat, the amount of glacial meltwater would decrease at some stage; this would be especially true in the middle and small reaches.

Key words: glacial retreat,, water resource, runoff,, climate change