The ongoing debates on climate change and global warming have been gaining in significance following the severe drought in Southwestern China, and the vicious winter storms which have hit the North, resulting in some of the worst winter weather in over 40 years.
The Yellow River is the longest river in Northern China. Its waters are used to irrigate almost 15% of China's total arable land, and in turn, around 140 million people.
But the regional drought and lack of rainfall in 2009 has meant that the Yellow River's water reserves have been plummeting. The Yellow River Conservancy Commission says the river's water levels had fallen 30% compared to previous years.
Authorities in eastern China are worried that the country's recent cold snap could cause potentially disastrous consequences for the region. Authorities fear ice drifts may lead to flooding along the Yellow River.
The length of frozen ice along the lower reaches of the Yellow River has reached a record high. Officials with the Yellow River Affairs Bureau say this could increase the possibility of ice jam flooding along the river. By the end of last week, the length of ice on the river stretched to about 100 miles long, about a mile longer than the previous record in 2005.
In some places, nearly 80 percent of the river surface has frozen, with the ice blocks covering areas as big as 900 square feet. That leaves little space for the remaining water to pass through, with fears that nearby areas could be flooded if the situation worsens.
The second longest river in China originates in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai province in northwestern China. It flows 34-hundred miles through Ningxia and Inner Mongolia,autonomous regions and Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan and Shangdong provinces before running into the Bohai sea.
Preparations for part of a massive water persion project aimed at bringing water from the Yangtze River to China's thirsty north are underway in Hubei province. But hundreds of thousands of locals will be displaced to make way for an expanded reservoir.