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Global warming could benefit the arid northwest part of China which was expected to greatly increase rainfall by 2050, meteorologists said here recently.

The increased evaporation from oceans and from the relatively-wet areas of China would be the prime factor leading to more rainfall, Shi Yafeng, a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said at the International Symposium on Climate Change which opened on Mar.31.

China's vast inland, mountain-ringed northwestern region, including the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Ethnicity Autonomous Region, and Gansu, Sha'anxi and Qinghai provinces, is always the most arid areas in the country.

Decades of meteorological monitoring records in these areas showed, however, that since 1987 the local climate has been shifting from warm-dry to warm-wet.

As a result, the water level of Bositeng Lake in the central part of the towering Tianshan Mountains has been rising after 1987and more floods have inundated Xinjiang since that year.

Experts predict that by the year 2050, the average temperature of the provinces and autonomous regions in northwest China will rise 1.5 to 2.6 degrees Celsius while the precipitation in this area will increase four to 34 percent and water resources from thawing glaciers would also increase by more than 50 percent.

Local governments should take the opportunity to improve or renovate their water conservancy networks and strengthen local ecological environment and build more reservoirs to store floodwater to guard against potential floods, experts suggest.