Guardian: The rate at which China’s largest desert freshwater lake is shrinking has accelerated dramatically in the past four years, figures show.
Hongjiannao Lake, several hundred kilometres to the west of Beijing, has been disappearing since the 1970s, due to a combination of coal mining and climate change. But the speed at which it is losing area has increased rapidly since 2009, when it measured 46 square kilometres (sq km), down from 67 sq km in 1969.
Data released by local meteorological agencies…