Dangerous glacial lakes across Tibetan Plateau
The flood danger posed by glacial lakes across the Tibetan Plateau has been assessed in the most comprehensive study of its kind so far. Simon Allen, member of the international research team, was interviewed by BBC.
Swiss and Chinese scientists looked at 1,300 of these water bodies that have built up in front of retreating glaciers and which are dammed by rocky debris. The fear is that these lakes can overtop their barriers and send floods downstream that overrun settlements.
The team has found 210 (16%) to have the potential to threaten communities. It is information local decision-makers can now use to prioritise strategies to mitigate the risk, says Simon Allen, who with scientists at the University of Zurich worked alongside colleagues from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing.
Dr. Simon Allen, Glaciology and Geomorphodynamics, Department of Geography, UZH
Literature:
Simon Keith Allen, Guoqing Zhang, Weicai Wang, Tandong Yao, Tobias Bolch,
Potentially dangerous glacial lakes across the Tibetan Plateau revealed using a large-scale automated assessment approach. Science Bulletin, 2019
More news
- WGMS Letter of Concern to COP25
- Alexander von Humboldt: Trailblazer of Science
- The world's highest mountains hold vital climate change lessons
- GIUZ treasures on Swiss television
- Local experts for global reports
- 1894–2019: 125 years of internationally coordinated glacier monitoring
- Monitoring the Matterhorn with Millions of Data Points
- Reise bis zum Ende der Eiszeit
- Träge Zungen
- Fostering permafrost research and scientific exchange
- Klimaindikator Gletscher
- Global warming is shrinking glaciers faster than thought
- Melting glaciers causing sea levels to rise at ever greater rates
- Den globalen Zusammenhang vermitteln
- Der Permafrost in der Schweiz erwärmt sich wieder
- Tauender Permafrost: Eine tickende Zeitbombe
- Panta rhei - everything flows
- Mountain glaciers: Vanishing sources of water and life
- Boost to UZH’s Climate Research
- Ein Jahr der Extreme für Schweizer Gletscher
- Zum Klimabericht tragen viele bei
- Gemeinsam globale Probleme angehen
- Scientists set out to explore microbial life in glacier streams
- Die Alpenreise - Live aus Grindelwald
- IPA Lifetime Achievement Award to Wilfried Haeberli
- How the Alps inform polar research
- Towards an operational glacier monitoring service: Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service
- WGMS contributed to European State of the Climate report
- Short break in the warming of the alpine permafrost
- Frequently cited comment on glacier mass loss
- A tipping point for Greenland and its ice caps
- “Our object of interest is about to melt away”
- Precipitation radar in the Peruvian Andes
- Glacier change data as climate indicators
- Alpine permafrost continues to warm up
- WGMS Jubilee
- War waste in greenland
- Rock glaciers crawl slowly down the slope