The recent glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in Sikkim wreaked havoc along the Teesta river, bringing into focus the magnifying risk of climate change-induced GLOF across the Indian Himalayan Region. A study published in Nature this year indicates that 90 million people across 30 countries live in 1,089 basins containing glacial lakes. Of these, one-sixth live within 50 km of a glacial lake and 1 km of potential GLOF runout channels.
In mountains, hazards often occur in a cascading fashion — heavy rainfall triggers a landslide, which may in turn cause a glacial lake outburst and more landslides downstream, and create conditions for flash floods. Predicting this chain of events is difficult. Institutional awareness of these risks is increasing, but the challenge is to evolve a system to mitigate risks from such hazards, and provide early warnings.
