A glacial lake outburst flood in Sikkim in October 2023 led to the collapse of the Teesta III hydroelectric dam, killed more than 100 people, and affected thousands of others. And according to the World Meteorological Organisations ‘State of the Climate Asia 2023’ report, published in April, it was one of the worst climate-related disasters to have occurred on the continent last year.
The geohydrology of GLOFs
A body of water influenced by glaciers is called a glacial lake. As glaciers move, they erode the land underneath and the debris of rocks and soil scraped from the land from ridges called moraines. Glacial lakes are mostly on the margins of glaciers and evolve from ice-contact lakes — where the lake is in touch with the ice — into distal lakes as the glaciers retreat.
