A study revealed that as many as three million people in India are at risk of flooding caused by glacial lakes, the highest number of those exposed in the world.
The study by an international team led by scientists at UK’s Newcastle University is the first global assessment of areas at greatest risk of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF).
The study was published in the Journal Nature Communications on Tuesday. It holds that around 15 million people over the world are at risk from flooding caused by glacial lakes.
The researchers, who also identified priority areas for mitigation, said more than half the globally exposed populations are found in just four countries: India, Pakistan, Peru, and China.
Among all, India and Pakistan have the highest number of people who are vulnerable to the situation. There are almost three million and two million people respectively, that is, one-third of the global total combined. Meanwhile, Iceland contains only 260 people making it the least of all, the study mentioned.
Moreover, the study also held that as the climate gets warmer, glaciers retreats as the glacial melt occurs faster than new seasonal snow and the ice get time to accumulate. The melted water piles up at the front of the glacier forming a lake.
It is to be mentioned that these lakes can suddenly burst and create a fast-flowing Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) that can spread over a large distance from the original site, more than 120 kilometers in some cases. GLOFs can be highly destructive and damage property, infrastructure, and agricultural land and can lead to significant loss of life.
The number of glacial lakes has witnessed a rapid increase since 1990 as a result of climate change. At the same time, the number of people living in these catchments has also increased significantly.
The research team looked at 1,089 glacial lake basins worldwide and the number of people living within 50 kilometers of them, as well as the level of development in those areas and other societal indicators as markers of vulnerability to GLOFs.
Hereafter, they used this information to quantify and rank the potential for damage from GLOFs at a global scale and assess communities' ability to respond effectively to a flood.
After the results, it was highlighted that 15 million people live within 50 km of a glacial lake and that High Mountain Asia, which encompasses the Tibetan Plateau, from Kyrgyzstan to China, has the highest GLOF danger, with 9.3 million people’s life at stake.
