According to a new study, as the glaciers melt and a large amount of water reaches the surrounding lakes, the pressure on them increases. Due to this increased water pressure, 15 million people around the world who live in areas where lakes burst are at risk of fatal flash floods.

The study said that more than half of the people living in the area affected by the floods caused by the bursting of the glacial lake are from just four countries, which include India, Pakistan, Peru and China. Another study listed more than 150 glacier-caused flood outbreaks in history and recent times.

The study estimates that about one million people live within just 10 kilometers of unstable glacier-fed lakes.

The study revealed that 15 million people live within 50 km of glacial lakes and that high mountain Asia (which extends from Kyrgyzstan to China and the Tibetan Plateau) has the highest incidence of Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). There is a danger of bursting of lakes, in which 93 lakh people are in danger. About 5 million people in India and Pakistan live in such vulnerable areas, which together is about a third of the world's total.

One of the most devastating floods occurred in Peru in 1941, killing 1,800 to 6,000 people. In British Columbia, Canada in 2020, a flood caused by the bursting of a glacier-fed lake caused a tsunami of water about 100 meters high, but did not cause any casualties.

Heavy rains and floods caused by the bursting of a glacier-fed lake killed thousands in India in 2013. Another deadly flood in India in 2021 that was initially attributed to the bursting of a glacier-fed lake.

So far, it doesn't appear that climate change has increased the frequency of those floods, scientists say, but as glaciers warm, the amount of water in the lakes increases, causing them to burst when dams burst. In rare cases, they become more dangerous.

In the past, the bursting of glacier-fed lakes has caused devastating floods that have killed thousands, said co-author Tom Robinson at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Climate change is causing glaciers to melt, so these lakes are getting bigger and more unstable.

Dan Sugar, a geophysicist at the University of Calgary, said much of the risk depends on how many people live in the flood zone caused by the glacier.

What's different about their study, Robinson said, is that it first looks at climate, geography, population, vulnerability and all of these factors to get a good idea of where the most dangerous places in the world are for all 1,089 glacier basins. way to be observed.

At the highest level of danger is the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa basin north of Islamabad, Pakistan. Robinson said it's a lot of people and they are in great danger, because they live in a valley below the lake.

The trouble, Robinson said, is that scientists are focusing too much on Pakistan, India, China and the Himalayas, often called high mountain Asia, and somewhat ignoring the Andes. The second and third most threatened basins are in Peru's Santa Basin and Bolivia's Beni Basin, the study said.

University of Dayton geology professor Umesh Haritshay said the region was one of the most vulnerable to flash floods caused by glaciers after the deadly Andes floods in the 1940s, but in the past decade the high mountains in Asia have taken over Is.

The three lake basins in the US and Canada, from the Pacific Northwest to Alaska, are ranked highest for threats, but some areas in Asia and the Andes are at lower risk, the study said. They are in Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, separated by Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau – in northeast Washington and west central British Columbia. This study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Source: Down to Earth