160 glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) across the Tropical Andes since the Little Ice Age

Emmer, Adam; Cook, Simon J.; Harrison, Stephan; Wilson, Ryan; Díaz‐Moreno, Alejandro; Reynolds, John M.; Torres, Juan; Yarlequé, Christian; Mergili, Martin; Jara, Harrinson; Bennett, Georgina L.; Caballero, Adriana; Glasser, Neil F.; Melgarejo, Enver; Riveros, Christian; Shannon, Sarah; Turpo, Efrain; Tinoco, Tito; Torres, Lucas; Garay, David; Villafane, Hilbert; Garrido, Henrry; Martínez, Carlos A.; Apaza, Nebenka; Araujo, Julia; Poma, C.

doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2021.103722

Cited by 31 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…Recently Veh et al (2022) compiled a dataset of more than 2800 GLOFs globally. These studies indicate that GLOFs may be more frequent than previously thought (Carrivick and Tweed, 2016;Emmer et al, 2022;Veh et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 49%

“…GLOFs are described as lowfrequency, high-magnitude events with major geomorphic consequences (Costa and Schuster, 1988;Evans and Clague, 1994;Clague and Evans, 2000), extreme hydrological characteristics (Richardson and Reynolds, 2000;Cenderelli and Wohl, 2003;Cook et al, 2018) and possibly adverse impacts on societies (Carey, 2005;Huggel et al, 2015;Carrivick and Tweed, 2016). While more than 1300 historical GLOFs have been catalogued throughout the world by Carrivick and Tweed (2016), recent studies show that this number is likely a lower bound for many regions (Emmer, 2017;Nie et al, 2018;Veh et al, 2019;Zheng et al, 2021a;Emmer et al, 2022). Recently Veh et al (2022) compiled a dataset of more than 2800 GLOFs globally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Progress and challenges in glacial lake outburst flood research (2017–2021): a research community perspective

Emmer

Allen

Carey

et al. 2022

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are among the most concerning consequences of retreating glaciers in mountain ranges worldwide. GLOFs have attracted significant attention amongst scientists and practitioners in the past 2 decades, with particular interest in the physical drivers and mechanisms of GLOF hazard and in socioeconomic and other human-related developments that affect vulnerabilities to GLOF events. This increased research focus on GLOFs is reflected in the gradually increasing number of papers published annually. This study offers an overview of recent GLOF research by analysing 594 peer-reviewed GLOF studies published between 2017 and 2021 (Web of Science and Scopus databases), reviewing the content and geographical focus as well as other characteristics of GLOF studies. This review is complemented with perspectives from the first GLOF conference (7–9 July 2021, online) where a global GLOF research community of major mountain regions gathered to discuss the current state of the art of integrated GLOF research. Therefore, representatives from 17 countries identified and elaborated trends and challenges and proposed possible ways forward to navigate future GLOF research, in four thematic areas: (i) understanding GLOFs – timing and processes; (ii) modelling GLOFs and GLOF process chains; (iii) GLOF risk management, prevention and warning; and (iv) human dimensions of GLOFs and GLOF attribution to climate change.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 49%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress and challenges in glacial lake outburst flood research (2017–2021): a research community perspective

Emmer

Allen

Carey

et al. 2022

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…Second, our hierarchical model structure allows for testing or including other levels than those we chose. For example, GLOFs originating from bedrock‐dammed or supraglacial lakes are assumed to become more frequent with ongoing glacier recession (Emmer et al., 2022; Miles et al., 2018). Those lakes can enter as additional hierarchical levels as more failures from these dam types enter our inventory.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This model allows the group‐level intercepts

{\beta }_{0}

and slopes

\,{\beta }_{1}

to change with time

x

. We assumed that the probability of missing a GLOF remains unchanged between 1973 and 2017, guided by studies that found years without GLOFs in any of the past three decades (Emmer et al., 2022; Veh et al., 2018). Again, we standardized the predictors, and define weakly informed (hyper‐)priors for the intercepts, slopes, and the standard deviations that model the variance between the levels (Table S3 in Supporting Information S1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends, Breaks, and Biases in the Frequency of Reported Glacier Lake Outburst Floods

et al. 2022

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Thousands of glacier lakes have been forming behind natural dams in high mountains following glacier retreat since the early 20th century. Some of these lakes abruptly released pulses of water and sediment with disastrous downstream consequences. Yet it remains unclear whether the reported rise of these glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) has been fueled by a warming atmosphere and enhanced meltwater production, or simply a growing research effort. Here we estimate trends and biases in GLOF reporting based on the largest global catalog of 1,997 dated glacier‐related floods in six major mountain ranges from 1901 to 2017. We find that the positive trend in the number of reported GLOFs has decayed distinctly after a break in the 1970s, coinciding with independently detected trend changes in annual air temperatures and in the annual number of field‐based glacier surveys (a proxy of scientific reporting). We observe that GLOF reports and glacier surveys decelerated, while temperature rise accelerated in the past five decades. Enhanced warming alone can thus hardly explain the annual number of reported GLOFs, suggesting that temperature‐driven glacier lake formation, growth, and failure are weakly coupled, or that outbursts have been overlooked. Indeed, our analysis emphasizes a distinct geographic and temporal bias in GLOF reporting, and we project that between two to four out of five GLOFs on average might have gone unnoticed in the early to mid‐20th century. We recommend that such biases should be considered, or better corrected for, when attributing the frequency of reported GLOFs to atmospheric warming.

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“…Several thousand deaths due to GLOFs have been reported during the last hundred years 30 . The actual number of fatalities is most likely greater because the inventory of lake outburst is incomplete 31 . Under the influence of formation and expansion of glacial lakes [1][2][3][4][5] , the frequency of GLOFs possibly increases in the 21st century 32 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Abrupt drainage of Lago Greve, a large proglacial lake in Chilean Patagonia, observed by satellite in 2020

Hata

Sugiyama

Heki

2022

Commun Earth Environ

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Glacial lakes are increasing in number and extent under a warming climate. Despite demand for lake monitoring and understanding outburst mechanisms, studies of large outburst events are sparse. Here we report an outburst of Lago Greve, a large proglacial lake in Chilean Patagonia. During the event in April–July 2020, the lake level dropped by 18.3 ± 1.2 m and the area decreased by 14.5 ± 0.02 km2. The total water discharge was 3.7 ± 0.2 km3, which is one of the largest glacial lake outbursts ever reported in satellite era. Satellite data indicated the collapse of a bump near the lake outlet triggered the event, by initiating erosion of the bank and bed of the outlet stream. Satellite gravimetry captured a signal of the event, although the magnitude of the corresponding mass change was inconsistent with the drained water mass. Our study demonstrated the potential for observing lake outburst using satellite imagery, altimetry, photogrammetry, and gravimetry.

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160 glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) across the Tropical Andes since the Little Ice Age

Cited by 31 publications

References 81 publications

Progress and challenges in glacial lake outburst flood research (2017–2021): a research community perspective

Progress and challenges in glacial lake outburst flood research (2017–2021): a research community perspective

Trends, Breaks, and Biases in the Frequency of Reported Glacier Lake Outburst Floods

Abrupt drainage of Lago Greve, a large proglacial lake in Chilean Patagonia, observed by satellite in 2020

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