Future glacial lakes in High Mountain Asia: an inventory and assessment of hazard potential from surrounding slopes

Furian, Wilhelm; Loibl, David; Schneider, Christoph

doi:10.1017/jog.2021.18

Cited by 53 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…However, proglacial lake expansion is expected to continue as glacier retreat accommodates lake growth, dependent on basin geometry. Using the Cordillera Blanca as an analogue for later stages of lake development (Emmer et al, 2020), we hypothesize a future shift in new proglacial lakes to mostly bedrock dammed lakes, as glaciers retreat into higher, steeper terrain (e.g., Linsbauer et al, 2016;Furian et al, 2021), though it is uncertain how long the present stage of moraine-dammed lake growth will persist before glaciers leave their terminal overdeepenings. Alaska's glacier complexity and relative abundance of ice-dammed lakes pose an interesting question as to whether these lakes will continue to drain as they have since 1970 (Wolfe et al, 2014) or whether new ice-dammed lakes will form if tributary valley ice retreats faster than main branch ice, such as has occurred in Suicide Basin since 2011 (Kienholz et al, 2020).…”

Section: Future Change In Ice-marginal Lakesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dam type and lake location characterize ice-marginal lake area change in Alaska and NW Canada between 1984 and 2019

et al. 2022

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Abstract. Ice-marginal lakes impact glacier mass balance, water resources, and ecosystem dynamics and can produce catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) via sudden drainage. Multitemporal inventories of ice-marginal lakes are a critical first step in understanding the drivers of historic change, predicting future lake evolution, and assessing GLOF hazards. Here, we use Landsat-era satellite imagery and supervised classification to semi-automatically delineate lake outlines for four ∼5-year time periods between 1984 and 2019 in Alaska and northwest Canada. Overall, ice-marginal lakes in the region have grown in total number (+183 lakes, 38 % increase) and area (+483 km2, 59 % increase) between the time periods of 1984–1988 and 2016–2019. However, changes in lake numbers and area were notably unsteady and nonuniform. We demonstrate that lake area changes are connected to dam type (moraine, bedrock, ice, or supraglacial) and topological position (proglacial, detached, unconnected, ice, or supraglacial), with important differences in lake behavior between the sub-groups. In strong contrast to all other dam types, ice-dammed lakes decreased in number (six fewer, 9 % decrease) and area (−51 km2, 40 % decrease), while moraine-dammed lakes increased (56 more, 26 % and +479 km2, 87 % increase for number and area, respectively) at a faster rate than the average when considering all dam types together. Proglacial lakes experienced the largest area changes and rate of change out of any lake position throughout the period of study and moraine-dammed lakes which experienced the largest increases are associated with clean-ice glaciers (<19 % debris cover). By tracking individual lakes through time and categorizing lakes by dam type, subregion, and topological position, we are able to parse trends that would otherwise be aliased if these characteristics were not considered. This work highlights the importance of such lake characterization when performing ice-marginal lake inventories and provides insight into the physical processes driving recent ice-marginal lake evolution.

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Section: Future Change In Ice-marginal Lakesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dam type and lake location characterize ice-marginal lake area change in Alaska and NW Canada between 1984 and 2019

et al. 2022

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“…Although the empirical relation may not be completely accurate, it can still provide a first order estimation of lake volumes. (Furian et al, 2021;Li et al, 2021;Taylor et al, 2021;Zheng et al, 2021).…”

Section: Glacial Lake Classification and Volume Estimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-temporal evolution of glacial lakes in the Tibetan Plateau over the past 30 years

Dou

Fan

Yunus

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. As the Third Pole of the Earth and the Water Tower of Asia, Tibetan Plateau (TP) nurtures large numbers of glacial lakes, which are sensitive to global climate change. These lakes modulate the freshwater ecosystem in the region, but concurrently pose severe threats to the valley population by means of sudden glacial lake outbursts and consequent floods (GLOFs). Lack of high-resolution multi-temporal inventory of glacial lakes in TP hampers a better understanding and prediction of the future trend and risk of glacial lakes. Here, we created a multi-temporal inventory of glacial lakes in TP using 30 years record of satellite images (1990–2019), and discussed their characteristics and spatio-temporal evolution over the years. Results showed that their number and area had increased by 3285 and 258.82 km2, respectively in the last 3 decades. We noticed that different regions of TP exhibited varying change rates in glacial lake size; some regions even showed decreasing trend such as the western Pamir and the eastern Hindu Kush because of reduced rainfall rates. The mapping uncertainty is about 17.5 %, lower than other available datasets, thus making our inventory, a reliable one for the spatio-temporal evolution analysis of glacial lakes in TP. Our lake inventory data are freely available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5574289 (Dou et al., 2021); it can help to study climate change-glacier-glacial lake-GLOF interactions in the third pole and serve input to various hydro-climatic studies.

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“…In addition to its use in ITIMs, the DEM has been an essential input for a wide range of TP glaciology studies, such as glacier inventory (Bhambri et al, 2011;Ke et al, 2016;Mölg et al, 2018), glacier mass change (Brun et al, 2017;Zhou et al, 2018), glacier-related disasters (Allen et al, 2019;Kääb et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2019), and projections of glacier or glacial-lake evolution (Kaser et al, 2010;Kraaijenbrink et al, 2017;Zheng et al, 2021). The uncertainty in the DEMs can lead to different ITIM outcomes Fujita et al, 2017;Furian et al, 2021;Kääb, 2005), especially for those ITIMs in which the DEM is a crucial input. For example, this includes the sensitivity of the Glacier bed Topography (GlabTop) model to slope increases for shallower slopes (Paul and Linsbauer, 2012), and an overestima-tion of slope by ∼ 10 % would result in an underestimation of ice thickness of ∼ 32 % (Linsbauer et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards ice-thickness inversion: an evaluation of global digital elevation models (DEMs) in the glacierized Tibetan Plateau

Chen

Zhang

et al. 2022

The Cryosphere

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Abstract. Accurate estimates of regional ice thickness, which are generally produced by ice-thickness inversion models, are crucial for assessments of available freshwater resources and sea level rise. A digital elevation model (DEM) derived from surface topography of glaciers is a primary data source for such models. However, the scarce in situ measurements of glacier surface elevation limit the evaluation of DEM uncertainty. Hence the influence of DEM uncertainty on ice-thickness modeling remains unclear over the glacierized area of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Here, we examine the performance of six widely used and mainly global-scale DEMs: AW3D30 (ALOS – Advanced Land Observing Satellite – World 3D – 30 m; 30 m), SRTM-GL1 (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Global 1 arc second; 30 m), NASADEM (NASA Digital Elevation Model; 30 m), TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement, synthetic-aperture radar; 90 m), SRTM v4.1 (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission; 90 m), and MERIT (Multi-Error-Removed Improved-Terrain; 90 m) over the glacierized TP by comparison with ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) laser altimetry data while considering the effects of glacier dynamics, terrain factors, and DEM misregistration. The results reveal NASADEM to be the best performer in vertical accuracy, with a small mean error (ME) of 0.9 m and a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 12.6 m, followed by AW3D30 (2.6 m ME and 11.3 m RMSE). TanDEM-X also performs well (0.1 m ME and 15.1 m RMSE) but suffers from serious errors and outliers on steep slopes. SRTM-based DEMs (SRTM-GL1, SRTM v4.1, and MERIT) (13.5–17.0 m RMSE) had an inferior performance to NASADEM. Errors in the six DEMs increase from the south-facing to the north-facing aspect and become larger with increasing slope. Misregistration of the six DEMs relative to the ICESat-2 footprint in most glacier areas is small (less than one grid spacing). In a next step, the influence of six DEMs on four ice-thickness inversion models – GlabTop2 (Glacier bed Topography), Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM), Huss–Farinotti (HF), and Ice Thickness Inversion Based on Velocity (ITIBOV) – is intercompared. The results show that GlabTop2 is sensitive to the accuracy of both elevation and slope, while OGGM and HF are less sensitive to DEM quality and resolution, and ITIBOV is the most sensitive to slope accuracy. NASADEM is the best choice for ice-thickness estimates over the whole TP.

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Future glacial lakes in High Mountain Asia: an inventory and assessment of hazard potential from surrounding slopes

Cited by 53 publications

References 80 publications

Dam type and lake location characterize ice-marginal lake area change in Alaska and NW Canada between 1984 and 2019

Dam type and lake location characterize ice-marginal lake area change in Alaska and NW Canada between 1984 and 2019

Spatio-temporal evolution of glacial lakes in the Tibetan Plateau over the past 30 years

Towards ice-thickness inversion: an evaluation of global digital elevation models (DEMs) in the glacierized Tibetan Plateau

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