Melting glaciers raise flood fears in the Himalayas
Melting glaciers in Nepal are giving rise to fears of floods in the Himalayas, according to a report on Time.com this week.
The bursting of glacial lakes, which releases raging rivers of water, has washed away roads and bridges in the area for centuries, but global warming is heightening the danger, scientists say.
Glacial-lake outbursts occur when the natural dams of ice that hold back the lakes give way, releasing millions of cubic meters of meltwater.
At least 50 glacial-lake outbursts were recorded in the Himalayas in the past 100 years, but now the glaciers are melting faster than ever, and the lakes are forming much more quickly.
One reader on the Time.com page (http://world.time.com/2013/05/27/fears-grow-of-a-himalayan-tsunami-as-glaciers-melt/#ixzz2UcjnemFY) notes that the Badlands of the American West were created when a vast glacial lake suddenly melted, "carving out the canyons and mesas in a matter of hours."
Monitoring the glacial lakes is the work of The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development and its program coordinator, Pradeep Mool.
He told Time that there were 20,000 glacial lakes in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, which runs from Afghanistan to Myanmar.
"Glacier thinning and retreat in the Himalayas has resulted in the formation of new glacial lakes and the enlargement of existing ones due to the accumulation of meltwater behind loosely consolidated end moraine dams that had formed when the glaciers attained their Little Ice Age maxima," the ICIMD website reports.
Because such lakes are inherently unstable and subject to catastrophic drainage they are potential sources of danger to people and property in the valleys below them. Recent surveys have shown that many glacial lakes in Nepal are expanding at a considerable rate so that the danger they pose appears to be increasing."
By Cheryl Rosen
Cheryl
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