As glaciers melt and pour massive amounts of water into nearby lakes, 15 million people across the globe live under the threat of a sudden and deadly outburst flood, a new study finds
has made those floods more frequent, but as glaciers shrink with warming, the amount of water in the lakes grows, making them more dangerous in those rare situations when dams burst.
Dan Shugar, a geoscientist at the University of Calgary who wasn’t part of the two studies, said much of the threat depends simply on how many people live in a glacial flood zone. Robinson said what’s different about his study is that it’s the first to look at the climate, geography, population, vulnerability and all these factors to get “a good overview of where in the world is the most dangerous places” for all 1,089 glacial basins.“That’s particularly bad,” Robinson said. “Lots of people and they’re very, very vulnerable” because they live in a valley below the lake.
India ranks high in the threat list not so much because of the physical setup but because of “a huge number of people downstream.”
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