Alton Byers, a mountain geographer at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, joins Al Jazeera to explain the ongoing risk from Nepal’s glacial lakes. He says newly formed lakes, held back only by loose debris from the recent glacier collapse, could spill over with little warning. Natural drainage is possible, or teams could attempt to drain them manually, as has been done in Peru, though Byers warns that this poses a real risk of triggering a sudden glacial lake outburst flood.
He says the initial collapse likely wasn’t caused by an earthquake but by warming permafrost, a trend that has accelerated since the Industrial Revolution and is now destabilising even the highest mountain terrain, making massive ice and rock breaks more frequent.
Subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish
Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera
Check our website: http://www.aljazeera.com/
Check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/aljazeeraenglish/
Download AJE Mobile App: https://aje.io/AJEMobile
#Nepal #GlacialLakes #ClimateChange #Himalayas #GLOF #NaturalDisaster #AltonByers #EarlyWarning #AlJazeera #AlJazeeraEnglish
