Nature Geoscience, 23 June 2022
The accelerated retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas and other high mountain regions of Asia is posing deadly risks to local communities, destabilizing the landscape and threatening to overwhelm numerous hydropower projects. As temperatures rise further, the snow and ice resources in high-altitude regions experience warming two to three times stronger than the global average. Such high temperatures increase the risk of glaciers and permafrost to extreme retreat and collapse, producing outburst floods, rock-ice avalanches, and debris flows that devastate downstream communities. These events also cause the release of large amounts of sediment, which can flow great distances in water currents. The accumulation of sediments in downstream reservoirs degrades power turbines and ultimately can result in dam failure, posing risks to billions of downstream populations in Asia that rely on the stability of these freshwater resources. High Mountain Asia contains the largest frozen water reservoirs outside of the polar regions, with numerous new hydropower projects under construction or planning. This study emphasizes the necessity of monitoring and predicting glacial hazards to enable the sustainable development of climate change-resilient dams and reservoirs in High Mountain Asia, even as mitigation is needed to preserve sustainable conditions for their future operation.
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