Outburst floods from glacial lakes in the Third Pole threaten the livelihood of thousands of people living in the region. (IMAGE)

Cactus Communications

Outburst floods from glacial lakes in the Third Pole threaten the livelihood of thousands of people living in the region.

Caption

Approximately 190,000 people live in areas that are at a risk of being flooded due to outbursts from the glacial lakes in the Third Pole region of the Earth. In the above map, the yellow sections in pie charts indicate the percentage of glacial lakes posing very high and high risks. The box plots illustrate the distance between glacial lakes and the nearest downstream human settlements exposed to glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and the basic early warning times for GLOFs, grouped by region.     

Credit

Weicai Wang from the Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Chinese Academy of Sciences

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