Growing risk of melting glaciers

Although GLOFs make headlines due to their dramatic nature, those aren’t the only risks.

In mountain ranges around the world, glaciers are melting as global temperatures rise . Europe’s Alps and Pyrenees lost 40 percent of their glacier volume from 2000 to 2023. These and other icy regions have provided freshwater for people living downstream for centuries—almost 2 billion people rely on glaciers today. But as glaciers melt faster, they also pose potentially lethal risks.