Monitor glacial lakes

The government must prepare a national plan of action to mitigate the risks the lakes pose.

As climate change melts glaciers, a threat looms large in mountainous areas—glacial lake outburst floods, which pose great dangers to mountain communities and mega infrastructures downstream. There is little warning before these disasters occur; and as they have done in the past, the unstable lakes could burst, releasing huge amounts of water and sweeping everything in its path. The volume of these lakes, according to scientists who used satellite imaging, remote-sensing data and other tools to study all of the world’s glacial lakes, has increased by about 50 percent in 30 years.