With temperatures rising, glaciers all across the globe are melting at a fast pace, and glacial lakes are getting formed, and with the bursting of these lakes, a grave danger can emerge for the 1.5 crore people across the globe who live within a 50KM radius from these glaciers. Half of these glaciers are in India, Pakistan, China, and Peru.
In a study conducted by the scientists of the New Castle University, UK, which has been published in the Nature Communications magazine, it has been said that 50% of the world’s population facing danger, which is 75 lakh people, live in these four countries including India.
30 lakh people in India and 20 lakh people in Pakistan can get affected from the same. The study also mentions the incident which had taken place in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli back in February 2021, and had led to the deaths of 80 people, and many others had gone missing. The highest degree of danger is looming from the Tibetan plateau, Kyrgyzstan, to China, where 93 lakh people live. Half of the glaciers outside the polar region are in Pakistan, and in 2022 alone, 16 incidents had taken place because of glacier bursts.
Nevertheless, it is still not clear as to how responsible was the melting of glaciers for the floods which had hit Pakistan the last year. Professor Tom Robinson of New Zealand’s Canterbury University has said that the bursting of a glacier like is like a tsunami on land, similar to a dam burst, and the most threatening factor is that such disasters take place without or with very little warning.
