This is what a glacial lake outburst flood looks like

As the climate changes and glaciers melt, a lesser-known threat lurks in alpine areas: glacial lake outburst floods. These events happen rapidly, releasing huge amounts of water with little or no warning. Unsuspecting communities lying in the flood path can suffer serious losses.

Researchers seek better ways to predict these outburst floods and mitigate their danger. Take a hike through the Swiss Alps with glaciologist Fabian Walter to learn about this phenomenon and our ongoing efforts to understand it.

[s.ludden]

glacial lake outburst floods have existed for millions of years. Two examples are the Badlands in South Dakota and the English Channel. The floods happen whenever glacial water burst from melting glaciers. There have been 6 major Glacial ages and outburst flooding have occurred.

[rajbiswakarmamusic]

I pray for all my people in Sikkim. I never thought or anticipated anything like this would ever happen in Sikkim.

I hope everything goes back to normal soon✨.

[UdyGraphie]

Gosh.. looking at what happened today, this mighty terrifying for the Himalayan region

[Warrentvoid]

Nothing compared to prehistoric dam breaks in the American North West at the end of the last ice age.

[brandonleesanders]

Everyone on the planet is subject to some form of natural disaster depending on the geographical area they’ve chosen to settle in. Wildfires, Hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides, tornadoes, avalanches, tsunamis etc…

[pathfinder]

Not all glacial lakes break out because a "dam" broke up. The glacial lake I was part of group studying drained out the bottom like a tub every year during late summer. One summer a group ventured approx. 50 ft into a tunnel. 2 years later I lead a group past that point and walked along bedrock with the glacier above us for just over 3/4 of a mile. We came out at a seasonal stream bed.

[divyamjain]

who is hereafter the Uttarakhand incident? please pray for the families of victims.

[cosmicrancher]

This has happened on a massive scale in the recent past. Check out glacial lake Missoula which carved the Columbia river gorge.

[skeets]

You act like this is the first time this has happend, , , guess what it aint the first and it wont be the last

[TheMountblanc]

Ice dams were never stable, as ice deforms under pressure and moves. Natural dams suffer the same problem as most dams: Overflow. A natural dam is not planned to handle overflow. So once overflow happens, the top of the dam gets destroyed and opens a more and more becoming bigger gap that finally leads to the wide opening and total dam failure. This is nothing specific. It always happened in the past and is not a new phenomonon.

[kenaipeninsulawhitewater]

We get these regularly here in Alaska. We usually call them Jokulhlaups. A couple of our glaciers, like Bear Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park, break with almost predictable regularity. It's always amazing when it happens, especially in remote places like that where nobody is in the way

[SradhaSumansskjohn]

This happened today in Uttarakhand, India.

[ij]

Fast forward 2 years after this video was posted and Pakistan is suffering from this🥺😢

[hkguitar]

We are enjoying life now because of past global warming. Many of us are living in areas that used to be glacial and covered in perpetual snow.
Thank goodness there was a warming which has allowed the world to flourish. The Earth is always cooling down or heating up.

[cesarportocarrero]

I am from Peru, and directed the examples you showed in the video. We did around 40 works to reduce the hazard from dangerous glacial lakes, indeed reducing the risk. The procedures consists in reduce the volume of the dangerous lakes according flood modelations and after we complemented with hydraulic structures like reinforced concrete conduits, earth dams and stone channels.

[justsaying]

Another commenter also said this but some of these look like annual seasonal glacial change, i.e flooding during the spring and growth during autumn and winter; for example glaciers in the Sierra Nevada, probably takes place in the Alps.
Volcanic activity which are volcanic eruptions over glaciers melting them creating lahars, for example Iceland.
Not saying climate change doesn't exist just be aware different conditions can cause glacial melt, including above average winter temperatures.
Pictures are worth a thousand words. Photography of any event is worse without context of the causes of it than uninformed photos.
Thank you for coming to this Ted talk. Probably is garbage what I'm talking about anyway.
Not an expert in climate science, volcanology or any such subjects.

[Agnostic]

It happened yesterday, 7th feb. in India...it was terrifying...150 peoples still missing

[DeepakSingh-hler]

I was strolling on bank of Alaknanda a week before & it was very calm. Shocked by what happened yesterday.

[samsmithmotovlogs]

Who was so short sighted as to build in a flood prone area?

[BaffinSailor]

Something that has been happing for millions of years 🤷‍♂️