Himalayan glacial lakes are growing—and so is the downstream flood risk
Dozens of glacial lakes have formed across northern India in the last three decades, while existing lakes have expanded rapidly, highlighting the need to monitor a landscape reshaped by climate change.
As the recovery operation continues in Nepal in the aftermath of catastrophic flooding that struck the country on Aug. 26, 2026, a recent satellite study reveals that glacial lakes are multiplying and expanding in the Himalayas as glacier ice melts, raising concerns that more devastating floods will hit the region in the future.
The paper "Alarming trends: rapidly growing and recently formed glacial lakes in the Alaknanda Basin, northern Indian Himalayas" is published in the journal Open Geosciences.
Rapid changes in lake coverage
The study used space-based observations from the Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellites to map changes in 74 glacial lakes in the Alaknanda Basin in the western Himalayas of India between 1994 and 2023. The results show just how quickly the landscape is changing: Melting glaciers are forming and feeding high-altitude lakes that can, under the right conditions, suddenly release large volumes of water.
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