The continuous rise in summer temperature and consequent glacier wastage have led to a significant loss of frozen water resources in the mountain headwaters of the major river systems in Central Asia. High mountain lakes in the headwaters of the Syr Darya River serve as sensitive indicators of climate change in the region. In this […]

Warming on Earth’s Third Pole is leading to rapid loss of ice and the formation and expansion of glacial lakes, posing a severe threat to downstream communities. Here we provide a holistic assessment of past evolution, present state and modelled future change of glacial lakes and related glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) risk across the […]

A collection of cartoons on climate change, focussing on EU policies and agreements, as well as the situation in Central Asia countries.

The region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) is already experiencing the consequences of climate change: increasing variability, warmer temperatures, altered hydrology. Events such as droughts, floods, heat waves, windstorms, and forest fires are increasing in number and severity. The concentration of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere guarantees that similar or greater changes […]

In response to climatic change, the size and number of moraine-dammed supraglacial and proglacial lake systems have increased dramatically in recent decades. Given an appropriate trigger, the natural moraine dams that impound these proglacial lakes are breached, producing catastrophic Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs). These floods are highly complex phenomena, with flood characteristics controlled, in […]

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are highly mobile mixtures of water and sediment that occur suddenly and are capable of traveling tens to hundreds of kilometers with peak discharges and volumes several orders of magnitude larger than those of normal floods. They travel along existing river channels, in some instances into populated downstream regions, and […]

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF) often have a significant impact on downstream users. Including their effects in hydrological models, identifying past occurrences and assessing their potential impacts are challenges for hydrologists working in mountainous catchments. The regularly outbursting Merzbacher Lake is located in the headwaters of the Aksu River, the most important source of water […]

Last year confirmed a trend of many decades: the glacier mass balance for 2019-20 was negative. The balance is the ratio of the incoming and outgoing mass of snow and ice on the glacier for the year. So, for example, the Tuiksu glacier “lost weight” for the year by 280 mm. This glacier is a […]

Mountain glacier is one of the extremely sensitive indicators for climate change, and its surface motion distribution and corresponding variation are valuable information for understanding ice mass exchange and glacier dynamics. This paper presents the long-term ice velocity distributions of Inylchek Glacier in the Tianshan region by pixel-tracking algorithm with time-series Landsat imagery acquired during […]

Glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and related debris flows are among the most significant natural threats in the Tien Shan Mountains of Kyrgyzstan and have even caused the loss of life and damage to infrastructure in its capital Bishkek. An improved understanding of the occurrence of this process is essential so as to be able […]

The presentation describes the methods and shows the results of GLOFs’ danger estimation in Ile and Zhetysu Alatau ranges (Kazakhstan). The catalogues of glacial lakes were made following the results of satellite images processing. The catalogue contains the data of 186 glacial lakes in Ile Alatau and 577 lakes in Zhetysu Alatau. According to the […]

Changes of glacial lakes and implications were assessed for the Tian Shan Mountains from 1990 to 2010, based on Landsat Thematic Mapper/Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus images. The total area of glacial lakes has expanded greatly over the last 20 years, at an average rate of 0.69 ± 0.12 km2 a-1 or 0.8 ± 0.1% a-1. […]