An ice-snow avalanche triggered small glacial lake outburst flood in Birendra Lake, Nepal Himalaya

Nitesh Khadka (), Guoxiong Zheng, Xiaoqing Chen (), Yan Zhong, Simon K. Allen and Manish Raj Gouli
Additional contact information
Nitesh Khadka: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Guoxiong Zheng: Lanzhou University
Xiaoqing Chen: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yan Zhong: University of Geneva
Simon K. Allen: University of Geneva
Manish Raj Gouli: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2025, vol. 121, issue 5, No 49, 6357-6365

Abstract: Abstract Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) pose a significant threat in high mountains. Here, we report a recent GLOF event from the Birendra Lake, Nepal Himalaya that occurred on 21 April 2024. We analyze its long-term evolution using multi-source satellite observations and reveal that the lake was formed before 1967 and gradually expanded to 0.25 km2 in 2000, after which it largely remained stable. Further analysis and field evidence indicates that a small ice-snow avalanche from the Manaslu Glacier had already hit the lake on 20 April, but a larger one on 21 April ultimately produced a surge wave and replaced lake water, leading to water discharge and substantial rise in the water level of the Budhi Gandaki River. Geomorphologic analysis suggests that the lake likely had earlier outbursts with a large breach in the dam. This is a probable reason along with small volume of the ice-snow avalanche, likely limited the scale of the outburst and resulted in less damage. Nevertheless, this event is significant despite being small in scale as it has demonstrated that even without significant dam breach process, powerful avalanches can displace enough water to generate surge waves across the lake, resulting in repeated GLOFs that can travel far. Such processes are expected to increase under future climate change.

Keywords: Ice-snow avalanche; Cascading process; Glacial lake outburst flood; Nepal himalaya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-024-07014-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:121:y:2025:i:5:d:10.1007_s11069-024-07014-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-024-07014-0

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().