New proof had certainly produced Uttarakhand incident look like a outcome of a landslide or snow avalanche. (IE Image)
Evidence collected by teams of scientists investigating the lead to of Sunday flash floods suggests that glacier outburst could not have triggered the flash floods in Uttarakhand on Sunday but a couple of research performed in the final couple of years pointed towards glacial lakes posing flood threats in the Himalayan states.
These research show how international warming has led to an boost in the quantity of glacier lakes and how they pose a threat of causing largescale flooding and destruction. The Kedarnath tragedy that occurred in June 2013 involved a breach in glacial lakes.
Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in its 2005 inventory located there are 127 glacial lakes in Uttarakhand In 2015 the quantity grew to 365 lakes, recommended National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad. If the information supplied by the scientists of these two centres can be believed, in 10 years the states witnessed an boost in 235 lakes.
But the truth of the matter is some of these lakes have been in remote areas that could not have been traced by the satellites in the 2005 study. With modern day technologies and much better resolution satellites, scientists can image the mountains with more clarity and trace a bigger quantity of lakes.
Syed Iqbal Hasnain, prominent glaciologists and Pro-Chancellor of Jamia Hamdard University speaking to IE stated that glacial lakes have been growing not just in Uttarakhand but other mountainous states in India as effectively. This inescapable trend is taking place due to retreating glaciers. It is regarding as rise in the quantity of glacier lakes tends to make flash flood like incidents a popular phenomenon there. This also points at how regarding the dilemma of climate alter is.
Not just quantity, the size of the glacial lakes are also growing. More the glacier retreats more does its size boost. The retreat of glaciers in Uttarakhand has been taking place due to the fact 1960s says a 2015 paper published in the Journal of Indian Society of Remote Sensing. The study, authored by K Babu Govindha Raj and K Vinod Kumar showed that location beneath Gharwal area in the state enhanced by 33 per cent in between 1990 and 2009.
The study additional explained that proglacial lakes are increasing more quickly compared to other sorts of glacial lakes. Hence the origin of new lakes in glacial valleys with human settlements and their possible outburst demands to be analysed.
Although these glacial lakes are a important supply of water provide in these locations for agricultural, industrial use and for the generation of hydroelectric energy but they also have the possible to lead to enormous floods like the one that occurred on Sunday. There’s demands to make more efforts, investment of dollars and human sources to study these locations, Hasnain concluded.