Glacier-related hazards and climatic change

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Abstract
Climatic warming during the last 100–150 years has resulted in a significant glacier ice loss from mountainous regions of the world. Most glaciers have undergone thinning and their margins have retreated significantly since the Little Ice Age. Natural processes associated with this loss of glacier ice pose hazards to people and the economic infrastructure in mountain areas. These processes include glacier avalanches, landslides and slope instability caused by debuttressing, catastrophic outburst floods from moraine‐dammed lakes, and outburst floods from glacier‐dammed lakes (jökulhlaups). The total loss of life from glacier‐related catastrophic events in the Andes, Himalayas, Alps, and other major mountain systems is in excess of 30,000; damage to the economic infrastructure of the affected regions is probably in excess of one billion dollars. In 1941, for example a single outburst from a moraine‐dammed lake in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru killed over 6000 people.

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