Climate Change and Water in Mountains: A Global Concern Impacts of climate change on glacial hazards Glacier, lake and GLOF changes Christian Huggel, Department of Geography, University of Zurich

Glacier shrinkage and lake formation Trift glacier, Switzerland: from the mid-20th to the early 21st century

Grosser Aletsch glacier, Switzerland: Future scenarios of glacier shrinkage and lake formation Animation: Andreas Linsbauer – Aletsch glacier, Switzerland.

Global glacier retreat Glacier length changes in different world region. Glaciers are continuously and uniformly retreating. IPCC, 2013

Disasters from glacier lake outburst floods Glacier lake Palcacocha (Peru), shortly before ist outburst flood in 1941 Kinzl 1932

Disasters from glacier lake outburst floods Impacts of the outburst flood of glacier lake Palcacocha (GLOF) on the downstream city of Huaraz in 1941, destroying large parts of the city and killing several thousand people. Arnold Heim / Wegner, 2014

Fundamental questions to consider: Where, when and with which probability of occurrence can a mass movement/flow occur? How far will the mass movement /flow reach and with which level of magnitude?

Climate change can influence the related hazard parameters in several ways: Changing the probability (frequency) of occurrence of events Changing the magnitude and reach of mass flows

Changing frequency of periglacial rock fall events in the Alps Increasing frequency of alpine rock fall events coincident with warming over the past decades. Huggel et al., 2012

Changing frequency of global GLOF record The GLOF record strongly increases in many regions in the late 19th / early 20th century. Documentation issues and bias over time need to be considered. Carrivick and Tweed, 2016

Damage of GLOF’s worldwide Europe, high Asia and the Andes are hotspots of GLOF damage Carrivick and Tweed, 2016