1. 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

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

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

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

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

6. 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

7. 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?

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

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