Tracking Three Decades of Dramatic Glacial Lake Growth

Narration: Katie Jepson

Transcript:

1

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,140

[MUSIC]

2

00:00:03,140 --> 00:00:06,680

Every year, climbers travel to the Himalayan

mountains in hopes

3

00:00:06,680 --> 00:00:09,360

of celebrating at the top of the world.

4

00:00:11,220 --> 00:00:14,620

Sometimes referred to our planet's ‘third

pole’, this region

5

00:00:14,620 --> 00:00:18,040

holds some of the world’s most iconic and challenging terrain.

6

00:00:23,720 --> 00:00:26,220

However, this landscape is changing.

7

00:00:26,800 --> 00:00:29,760

Many of the glaciers on popular trekking routes have retreated

8

00:00:29,820 --> 00:00:33,080

and given rise to new and larger glacial lakes.

9

00:00:33,080 --> 00:00:37,720

Which typically form when glacial meltwater

is blocked by ice dams or glacial sediment.

10

00:00:40,700 --> 00:00:43,100

And worldwide, retreating glaciers have led to

11

00:00:43,100 --> 00:00:46,240

an increase in the number and size of these glacial lakes.

12

00:00:48,740 --> 00:00:54,560

Researchers, supported by NASA's High Mountain Asia Program, used new supercomputing abilities

13

00:00:54,560 --> 00:00:57,680

and hundreds of thousands of Landsat satellite images

14

00:00:57,680 --> 00:01:00,760

to catalogue and analyze three decades'

15

00:01:00,760 --> 00:01:05,200

worth of glacial lake boundaries in the first-ever global study of its kind.

16

00:01:07,470 --> 00:01:13,320

The study found that, during that period, global

glacial lake volume increased ~48%.

17

00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:20,540

The analysis concluded that, worldwide,

smaller glacial lakes were growing at a more

18

00:01:20,540 --> 00:01:25,900

rapid pace, and that lakes were occurring at

higher elevations than previously documented.

19

00:01:29,660 --> 00:01:33,660

This new assessment is a critical component

to understanding how these growing lakes may

20

00:01:33,660 --> 00:01:39,360

impact tourism, elevate hazard risk, and affect

infrastructure for the communities living downstream.

21

00:01:41,360 --> 00:01:43,600

And bring us one step closer to understanding

22

00:01:43,640 --> 00:01:46,400

the global changes to our cryosphere.

23

00:01:46,560 --> 00:01:52,200

[MUSIC]