Chamoli Glacier Burst | Uttarakhand | K. Ramnarayan

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K. Ramnarayanji, living in the Himalaya’s for the last 27 years. Sir’s house is in Sarmoli in Munsiyari of Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand. His entire career has been living and working with communities at Himalayas.

Forest conservation, wild life conservation and helping for their livelihood with eco-tourism best practises.

Ramji has done Post Graduate Diploma in Forest Management from Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal passed out in 1994. He is 50 years old.

Ramji started his career from National Tree Growers Federation. Later with own organisation called Amai Prakruti, working for conservation, education and training in various aspects of nature nurturing with local community help and participation.

Now Ramji is serving as freelancer for nature guides training. K. Ramnarayanji, has done extensive research on Wildlife and Birds of Himalayan ranges.

In this episode he has out lined the ins and outs of Glacier Burst in Uttarakhand.

According to him, a glacial lake burst, a cloud burst or an avalanche, the impact of climate change or “development” — scientists are not sure what triggered the sudden surge of water near Chamoli in Uttarakhand Sunday morning, the 7th March, 2021, that briefly raised fears of a repeat of the 2013 disaster in the state.

By evening, the prospect of large scale flooding and destruction had receded. And, as scientists prepared to travel to the site in the high mountains north of Chamoli to ascertain the cause of the incident, the scenario being most talked about was what glaciologists like to call a GLOF, or glacial lake outburst flood. It is a reference to flooding caused downstream due to a breach in a glacial lake.

Retreating glaciers, like several in the Himalayas, usually result in the formation of lakes at their tips, called proglacial lakes, often bound only by sediments and boulders. If the boundaries of these lakes are breached, it can lead to large amounts of water rushing down to nearby streams and rivers, gathering momentum on the way by picking up sediments, rocks and other material, and resulting in flooding downstream.

GLOF events are not unusual, but their impact depends on the size of the proglacial lake that burst, and location. The breach can be caused by several reasons — in this particular case, for instance, an avalanche was reported in the region two days ago.

But while GLOF is being considered to be the most likely trigger for Sunday’s event, there are questions surrounding this possibility. We don’t know of any big glacial lakes in this region. An avalanche is quite common, and there could have been one, but an avalanche on its own would not result in an increase in the flow of water in the river. The water has to come from a source, and as of now, we do not know what this source is.

There are hundreds of such lakes all over the place. We know about many of them, but it is possible that there is one that we do not know about. After the event, everybody was curious and started looking at the satellite images, and couldn’t find any glacial lake in that area. But maybe, there are also instances of lakes forming inside the glaciers, which cannot be detected in satellite images.

The surprise is also because of timing — a possible reason for the sudden rush of water, like a cloudburst, is not expected at this time of the year. Cloudburst would be a rare event during this time of the year. It does look like a GLOF event right now.
It is possible that an avalanche or a landslide created an obstruction in the flow of the river or streams in the upper mountains, resulting in a makeshift dam-like situation. When the pressure of the flowing water became large, the dam probably gave away, leading to a sudden gush of water. These are just the possible scenarios.
As of now, the incident does not seem to have any direct linkage with construction-related activities, or the presence of big dams, but climate change as a factor is not something that can be ignored, particularly in the formation of proglacial lakes. A majority of the glaciers in the Himalayas are known to be receding, all leading to the formation of several proglacial lakes.

What scientists are almost certain of is that the incident was not a result of any glacier ‘breaking off’. In fact, glaciers are not known to break in a manner that ice-sheets in the Polar Regions do. Some chunks of snow from near the tip of the glacier can indeed slide down, but they do not result in huge amounts of water like those seen in incidents like these.

Come let us listen to Ramji.

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