Glacial Lakes and GLOFs in a Warming Himalaya: Current Understanding, Challenges, and the Way Forward

This review presents the first comprehensive synthesis of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) across the Himalayan region that integrates spatial patterns, lake typology, triggering mechanisms, and social vulnerability into a unified framework. While prior studies have focused on individual basins or events, our contribution stands out by systematically analyzing more than 388 GLOF events and over 19,000 glacial lakes, revealing overlooked trends—such as the dominance of ice-dammed lake GLOFs in the Karakoram and the underrepresentation of socio-environmental risks in existing assessments. By critically evaluating current research gaps and highlighting the urgent need for community-based mitigation, this work not only advances cryosphere hazard understanding but also addresses its real-world implications under accelerating climate change. Given the transboundary relevance and growing global concern over high mountain hazards, the study holds strong international significance and is well aligned with Catena’s focus on earth surface processes and environmental risk.