Hazard assessment of glacial lake outburst floods in Southeast Tibet based on RS and GIS technologies

ABSTRACTGlacial lakes are widely distributed across glaciated mountainous regions such as Southeast Tibet (ST). As a result of climate change, glacial lakes have expanded continually in ST over recent five decades, and ST is seriously suffering from glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Hence, glacial lake investigations and hazard assessments of GLOFs are very necessary to perform and are of great practical significance for this area. The region running from Ranwu to Tongmai (RTR) in ST was selected as a study area. To assess hazard degrees of GLOFs, nine factors (F1–F9) were selected from glacial characteristics: the scale of glacial lakes, meteorological conditions, moraine dam parameters and downstream gullies. Average monthly (May to September) land surface temperatures (LSTs), temperature change rates, and average annual precipitation levels were first calculated using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST product and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation data....