Himalayan Glaciers & GLOF Risk

The Himalaya is Asia's frozen water bank, feeding the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra that sustain nearly two billion people. It is now thawing faster than at any point in the monitored record: ICIMOD's 2026 stocktake finds the range shedding ice about twice as fast as it did before the millennium, thinned by as much as 27 metres since 1975. The sharpest expression of that danger struck on the night of 3 October 2023, when a collapsing moraine emptied Sikkim's South Lhonak lake, wrecked the 1,200 MW Teesta-III dam and killed at least 55 people. With 2025 designated the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation, India has stood up a dedicated Rs 150-crore GLOF mitigation programme across four Himalayan states.