Ganging Glacier to the East of the Famous Badrinath Temple in Uttarakhand

Hyderabad:If India is struck by a disaster of the likes that hit Nepal on August 26, the country is simply not prepared. While there can be no doubt on that the country can mount massive rescue and relief effort, the fact is India knows next to little in terms of how its glaciers – especially the potentially deadly hanging glaciers — are behaving, and when one could break and fall into the valley, below resulting in disastrous consequences.

While there is no official number on just how many glaciers are ‘hanging’ in the Himalayan mountains and valleys in India, estimates based on some surveys put this number at around 900. Some of these have been mapped, as was the case with 219 hanging glaciers found in the Alaknanda basin in the Garhwal Himalayas.

The study ‘Basin-scale inventory and exposure assessment of hanging glaciers, Central Himalaya’ published in ‘Nature’ in April, focused on just one section of the mountains. It said not only do such glaciers be literally hanging on by a thread, but even past events of a glacier collapse could create problems in the future.

The study, citing the February 2021 Chamoli rock-ice avalanche that was caused by a similar hanging glacier breaking off and falling into the valley below, said, the event left behind an unstable debris dam at the crash zone, one that may become hazardous in the future as summer snowmelt can accumulate behind it and potentially breach the dam.

“The frequency and magnitude of such disasters is increasing. The Himalayas have around 30,000 small glaciers, which are receding due to global warming. The health of the cryosphere is grim. The threat of glaciers breaking is very real,” Dr Saraswati Prakash Sati, from the VCSG Uttarakhand University of Horticulture and Forestry, told Deccan Chronicle. “And with each year, we will see more of such disasters and we need to be prepared.” Dr Sati has for years studied Himalayan glaciers and their ecology.

The thing about hanging glaciers is that they are hanging on to the mountain slopes, steep slopes at that. If they break, as in the case of the recent Nepal incident, what happens is that the falling glacial mass carries with it large volumes of rock, and together they form a mix of water and rock that moves downslopes at great speed, he explained.

“It was this kind of incident that occurred in Chamoli in 2021, the Dharali disaster in Uttarkashi in 2025, and in Nepal now,” Dr Sati said.

“We need to have a road map to overcome, or minimise these disasters. At present, we see no such seriousness. We as a nation, also do not have enough sensitivity towards climate change, and are not prepared for what seismic events may lead to,” he said.

Dr Sati said there is an urgent need to map all hanging glaciers which, he added, were potential threats. “We need high resolution imaging, every valley must be mapped. There must be at least one high resolution image of every glacier and stream. We also need observatories to ‘watch’ what these hanging glaciers are doing,” he said.

He added that while these steps are put in place, there need to be simultaneous studies on what the maximum possible floods could be in each stream, how the areas downstream of these glaciers are in terms of development, projects. “There is no alternative than to be prepared for glacier induced disasters,” Dr Sati said.

Hanging glacier: A frozen ice river that rests on a cliff edge or a steep mountain slopes, high above a valley, unlike typical glaciers that ‘flow’ into a valley.

Constant danger

Himalayas have around 30,000 small glaciers.

Around 900 hanging glaciers in India.

219 counted in Alaknanda basin in Garhwal Himalayas.

Global warming is causing glaciers to break, fall into the valley below.

No comprehensive study of such glaciers.

Disaster mitigation plans not in place.

India needs to map hanging glaciers, set up observatories.