You may have seen the bar chart below of global glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) frequency shared around by climate people amidst the recent landslide / flood in Nepal.
Science-illiterate climate doomers are claiming that the bar graph (Fig. 6 from Lützow & Korup, 2023) shows that GLOFs have increased sixfold since 1900. But if you read the fine print on the y-axis and caption of the figure, you’d notice that this is what it actually shows. Rather, it shows that the number of GLOFs have increased. Reported means how many were documented, not necessarily how many there actually were.
And because the time series begins in 1900, there is a huge time-dependent reporting bias in the data, so most of the increase seen is due to increased detection of GLOFs from improving observational capabilities (e.g., satellites and increased field work).
The authors of the paper also acknowledge substantial reporting biases in the Discussion section and note that recent increases largely reflect newly published inventories and expanded databases mirroring increased interest in GLOFs in certain regions that were once seldom studied or monitored.
GLOFs may have increased, sure, but definitely not that rapidly or by that much.
Also, what happened in Nepal was not a GLOF. It was a landslide triggered by an avalanche.
Be careful who you get your climate information from; there is a lot of misinformation out there.
Link to paper: https://essd.copernicus.org/…/essd…/essd-2022-449.pdf
