Project Description
Glaciers and their retreat pose severe hazards for people and infrastructure in the Arctic. Such risks are climate-dependent and increase with human activities expanding into regions prone to glacier hazards, such as the Arctic. Glacier hazards, such as floods (e.g. glacier outburst floods and collapsing icedammed lakes), retreat-induced land-slides and rockfalls, ice-berg calving and drift, and glacier surges affect Arctic communities, infrastructure, tourism and industry. In a cross-cutting activity on “Arctic glacier hazards”, we aim to bring together glaciologists, social scientists, atmosphere scientists, terrestrial researchers, and representatives from Arctic (Indigenous) communities to identify key glacier hazards, analyze the physical processes involved, discuss exposure and vulnerability of Arctic society in a present and future climate, and establish future research directions.
The cross-cutting activity will be implemented in the annual IASC Network on Arctic Glaciology (NAG; http://nag.iasc.info) in connection to the “Workshop on the Dynamics and Mass Budget of Arctic Glaciers” in Obergurgl, Austria, in January 2026.
Date and Location
January 2026 | Obergurgl, Austria
IASC Working Groups funding the project
- Atmosphere WG
- Cryosphere WG
- Social & Human WG
- Terrestrial WG
Project Lead
Ward van Pelt (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Year funded by IASC
2025