Abstract:

Glacier-lake outburst is closely related to temperature fluctuation. With the global warming, it is important to study the relationship between them. The authors try to find out the relationship based on the temperature data associated with 14 glacier-lake outburst events in Tibet. It is found that the outburst is sensitive to acute change in annual temperature. Most outbursts occur at the years with abnormal change in temperature. According to this study, the probability of outburst depends on temperature series in many years. According to the combination with positive accumulated temperature (T) and exponent (a) of fitting curve that is fitted for accumulated temperature, we can distinguish low-possibility outbursts and high-possibility outbursts by power function. The authors recommend long time series of total accumulated temperature and exponent of accumulated temperature curve is effective way to study glacier-lake outburst.

Key words: Tibet, temperature, glacier-lake outbursts, impact