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Dynamic process of the massive Aru glacier collapse in Tibet

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Abstract

Due to global climatic warming, the possibility of collapse of polythermal glaciers is increasing. In the summer of 2016, two massive glaciers suddenly collapsed at Aru Village, Ali District, Xizang Autonomous Region, China, running out up to 7 km and killing nine herders. These events occurred suddenly in a remote area, and quantitative data about them was difficult to obtain quickly. Their seismic waves, however, could be quickly inverted to estimate the event motion parameters; the inversion results reflecting the average state. In order to have an initial judgment on the deposit range and the kinematic parameters at different positions after the collapse, seismic-wave inversions were used to estimate parameters (e.g., mass and friction coefficient) for numerical simulation to quickly simulate the motion processes that are important for the initial rescue, especially in the absence of topographic data. Numerical simulation showed that even though the shape and depth of the source area as assigned from such inversion were slightly different from the real situation, the effect on the final deposit morphology was not so great, which can be used as a reference for useful assessment after future disasters.

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Acknowledgments

We thank for the suggestions of anonymous reviewers and Professor Mauri Mcsaveney for assisting in the improvement of the manuscript, which greatly improved the quality of this paper. We also are thankful for the seismic data of this study provided by Data Management Centre of China National Seismic Network at Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration and the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data of pre-collapse which were obtained from the Geospatial Data Cloud (http://www.gscloud.cn/).

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Project No. 2017YFC1501003), the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41790433), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41772312), Key Deployment Project of CAS:KFZD-SW-424.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xiuqiang Bai

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xiuqiang Bai & Siming He

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xiuqiang Bai & Siming He

  4. Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards and Surface Process, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, China

    Siming He

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  1. Xiuqiang Bai
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Correspondence to Siming He.

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Bai, X., He, S. Dynamic process of the massive Aru glacier collapse in Tibet. Landslides 17, 1353–1361 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-019-01337-x

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