While human-induced climate change is well-known, identifying individual factors based on human activity that contribute to climate change merits further research.
In the paper “Anthropogenic climate change and glacier lake outburst flood risk: local and global drivers and responsibilities for the case of Lake Palcacocha, Peru” by lead author and MRI Co-Principal Investigator Christian Huggel, lake Palcacocha in the Peruvian Andes was taken as a representative model for glacier lakes and related global risks, in part due to its dynamic evolution of flood risk and and in part for currently being the subject of a prominent lawsuit between a Peruvian citizen and a large German energy producer who is accused of having contributed to the risks of flooding of lake Palcacocha.
“I’ve been working for many years in the region,” says Huggel. “The intriguing thing is that on the one hand, there exists actually a major flood risk for the city of Huaraz, but on the other hand, the legal court case could represent important precedence for the response to climate change at global leve.”
The findings of the study concluded that human-made greenhouse gas emissions are indeed a contributing factor to the threat of a glacier lake flood, and that flood risk is substantially influenced by a combination of decades-old socio-economic, institutional, and cultural mechanisms. Who ultimately is responsible for flood risk remains unclear in increasingly complex interactions between local, national, and global actors.
“In this study we try to bring clarity in the complex and interwoven network of responsibilities. This is the first step towards reconciliation of responsibilities and agreement on implied actions.”
This article is co-authored by Mark Carey, Adam Emmer, Holger Frey, Noah Walker-Crawford, and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer, and is currently open for discussion at the Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences open-access journal.
Citation
Huggel, C., Carey, M., Emmer, A., Frey, H., Walker-Crawford, N., and Wallimann-Helmer, I.: Anthropogenic climate change and glacier lake outburst flood risk: local and global drivers and responsibilities for the case of Lake Palcacocha, Peru, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2020-44, 2020.
Photo by Christian Huggel