Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs)—the sudden release of water from lakes dammed by moraines, ice, or bedrock—are among the most dynamic perturbations of Earth’s surface. Their geomorphic signatures can persist for hundreds to thousands of years, while recent events in mountainous regions have demonstrated their potential to cause damage and loss of life when floods reach downstream communities that may be unprepared. Major uncertainties remain in understanding where and when GLOFs occur, how they are triggered and propagate, how landscapes respond, and how these processes may change in the future.

This session explores links between glacial-lake evolution, outburst-flood processes, geomorphic legacies, and societal impacts, with the aim of advancing our understanding of landscape evolution and future hazard and risk. We particularly welcome contributions using sedimentary and geochronological evidence to reconstruct paleo-lakes and paleo-GLOFs, constrain their magnitude and frequency, quantify sediment fluxes, and investigate how outburst floods establish, reorganise, or abandon drainage systems. Contributions addressing the processes controlling GLOF initiation are also encouraged, including ice–lake interactions, dam failure, and triggering and preconditioning mechanisms. A particular focus is the changing abundance and size of glacial lakes, and potential feedbacks on GLOF frequency and magnitude, as well as downstream geomorphic and ecological impacts. We invite studies examining the role of anthropogenic climate warming in GLOF activity, as well as approaches for incorporating dynamically evolving lake populations into flood, hazard, and risk models. We therefore welcome new insights from field observations, remote sensing, and process-based modelling that can improve lake monitoring, early warning, risk management, and assessments of downstream vulnerability.

This session seeks to cover the full breadth of glacial-lake research, spanning paleo-lake and paleo-flood reconstruction, state-of-the-art glacial-lake mapping and remote sensing, field observations, process-based modelling, and assessments of the geomorphological, hydraulic, and ecological impacts of GLOFs. We therefore aim to synthesize studies connecting observations across timescales and spatial scales, from individual lake and flood processes to regional and global changes, in order to provide new perspectives on the future evolution of glacial lakes and GLOF hazards.