The Oct 2023 Teesta Valley GLOF disaster gets its due recognition: An article published on the disaster in SCIENCE MAGAZINE

The GLOF sweeping past the Teesta bazar (W Bengal) on 04Oct2023. This drone photo by Praveen is certainly one of the most iconic images of a GLOF.

The SCIENCE MAGAZINE (https://www.science.org) is widely recognized as the world's most prestigious journal on science, publishing the very best in research across the sciences, with articles that consistently rank among the most cited in the world. It is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s oldest and largest general science organization.
Dr Ashim Sattar (IIT Bhubaneshwer) is a glaciologist who has done a huge amount of research on the South Lhonak glacial lake and had almost predicted accurately the GLOF which occurred on 03/04Oct2023. I have quoted extensively from his write up earlier in this blog and had the good fortune of meeting him at Chitrey, in the Teesta valley last year when he was enroute to Gangtok, Sikkim.

With Ashim (left) on 21Feb2024 at Chitrey

In our brief interaction, he mentioned he was working with many world experts on a paper on the 03/04Oct2023 Teesta Valley GLOF disaster which I daresay was all but ignored by government and the media even  though it was the largest GLOF disaster in the Himalayas in the recent past.
Since then I have personally had many interactions with him, shared photographs of the GLOF and affected areas and discussed the impact at the many places we had visited while recording the GLOF.
Even though I am unaware of the technical details of the mammoth work that Ashim and all the associated scientists have put in, I know getting it published in Science Magazine was another huge challenge and it took months of meticulous work by Ashim with literally many emails being exchanged between all of us.
The full article published by SCIENCE MAGAZINE yesterday, is here (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads2659)
In addition, Dr Dave Petley, VC Univeristy of Hull (UK) who is one of the co - authors has published his synopsis of the whole article - which is here (https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/sikkim-glof-october-2023)
My grateful thanks to Dr Ashim Sattar and all the eminent scientists who devoted so much time and effort towards this article.

Praful Rao
SaveTheHills
savethehills@gmail.com
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