Seismic ground vibrations give advanced early-warning of subglacial floods

Abstract

Subglacial lakes and jökulhlaups (glacier outburst floods) are common in volcanic and glaciated environments, and can pose potential threats to communities living downstream. Here, the authors find that seismic tremor signals during subglacial floods can be used to locate and track the speed and size of the flood before it arrives at the river system, and improves previous methods of early glacial flood warning by a factor of 5.