The Himalaya, the breathtaking consequence of the battle between two tectonic plates, is home to spectacular mountains and a family of glaciers whose waters sustain 1.65 billion people across the region. The thawing of these glaciers leaves behind a myriad of lakes, some of which can suddenly burst their banks and flood downstream.

Plenty of these lakes can also be found in the Tibetan Plateau, an elevated region containing Tibet and parts of western China, and a team of researchers wanted to know if any of them posed a threat to those that live nearby. Their satellite-based assessment of 1,291 glacial lakes in the Tibetan Plateau and along the main Himalaya range found that 16 percent of them potentially