资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Glacial floods (jökulhlaups) are a phenomenon of some temperate ice masses; they are a significant natural hazard but their complex hydrology is incompletely understood. We document a jökulhlaup from a subglacial lake in Iceland that was inadvertently triggered by a borehole drilled through the overlying ice. We propose that that this borehole allowed an englacial water body to drain into the lake, inducing a transient rise in pressure that overwhelmed the lake's subglacial seal five days later. Runaway melting of a subglacial conduit by 4°C lake water then initiated a flood to the outlet glacier margin. This incident suggests that draining of englacial water bodies via hydro‐fracturing crevasses as well as flooding of moulins by precipitation events are potential natural triggers of jökulhlaups, and explains a correlation between surface melting and jökulhlaups. This hydraulic trigger could have wider implications for relations between meteorological conditions, drainage, and dynamics of some glaciers.