With global warming, the temperature rising is particularly obvious in high-altitude regions, and glaciers show accelerated retreat or thinning ( Zemp et al., 2006 Fischer et al., 2015 Zemp et al., 2019). This study provides a spatially-complete and temporally-consecutive picture of glacial lake changes in the Alps and can be greatly helpful for future research on climate-glacier-lake interactions, glacial lake outburst floods, and freshwater resources in this region. The area change rate of supraglacial lakes was the largest (+47%). The number and area of glacier-fed lakes increased rapidly, while the non-glacier-fed lakes were relatively stable. The changing trends of the glacial lake area and volume were consistent and presents in three stages, as the glacial lake expanded rapidly in the first 5 years and in the last 7 years and remained relatively stable between 20. During the study period, the number, area, and water volume of glacial lakes were increasing, but the expansion varied between different periods. The distribution of ice-contacted lakes and supraglacial lakes were more concentrated, and the mean altitude was higher. Meanwhile, the mean altitude of small glacial lakes is higher than that of large lakes. In terms of the elevation distribution, almost half of the lakes are concentrated at the altitude of 2,250–2,750 m (a.s.l.). The comparison of lakes of different types indicated that ice-uncontacted lakes are dominant in number and area, accounting for 59.4 and 58.4%, respectively. These Alps glacial lakes, with the area ranging 0.01–1.59 km 2, are generally dominated by small-sized ones. A total of 498 glacial lakes (>0.01 km 2) with the net area of 33.77 ± 6.94 km 2 were identified in the Alps in 2019 and are mainly distributed in the western and central Alps. In this study, we developed an inventory of Alps glacial lakes of different types and then obtained the annual areas of these lakes from 2000 to 2019 using JRC Global Surface Water and Global Land Analysis and Discovery data at a resolution of 30 m. However, the research on the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of the Alps glacial lakes of various types still lacks a holistic view. 2Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, ChinaĬlimate warming is intensifying the melting of glaciers and the growth of glacial lakes in the Alps, which has a profound impact on the management of water resources and high-mountain hydropower in this region.1School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China.Jingsong Ma 1,2, Chunqiao Song 2* and Yanjun Wang 1
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