Declining discharge of glacier outburst floods through the Holocene in central Patagonia

Abstract

Glacier outburst floods are a major hazard in glacierized catchments. Global analyses have shown reduced frequency of glacier floods over recent decades but there is limited longer-term data on event magnitude and frequency. Here, we present a Holocene palaeoflood record from the Río Baker (Chilean Patagonia), quantifying the discharge and timing of glacier floods over millennial timescales. A catastrophic flood of 110,000 m3/s (0.11 Sv) occurred at 9.6 ± 0.8 ka, during final stages of the Late Glacial Interglacial Transition, followed by five flood-phases coeval or post-dating Holocene neoglacials. Highest flood frequencies occurred at 4.3–4.4 ka, with 26 floods of minimum discharges of 10,000–11,000 m3/s, and 0.6 ka with 10 floods exceeding 4600–5700 m3/s. The largest modern outburst flood recorded surpassed ∼3810 m3/s. Thus glacier flood magnitude declines from the order of 0.1 to 0.01 Sv over the Early to Mid Holocene, and to 0.001 Sv in the instrumental record.