(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Alton C. Byers , University of Colorado Boulder and Suzanne OConnell , Wesleyan University

(THE CONVERSATION) Each summer in the mountains above Juneau, Alaska, meltwater from the massive Mendenhall Glacier flows into mountain lakes and into the Mendenhall River, which runs through town.

Since 2011, scientists and local officials have kept a close eye on one lake in particular: Suicide Basin , an ice-dammed bowl on an arm of the glacier. Glacier ice once covered this area, but as the ice retreated in recent decades, it left behind a large, deep depression.

In the summers of 2023 and 2024, meltwater filled Suicide Basin, overflowed and escaped through tunnels in the

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