Published on 21 February 2026
On November 1, 2022, the entire tongue of a glacier on the Tibetan Plateau detached. In a matter of minutes, tens of millions of cubic meters of ice accelerated to highway speeds and surged into a high-altitude lake. No direct eyewitness accounts exist from this remote region—but a constellation of satellites continuously observing Earth captured the event in detail.
The collapse was first identified during a routine, global mapping of surging glaciers, in which systematic satellite observations are regularly screened for dynamic changes. Optical imagery, radar measurements, elevation data, and thermal observations subsequently enabled a precise reconstruction of the timing, velocity, volume, and environmental context of this extraordinary event, which ranks among the largest ice avalanches documented to date.
What distinguishes this event is not only its immense scale—tens of millions of cubic meters of ice. If transported in standard freight wagons, the resulting train would extend roughly 15,000 km, spanning the distance from central Europe to Australia. Equally remarkable is the comprehensive way satellite observations illuminated every phase of the process: the glacier’s pre-failure acceleration, the catastrophic detachment, the dispersal and progressive melt of the debris, and the lasting thermal and geomorphic signatures imprinted on the landscape.
Central to this reconstruction were the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Programme Sentinel missions, particularly Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, which acquire data systematically, consistently, and worldwide. Their standardized observation strategy produces a continuous and homogeneous global archive, allowing regions of interest to be reassessed retrospectively with newly developed analytical approaches. Such sustained, global monitoring enables the detection and detailed investigation of major cryospheric events that might otherwise remain unnoticed.
Figure 1: Sentinel-2 images draped over an elevation model. Upper image: Xinqingfeng ice cap on the Tibetan Plateau in summer 2020. Lower image: After the failure of the glacier tongue in November 2022. The length of the detached glacier tongue was 1.1 km. The 40 million cubic metre ice avalanche dropped by 370 m, over a distance of 4300 m, giving it a slope of below 5 degree.
The avalanche occurred in an inhabited area of the Tibetan Plateau. The scientists behind its study (“Recent giant detachment of a glacier on the Tibetan Plateau provoked by its frozen tongue”, 2026) discovered and mapped the huge avalanche deposits in repeat Sentinel-1 radar images. The avalanche volume was estimated at roughly 40 million cubic metre—an immense mass that raced downslope at top speeds of around 200 km/h along gentle terrain yet left in its upper parts surprisingly little erosion. Using elevation models from satellite stereo imagery and satellite altimetry, the avalanche deposits were reconstructed to have been up to 20 m thick.
Source:
Copernicus. (2026, February 20). Watching one of Earth’s largest ice avalanches unfold. Sentinel Online. https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/success-stories/-/watching-one-of-e…