Climate warming and concomitant glacier recession in the High Mountain Asia (HMA) have led to widespread development and expansion of glacial lakes, which reserved the freshwater resource, but also may increase risks of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) or debris floods. Using 46 moderate- and high-resolution satellite images, including declassified Keyhole and Landsat missions between 1964 and 2020, we provide a comprehensive area mapping of glaciers and glacial lakes in the Tama Koshi (Rongxer) basin, a highly glacierized China-Nepal transnational catchment in the central Himalayas with high potential risks of glacier-related hazards. Results show that the 329.2 ± 1.9 km² total area of 271 glaciers in the region has decreased by 26.2 ± 3.2 km² in the past 56 years. During 2000–2016, remarkable ice mass loss caused the mean glacier surface elevation to decrease with a rate of −0.63 m a⁻¹, and the mean glacier surface velocity slowed by ~25% between 1999 and 2015. The total area of glacial lakes increased by 9.2 ± 0.4 km² (~180%) from 5.1 ± 0.1 km² in 1964 to 14.4 ± 0.3 km² in 2020, while ice-contacted proglacial lakes have a much higher expansion rate (~204%). Large-scale glacial lakes are developed preferentially and experienced rapid expansion on the east side of the basin, suggesting that in addition to climate warming, the glacial geomorphological characters (aspect and slope) are also key controlling factors of the lake growing process. We hypothesize that lake expansion will continue in some cases until critical local topography (i.e., steepening icefall) is reached, but the lake number may not necessarily increase. Further monitoring should be focused on eight rapidly expanding proglacial lakes due to their high potential risks of failure and relatively high lake volumes.

Lake-terminating glaciers retreat and thin faster than land-terminating glaciers, yet their long-term dynamics remain underexplored. Using multi source–remote sensing data combined with glacier velocity and elevation change datasets, we investigated their distribution and evolution in the Himalaya and Southeastern Tibet from 1990 to 2020. By 2020, 577 lake-terminating glaciers (2561.5 ± 11.8 km ² ) had been identified, representing ∼2% of all glaciers by number and ∼10% by area. Of these, 246 glaciers maintained contact with proglacial lakes (Type 1 change), while 331 developed new lakes (Type 2 change). Additionally, 173 glaciers detached from lakes (Type 3 change). Variations in glacier–lake contact strongly modulate glacier dynamics. Type 1 change glaciers experienced the largest area loss (73.8 ± 13.1 km ² ), whereas Type 2 change glaciers showed the greatest average retreat distance (1.06 ± 0.05 km). Among Type 1 change glaciers (>5 km ² ) with significant velocity trends, 22% accelerated and 78% decelerated, while all Type 3 change glaciers with significant velocity trends consistently decelerated. These findings underscore the pivotal influence of proglacial lake evolution on glacier dynamics, advancing our understanding of glacier–lake interactions on the Tibetan Plateau and beyond.

Lake-terminating glaciers (LTGs) typically exhibit higher rates of retreat and thinning compared to land-terminating glaciers. However, a comprehensive inventory for LTGs and their associate proglacial lakes across High Mountain Asia (HMA) is currently lacking, limiting further understanding of their spatial heterogeneity in glacier change. This study employs a semi-automated identification method, coupled with rigorous visual inspection, to construct a comprehensive inventory of LTGs and proglacial lakes in HMA for 1990 and 2022. Our data indicate that, by 2022, HMA hosted 1740 LTGs (5082.08 ± 13.15 km²), among which 667 glaciers (3454.59 ± 12.43 km²) remained in contact with proglacial lakes since 1990, 1073 (1627.49 ± 4.30 km²) are newly developed and 468 (960.13 ± 3.18 km²) had disconnected from proglacial lakes during the investigation period. Accordingly, 645 proglacial lakes (207.18 ± 0.82 km²) remained in contact with ice, 1123 new lakes (54.85 ± 0.35 km²) formed, and 485 lakes (45.31 ± 0.34 km²) detached from ice (including 25 disappeared). During the past 32 year, the total area of proglacial lakes increased by 138.19 ± 1.18 km² (81.7 %), alongside a glacier area loss of 324.43 ± 19.23 km² (5.1 %). The southern regions of HMA, particularly the Hindu Kush, Himalayas, Nyainqentanglha, and Gangdise Mountains, exhibiting the highest concentration and rapidest changes of the glacier-lake system. We hope that this dataset will improve our understanding of mountain glacier-lake interactions, water availability, as well as glacier-related hazards in HMA. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17369580 (Luo and Liu, 2025).