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Abstract: In recent years, disasters caused by Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) have taken place more frequently in Tibet than previously and have been the cause of considerable losses. Temperature fluctuations are believed a major influencing factor of GLOFs. However, if or how much climatic change influences GLOFs is a question that remains to be answered. In this paper, using 24 GLOFs related to 19 glacial lakes and temperature data from 14 meteorological stations, we explored the relationships between temperature variations on different temporal scales (annual, monthly, and daily) and GLOFs. There were three active periods for GLOFs in the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s in Tibet, when 16 of 24 GLOFs took place. All the studied GLOFs occurred in the ablation months (from May and September, and especially in July and August) and on ablation days with a monthly average temperature and daily average temperature that were both greater than 0 °C. Based on the analysis of monthly and daily temperature, GLOFs depend on the coupled influence of ablation temperature and accumulation temperature; even the accumulation temperature may be important. Based on this, temperature increments were defined, representing the change from accumulation to ablation temperature with a significant impact on GLOFs. There is an altitude effect on GLOFs, in that lakes at lower altitude generally burst earlier, whereas those at a higher altitude burst later. The monthly and daily increments increase according to a similar power-law form with elevation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]