By now, you have seen the tragic videos of floodwaters laden with mud that destroyed villages and lives along the Nepal-China border. According to multiple media reports , a landslide impeded the Bhote Koshi river, which caused a massive amount of water to head downstream from China to Nepal. “A group of scientists believe a glacier may have broken off and fallen into the valley below, which triggered or at least compounded the effect of the landslide,” stated a report on CNN’s website. This massive event likely also caused seismic instruments to detect signals that resembled a large earthquake. While it may be too early to connect these events to climate change, I suspect it will be in future discussions. Whether it was a direct cause or not, this region is warming very fast.

Arctic latitudes have been warming faster than many other parts of the world, but the Himalayan region is certainly a fast warming region. “The Himalayan region, known as the “Third Pole”, is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, threatening water security, livelihoods, ecosystems and increasing disaster risk,” according to the World Meteorological Organization website . “Nepal, in the rapidly-warming Himalayan region, is home to thousands of glaciers which are melting and destabilizing as temperatures rise,” wrote CNN’s Laura Paddison and Angela Fritz. However, they cautioned that it will take time to know if warming temperatures were directly tied to this event.

Here’s what we do know about Nepal. It is warming relatively fast compared to the rest of the world. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warned that, "The level of warming of 0.3°C per decade in the high mountains of Asia, outpacing the global warming rate and leading to glacier retreat, which has decreased the stability of mountain slopes and the integrity of infrastructure.” The country knows it. In 2023 Nepal released its first National Adaptation Plan. It included a set of strategies to improve resiliency to climate change.

As glaciers shrink and meltwater lakes grow, the threat to nearby communities increases,” stated a NASA website. Glacial outburst floods are a threat in regions like this, but there is no evidence that is what happened here. Time will tell, but two things can be true at the same time. It’s certainly true that this is a climate-volatile region irrespective of causation with this event. I will pin this article and circle back to it once scientists dig deeper into the science behind this deadly tragedy.