The giant flash flood that tore through settlements near Nepal’s border with China on Wednesday came as a brutal reminder of the growing risks to people in the Himalayas, a mountain range scientists say is deeply vulnerable to climate change.
It is too early to establish definitively what caused Wednesday’s flood, but scientists said satellite imagery before and after the disaster suggested that a large portion of cliff north of the Langtang Lirung mountain close to Tibet collapsed, snapping off a huge chunk of glacier sitting over it.
The force of tens of millions of cubic metres of falling rock and ice was initially mistaken for an earthquake and, by some estimates, unleashed enough energy to melt the glacial ice, sending an enormous wall of rock, mud and water cascading dozens of miles down the Bhote Koshi valley into Nepal.