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| This is Trishul Bazaar, Nepal, before and after the immense water and debris flow on August 26 World Weather Attribution says that climate change was a very likely culprit in this calamity |
The death toll made this disaster was especially horrific. In Nepal, 1,403 bodies had been recovered as of last week. The number of missing people has been revised upward to 6,150. In neighboring Tibet, 43 are known dead and 519 are missing.
Several factors went into the disaster, but climate change got the ball rolling, according to a report from World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who study how individual disasters are influenced and often made worse by climate change
"Relentless warming has lifted the altitude of the freezing threshold on the high Himalayas, exposing ic and permafrost deep in the bedrock to higher and longer thaw temperatures, weakening mountain slopes," according to the report.
World Weather Attribution formed a team of researchers from ten countries. They were experts in glaciology, mountain hydrology, climate science, humanitarian aid, seismology and social science to study how this calamity unfolded and what caused it.
The disaster started when a large rock wall collapsed on the Langtang Lirung Mountain, elevation 23,734 feet. The rock slide also caused part of an overlying glacier to collapse. The rock-ice avalanche quick turned into an incredible debris and water flood that traveled downstream at speeds of up to 117 mph.
The calamity happened on August 26, but may have had its roots in 2015. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake that year might have further weakened the slope, but the precise role of that earthquake remains uncertain, says WWA.
Then there's climate change
"Warming and permafrost degradation likely weakened the source rock wall by increasing bedrock temperatures and thawing ice within fractures. Loss of ice bonding reduces fracture strength, while meltwater can increase water pressure and further destabilize pre-existing geological weaknesses. Thus, permafrost degradation may have acted aa an additional climate-related factors pre-conditioning the slope for failure."
On top of that, glaciers in the region have been losing mass for decades under the onslaught of climate change. Since 2010, the rate loss of the Lantang-Lirung glacier has accelerated. Thinning glaciers can change stresses on adjacent rock walls, which in turn can increase slope instability. Combined with more meltwater than in earlier decades. It's possible this could have worsened the event.
All this is because it's above freezing at higher and higher elevations in the Himalayas more frequently due to climate change.
It didn't help that the area where this disaster started, and the river valley it pummeled, had their warmest July and August on record. This came after unusually heavy snowfall in late 2025 which contributed extra meltwater before the collapse.
WWA wouldn't go so far as to say that this disaster couldn't have happened in the days before climate change really started to alter the world. It would require a lot more study to absolutely prove the connection. "Rapidly rising temperatures at a rate beyond the global mean as a result of fossil fuel emissions increase the likelihood and severity such hazards in the Himalayas, WWA concluded.
In other words, this could happen again.
With this in mind, Nepal is planning to use the World Weather Attribution study to request $20 million from the United Nations. It's from the UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, which helps countries affected by climate change.
If the funding goes through, it will be a drop in the bucket compared to what Nepal needs. It's estimated that Nepal will need about $5 billion to recover from this tragedy.
They've always warned us climate change would be expensive, and there you go.
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