Nepal Tragedy Likely Brought On By Climate Change, Scientists Say

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

 Climate change was a core contributing factor in last month's horrific glacial mountain collapse and mega-flash flood and debris flow that killed thousands of people in Nepal last month. 

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. 

 

 

 

 

Climate Change Made California Fires More Likely

A bank burns during the January wildfire crisis in southern
California. Experts have concluded that climate change 
made this disaster more likely. Photo by CalFire.

Climate change made those horrific January California wildfires more likely, but the overall picture is complicated, experts who have done an analysis on the crisis have concluded. 

World Weather Attribution is an organization that does rapid response analyses of extreme weather events to determine whether climate change contributed to these events and to what extent. 

The link between the fires and climate change is complex, but it is there. 

Yale Climate Connections reported on the World Weather Attribution findings:

"The hot, dry and windy conditions that drive the fires were about 35 percent more likely and 6 percent more intense due to 1.3 degrees Celsius of global warming that has occurred since preindustrial times."

Also, "Low rainfall from October through December in the current climate is about 2.4 times more likely compared to the preindustrial climate, but this change cannot be confidently attributed to human-caused climate change"

"Fire-prone conditions because of human-caused climate change have increased by about 23 extra days each year, increasing the chance a fire will start from October through December, which coincides with the onset of peak Santa Ana wind season." 

Other findings by WWA suggest that the California dry season has increased by about 23 days since the global climate began warming to its current 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 

That means there's now a greater overlap between the time Santa Ana winds typical hit and the times that those winds can create firestorms like we saw last month in California. 

WWA also noted that the atmospheric patterns that are known to strengthen Santa Ana winds has increased in the winter, which increases the risk of weather that encourages wildfire in January. However, WWA scientists say they are unsure if this atmospheric pattern trend can conclusively be tied to climate change. More study is needed on that topic. 

The bottom line: WWA concludes that climate change had an impact on the fires. Here's their precise conclusion: 

"Given all these lines of evidence we have high confidence that human-induced climate change, primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels, increased the likelihood of the devastating LA fires."

Since the likelihood of fires has apparently increased in southern California due to climate change, they'll need to build more resilience to future fires, WWA tells us. 

There is a high number of both elderly and disabled people living in the potential fire zones, so plans need to be in place to help them evacuate more quickly and easily when danger lurks. 

The fires also proved the water infrastructure in the area is inadequate. Despite the bleatings of the Trump administration and others, the reservoirs had plenty of water to fight the fires. 

But city infrastructure like water mains, hydrants and such are designed to handle routine fires, like when a single house or business burns down. The water system clearly can't hand major fires like this, as we know some hydrants ran dry from too much demand in the local systems. 

The region also needs more defensible areas, in which brush and other flammables are kept away from homes, businesses and neighborhoods. And rebuilding should use fire-resistant materials.

As bad as this tragic wildfire episode was, it'll happen again at some time in the future. Now is the time to take steps to make sure southern California - and other wildfire prone areas - take steps to minimize the danger. 

Because climate change is not going to go away.