Over 1,300 dead and 5,000 missing after glacier collapse in the Himalayas

Over 1,300 people have been confirmed dead and more than 5,000 are still missing after the avalanche on August 26 this year, when a large mass of rock and glacial ice collapsed near the Nepal-Tibet border.

It unleashed a huge flood of water, mud and rock that swept through the valleys.

Earthquake and climate change causes

A new analysis from World Weather Attribution, an international research collaboration that examines how climate change affects extreme weather events, points to several interacting causes.

One of them is the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015. The quake may have weakened the mountainside and contributed to the instability that developed in the following years.

At the same time, the researchers believe that climate change has changed the conditions in the Himalayas.

Glaciers have retreated, permafrost has thawed and temperatures have risen. It can weaken what previously functioned as a natural binder in the bedrock. Increased amounts of meltwater can also make slopes more unstable.

It was already visible a month before

But the question is whether similar disasters in the future can be predicted.

Professor and hydrogeologist Walter Immerzeel at Utrecht University says that retrospective analyzes show that the mountain between two glaciers began to accelerate already one to two months before the slide.

- It is easy to analyze when the event has already occurred. But doing it in real time for thousands of glaciers is a huge challenge, he says.

The researchers therefore hope for future early warning systems, but the Himalayas have thousands of glaciers and monitoring them all is a very big challenge.

Nepal has requested $20 million in compensation from a UN fund, citing climate change as the cause of the disaster.