How Rising Temperatures Likely Contributed to Nepal’s Deadly Flood

Around 160 people died and hundreds remain missing after a flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border was triggered by a glacier fragment falling several thousand feet, creating a 2,000-foot-wide ice mass that pulverized into water and generated a magnitude 5.2 seismic event. The incident reflects accelerating glacier retreat in Nepal, where glaciers have lost nearly 25% of their area since 1970, increasing landslide and glacial-lake outburst flood risks as warming temperatures thin and destabilize ice.