On the morning of Aug. 26, a catastrophic flash flood traveled around 60 miles along the Nepal-Tibet border region, destroying bridges, buildings and a border crossing. It swallowed entire villages and swept thousands of people along with it. Whole tour buses are still missing. More than 1,200 people have been confirmed dead, with thousands more still unaccounted for, including hundreds trapped in the tunnels of hydropower projects. 

This shocking event, at the end of a summer when the world was already on fire, was yet another reminder that climate change is no longer a hypothetical threat to our future, but a deadly and ever-present threat that can strike us without warning at virtually any time, anywhere. 

No rain was in the forecast. Many videos capturing the racing wall of water revealed blue skies above. Heavy rains can cause raging waters too, but at a rate that people and communities can often respond to. This tragedy offered its victims little time to find safe cover. It was a nightmare come to life.

When it first occurred, the cause was a mystery, but scientists have since established, through before-and-after satellite images, that a 2,000-foot-wide chunk of ice snapped off a glacier at 17,000 feet and fell nearly three-quarters of a mile to the valley floor, triggering a massive landslide and the flood. The crash caused the........

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