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New Delhi: Human-induced climate change may have thawed permafrost contributing to the instability of the rock wall that gave way in Rasuwa in Nepal and triggering flash floods downstream, according to a report released on September 17. The catastrophic floods have killed over 1,300 people and left 5,000 missing. 

Thawing ice, more rain

According to the report released by World Weather Attribution (WWA), a global collective of scientists who analyse the role of climate change in extreme weather events, warmer temperatures caused by human-caused climate change possibly thawed ice and weakened the rock wall in Rasuwa, causing slope instability that led to the ice-rock avalanche that triggered the floods.

The resulting mixture of sediment, ice, and rock led to the formation of deadly debris, which ravaged families, homes, and nearly all existing infrastructure it encountered. This bulwark moved at rapid speed, reaching the Rasuwagadhi border in seven minutes. It took another half an hour for it to reach the Trishuli Valley. In under seven hours, the flood travelled 200 kilometres, wreaking devastation. The report suggests that while climate change was not the “fundamental cause” it acted as a “significant destabilising force.” What this means, effectively, is that climate change can not only dramatically alter weather patterns, but remake the mountains themselves. 

The report also noted that another contributing factor that caused the slope failure on the Langtang-Lirung glacier could have been an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on the Richter Scale, in 2015 in the area,........

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