Was climate change to blame for the Nepal floods?

A devastating flood in the border area of Nepal and China swept through villages and inundated buildings. Experts say rising temperatures and melting glaciers probably played a role in the disaster. But they warn against describing climate change as the sole trigger. Here's what we know so far about the cause of the floods. Scientists say it probably began with a massive ice rock avalanche. Though the exact cause of the Himalayan disaster is still being analyzed, hundreds were killed, with over a thousand still missing days after the catastrophe. Mohan Bahadur Chand, an assistant professor at Kathmandu University's Department of Environmental Science, explains. The height where we are assuming that ice was broken is about 5,200 meters from the sea level. And then the vertical drop of almost 1,200 meters. And then again, the ice might have melted during that drop. Chand said the combination of extreme height and speed was enough to melt the broken ice and drag vast quantities of debris down with it. It carried several amounts of tons of sediments in that low part. And then again, there was another vertical drop all the way to the rivers, which was about 3,000 meters. Similar catastrophic surges have hit the region in recent years, but on a smaller scale. These events have occurred throughout history. What's unusual is the scale of this landslide. It is incredibly large. Benjamin Horton is dean of the School of Energy and Environment at the City University of Hong Kong. With climate change, that summer melting is more extensive. It's more intensive. It lasts for a longer period of the year. So the probability of these landslides that are generated by climate change is increasing year upon year. The long-term trend appears stark. The United Nations said in 2023 that global warming caused Nepal's snow-capped mountains to lose around one-third of their ice cover in just over 30 years. And glaciers in Nepal had melted 65% faster over the previous decade than they had in the decade before. One of the things that I find so tragic is that the people who lost their lives and lost their livelihoods didn't contribute to this problem. They're not the polluters of carbon dioxide. We know who are the polluters and they are responsible.