The Nepal-Tibet floods

More than 600 people have died due to the Glacial collapse in the Nepa;-Tibet area. More than 3000 are missing. Rescue attempts have been interrupted due to a newly formed lake that may burst it’s earthen dam causing more flooding and more deaths.

Preliminary investigations have pointed to a collapsed glacier as the cause of the flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border, highlighting the issue of the rapidly melting Himalayan Glacier.

Initial reports of an earthquake led many to believe that a tremor had caused a landslide, which in turn caused the flood that has killed at least 600 people.

However,  US Geological Survey then clarified that the disaster was caused by a glacial collapse.

The impact of the collapsed glacier hitting the bottom of the valley was registered as a magnitude of 5.2, according to data.  A glacier expert with the University of Dundee, and his team had detected that the lower part of a glacier in Nepal which is approximately  9 miles west of the site of the floods had collapsed.

The team estimated  the glacier collapsed in a northwesterly direction and then travelled downstream. An analysis found there could have been "an ice-rock avalanche originating from a high-altitude area.

This caused a large volume of ice and rock debris to enter  a tributary of the Bhote, Koshi river.  This in turn generated a sudden surge in the river carrying water, sediment and large boulders downstream.

The analysis found that water levels in rivers downstream rose by between seven and nine meters within a span of 30 minutes, and several water monitoring stations were washed away.

 A professor said that this whole process  from landslide to flood  could have taken hours. The sheer wave of debris suggests there could have been a landslide, the water built up, dammed the river, and then it burst in one huge great flood.

The topography of the area could have also worsened the flood. The Langtang, Lirung mountain sits on the crest of the high Himalayas and there are steep valleys on both sides of the mountain, which may have funneled the water at higher speeds.

The Langtang, Lirung, like the rest of the Himalayas, has been slowly rising due to long-term tectonic movement, where one plate has been pushing another plate up.

 The mountain rises, the glacier gets steeper and steeper, and  parts of it fall off. But usually these are smaller chunks which temporarily block the rivers, and are easily flushed out. However, in this disaster, the whole glacier collapsed in one large piece. These floods happen all the time, but not at this scale.

 Wednesday's event likely happened because of two different processes,  tectonics with the Himalayas uplifting, and climate change with increasingly high temperatures and melting of glaciers.

The whole thing is combining to form these catastrophic disasters that we are now seeing at a regular basis. Scientists for years have warned of melting ice and permafrost, in the Himalayas due to climate change.

An analysis earlier this year found that the Hindu Kush Himalaya glaciers are now losing ice at double the rate since 1990. This in turn causes dangers such as flooding.

 There have been similar incidents of floods and landslides caused by glacier collapses in India, and Switzerland in recent years.

In 2012, a large chunk of a Himalayan glacier collapsed in northern India, sending  debris and water downstream that killed 300 people. Scientists later estimated that the impact of the collapse was the equivalent to 15 atomic bombs.

Even in Nepal, the same region saw flooding last year caused by a glacial lake in Tibet bursting.
I hate to say I told you so. I haven't said that, but this disaster may happen more and more.

Photo found on the internet.