Nepal, like the rest of the world, has already experienced a disproportionate share of the fallout from rising global temperatures and related ecological disruption. The disaster that hit Nepal was merely the tip of the iceberg; if not today, the inevitability of it happening at some point in the future was always there.   

There are competing versions of what happened on that fateful morning of August 26. According to one analysis by Mike Bettes, an American meteorologist who co-hosts a show on The Weather Channel called ‘Weather Unfiltered’, this disaster traces its origins to the Yala glacier in Nepal’s central Himalayas. Over a decade, he notes that the glacier has lost about 33 feet of water equivalent (roughly the height of a 3-story building). 

Bettes then goes on to offer a blow-by-blow account of what happened. According to him, at 10:52:10 am, a section of the glacier sitting at an elevation of around 16,700 feet and spanning roughly 1.5 km collapsed, sending a pulverised mass plunging nearly 7,000 feet over just 5.5 km. What followed was an astonishingly rapid descent. 

At 10:59:50 am, precisely 7 minutes and 40 seconds after the collapse was registered, the resulting torrent reached a checkpoint near the Nepal-China border, roughly 21.6 km downstream. By then, the surge had descended a total of nearly 10,500 feet and travelled that distance at an average speed of about 105 mph (169 km/h), whipping up a terrifying wall of water and debris nearly 300 feet (91 metres) high. By the time it reached settlement areas such as Trishuli Bazar, the speed had plummeted to roughly 72km/h, strong enough to destroy the lives of people. So far, the devastating flash floods in Nepal have, as per latest estimates, killed more than 1,400 people and left more than 5,000 people missing.  

This disaster in Nepal is not an isolated event. Rather, it’s part of a broader pattern of climatic vulnerabilities and susceptibilities confronting the entire Himalayan belt, running from Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan and China. India, in particular, has witnessed growing intensity and frequency of such events, from the Kedarnath tragedy in 2013 and the Chamoli disaster in 2021 to the Sikkim floods of 2023, to name a few. For climate and ecological processes, anthropogenic lines dividing countries, or an abstract construct of sovereignty, are irrelevant, since the consequences affect everyone, even if not equally. 

But the significance of the Nepal disaster lies beyond the event. To understand why such events have become a recurring feature, we have to understand the topography of the entire Himalayan zone in consonance with changing climatic realities and human interventions thereof. 

A mountain system under stress

The Himalaya is an abode of glaciers. These glaciers are the lifeline of northern India, serving as important perennial water sources for most of the region’s major rivers. 

One reason glaciers can withstand intense summer insolation is that they are white and therefore have a high albedo (high reflectivity). But as temperatures rise, this reflective capacity is increasingly compromised, resulting in some melting. This exposes dark, dingy, rock-laden ice that absorbs heat rapidly, creating a feedback loop in which more heat absorption leads to further melting. 

The consequences of this feedback loop are glacier retreat and ice loss, which ultimately aid landslides, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), ice and rock avalanches, etc. – hazards that often leave behind a trail of devastation

Making matters worse is the growing carbon footprint driven by rising tourist footfall and the resulting infrastructure development in Nepal and neighbouring countries. Both rising tourist footfall and rampant infrastructure development are significant contributors to rising levels of black carbon and soot. This particulate matter is carried by winds and deposited on glacier surfaces, turning them from bright white to a darker shade. Once the layer of soot settles in, the surface begins to absorb more insolation than it originally would have, further escalating the melting process. 

While Nepal serves as a reference point here, this holds true across the entire Himalayan belt. When these pressures act upon a mountain system that is already geologically dynamic, the problem you have is that not only are the Himalayas warming, but this warming is also interacting with an already dynamic and sensitive terrain.

When human intervention meets a fragile landscape

The Himalayan range is one of the youngest fold mountain systems in the world, indicating that it is still growing. Unlike the ancient landmasses of Peninsular India, the Himalayas are tectonically active, with the Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates always pushing into each other. For instance, Mount Everest continues to rise by roughly a centimetre or so each year.

Because these mountains are still in an evolutionary process, any anthropogenic activities, be it the construction of roads, buildings, tunnels, etc, put an additional burden on these already fragile eco-zones. Such activities don’t merely disturb slopes; they alter drainage patterns, create fissures, and weaken the terrain's natural stability, ultimately leading to disasters.

The Char Dham project in Uttarakhand presents a painful picture of this tension between infrastructure development, ecological sensitivity, and the balance between them. The project, which was started in 2016, connects Badrinath, Yamunotri, Gangotri and Kedarnath. Historically, as early as 1976, a government-appointed committee had warned against heavy construction in the area. Despite past warnings against heavy construction in the area, this 12,000 crore Char-Dham project was allowed through after loopholes in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) rules were exploited to clear the way for this project, according to Vimlendu Jha, the founder of Swechha, a group working on sustainability issues, writing for Frontline magazine. 

In 2019, the Supreme Court appointed a High Powered Committee (HPC) to examine the cumulative and independent environmental impact of the 900-kilometre project. Three years later, Ravi Chopra, the chairman of the HPC, resigned from his role, citing his disappointment over the permission for the “brazen widening of roads”. Also, as a result of the project, the town of Joshimath, which serves as a vital gateway to Badrinath, experienced severe land subsidence in 2023, displacing hundreds of families, according to some experts.

However, vulnerability in the Himalayas does not manifest only through slow processes such as glacier retreat, land subsidence, or changing slopes. It can also appear through other common yet consequential climatic events, such as cloudbursts and heavy rainfall. 

When a hazard becomes a disaster

A comprehensive study of atmospheric dynamics associated with cloudburst events in 2022 over the Indian Himalayan regions by Payoshni Samantray and Krushna Chandra Gouda reveals that Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh each witnessed 24 cloudburst events, followed by 18 in Uttarakhand. The study was published in the Journal of Earth System Science in July 2024.  

In recent times, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in the Himalayas have become a growing concern. And because these events are so intensely localised, an increasing number of extreme rainfall events are often labelled as “cloudbursts”. But there is a caveat here. By attributing every extreme downpour to a cloudburst, authorities conveniently shift the attention away from questions of preparedness, planning and accountability to an “act of nature”, therefore beyond human control. 

A case in point is the Dharali floods in Uttarakhand in 2025. The disaster was initially attributed to a cloudburst; however, data from the Indian Meteorological Department later revealed that the actual rate of rainfall was much lower than the threshold for a cloudburst. The underlying causes of the devastation were illegal construction on riverbeds, deforestation, and concretisation, according to this explainer in The Hindu. 

The larger question

Early warning systems across the Himalayan range remain nascent, but disasters will not wait for governance to catch up. These tragedies are not caused by single or multiple acts of nature alone. The hazard may be natural, but the ramifications are often shaped by human decisions: where and how to build, what we allow, and the preparatory mechanisms in place before and after these hazards hit us. 

Peerzada Mahboob Ul Haq is an independent writer whose work focuses on Kashmir, the environment, geopolitics, and democratic processes.

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