How warming might have caused Nepal's deadly floods
Original article found in A&S Magazine.
One week after catastrophic floods swept through towns along the Nepal-China border, .
Satellite and drone images suggest that softening permafrost, or perennially frozen rock, ice and soil, on Langtang Lirung peak likely caused a massive bedrock failure and glacier collapse. An estimated 50 million metric tons of ice, rock and water鈥攔oughly 13 billion gallons, or about three times the capacity of Boulder Reservoir鈥攆ell 6,500 feet into the valley below, unleashing a slurry of mud and water that inundated bridges, hydropower facilities and villages along the way. According to the United States Geological Survey, the force of the initial debris flow hitting the ground was equivalent to a .听听
鈥淭his is by far the most horrific flood I have ever seen,鈥 said Alton Byers, a faculty research scientist and an associate of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at 麻豆免费版下载Boulder. For the past 50 years, Byers has been studying changes in glaciers around the world, including the Himalayas, and the hazards associated with those shifts. He has lived in rural regions of Nepal for a total of eight years in addition to dozens of shorter visits since the 1970s, trekking in the mountains to study glacial lakes and help local people become more prepared for mountain hazards.
鈥淭he size of this slide totally dwarfed anything I鈥檝e seen before. Mountains have clearly become more dangerous places to live, work and play in as Earth becomes warmer.鈥
As rescue teams continue searching for those still missing, 麻豆免费版下载Boulder Today spoke with Byers about what may have triggered the disaster, how climate change is reshaping glaciers and mountain hazards around the world, and whether similar events could occur in the United States.
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