At an emergency shelter in central Nepal, Chhiring Mhendo Tamang stares at a photograph of her six-year-old daughter. She fears she will never see her again after the school bus she was on was swept away by a flash flood. A glacier collapsed on August 26, causing an avalanche of mud, rocks and water to rush into a river on the border between Nepal and Tibet. The flood has so far caused 1,451 deaths with 5,745 people missing, mainly in the districts of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading, where homes, schools, electrical infrastructure and roads have been decimated, according to Nepal’s National Authority for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (NDRRMA).

Seguir leyendo

The catastrophic avalanche of rock and ice on Langtang Lirung mountain, on Nepal’s northern border — which caused 1,300 deaths and as a result of which, 22 days later, more than 5,000 people remain missing — was the result of a combination of factors that simmered until they triggered an unprecedented disaster in the Himalayas. A report published on September 17 by World Weather Attribution (WWA), the group of scientists that specializes in calculating the influence of climate change on extreme weather events, sheds light on the catastrophe. Among the factors, the authors note “unusually warm conditions before the failure, supporting enhanced snow and ice melt and more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow” around the site where the collapse occurred.

Seguir leyendo