Paris – The mountain section whose collapse triggered fatal floods in Nepal and China on Aug. 26 had experienced unprecedented heat for the time of year, meteorological data analyzed by a researcher shows. Average temperatures on the mountain glacier at an altitude of 5,200 meters were estimated at around 5 degrees Celsius between Aug. 21 and 26. They had not exceeded 4.0 C over the same period in more than 55 years of data recording, although no direct link to the collapse has so far been established.
This series of highly localized temperatures was reconstructed by Robert Rohde, chief scientist at the independent Berkeley Earth organization in California. At the site of the collapse, the average temperature recorded over that six-day period has risen by about 1.8 C since the mid-20th century. Without the additional heat brought by climate change, a comparable temperature pattern “would probably occur only once in a few thousand years,“ Rohde calculated.
The collapse came during the Langtang region’s fourth-hottest summer on record, according to AFP’s analysis of data from Europe’s Copernicus observatory dating back to 1970. Permafrost acts as ice cement, holding rock faces together. Its degradation makes them more unstable.
Satellite images also showed significant snowmelt in the days before the disaster, providing “a substantial source of liquid water that can infiltrate fractures in the mountain and facilitate landslides,“ said Etienne Berthier, a glaciologist at France’s CNRS research agency. Experts remain cautious, however, about the precise role played by the heatwave. Researchers are now examining the small movements observed in the mountain in the years before the collapse and their interaction with changes in temperature.
His temperature analysis used data from the Copernicus program’s ERA5 climate model and a network of 14 high-altitude weather stations located between 9 and 140 kilometers from the collapsed glacier.
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