Kim Stanley Robinson won’t read aloud his climate disaster scene from ‘The Ministry for the Future’
Scientists said climate change helped destabilize the mountain slope, and Nepal says the fund request is a test of global climate compensation.
- On August 26, 2026, a two-square-kilometre slab of rock and glacier broke away from Langtang Lirung, triggering a debris flow that killed more than 1,400 people and left thousands missing across northern Nepal.
- World Weather Attribution researchers reported on September 16 that human-caused warming thinned glaciers and thawed permafrost, destabilizing the mountain slope over decades and creating conditions for the disaster.
- A 2015 magnitude-7.8 earthquake likely fractured the bedrock, while record-high temperatures in July and August accelerated meltwater, pushing unstable rock and ice toward collapse, according to study authors.
- Nepal formally requested $20 million from the U.N. Loss and Damage fund, though Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle estimated total reconstruction costs could reach $5 billion to rebuild the damaged economy.
- Existing early warning systems designed for rainfall-driven floods failed to detect the speed of this high-altitude "compound crisis," as climate experts warn mountain destabilization is now a global trend.
156 Articles
156 Articles
On August 26th, a massive landslide of rock and ice, equivalent to 40 Pyramids of Giza, occurred at Langtang Lirung in Nepal, killing over 1,300 people. Climate change is increasing such hazards in the mountains.
(Hanoi=Yonhap News) Correspondent Park Jin-hyung = "Why did the floods in Nepal cause such extensive damage?"
The catastrophic floods in Nepal at the end of August, during which more than 1,400 people lost their lives, were caused by the destabilization of a glacier fueled by global warming, according to the first attribution study of the event published on Thursday, September 17th.
The Conversation
Flood-damaged Nepal wants help from the global climate Loss and Damage Fund – but it’s waiting, along with 118 other countries
A rush of mud, rock and water inundated the town of Trishuli, Nepal, on Aug. 26, 2026, after a glacier collapsed. Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty ImagesAs it faces the enormous task of rebuilding from a deadly flood that tore through communities in the Himalayas, Nepal is seeking compensation from the international Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage – meaning from countries that are major contributors to climate change, which it blames for the dis…
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