Glacier disaster highlights growing risks from a destabilising cryosphere

“The cryosphere destabilisation significantly increases the risk of high-mountain hazards, including ice and snow avalanches, flash floods and droughts, with implications for ecosystems, water security, human livelihoods, infrastructure, food, and cultural heritage,” says Bo Su, guest researcher with a focus on the cryosphere at Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Scientists have reached a preliminary consensus that the flash flood in Nepal-Tibet was triggered by a glacier collapse and further by rockfall and debris flow. However, this is based on remote sensing image analysis and expert judgment, and there is still a need to further explore the specific mechanisms.

Albert Norström, researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre, says the Nepal-Tibet disaster illustrates a broader global trend:

"Rapid warming is fundamentally altering the cryosphere, increasing instability in glaciers, slopes and glacial lakes and thereby the potential for cascading hazards," he says.

A massive amount of glaciers are already doomed because of past greenhouse gas emissions, Centre researcher Lan Wang-Erlandsson adds:

“Studies show that limiting warming to 1.5°C – thereby staying within the planetary boundary for climate change – can halve glacier melt compared to the current warming trajectory towards 2.7°C,” she says.

Maintaining Earth and social-ecological resilience requires urgent global action to halt and reverse greenhouse gas and black carbon emissions.

“We also need to reduce the effects of local human disturbances such as industrial and infrastructure expansion in cryospheric regions," Bo Su adds.