NPR reports:

More than a thousand people are missing and at least 400 people are dead after flash flooding tore through Nepal and Tibet early Wednesday. According to initial assessments, a massive chunk of ice snapped off a glacier and tumbled thousands of feet into the valley below. Rock, ice and mud plunged down for miles, washing away communities along the river.

Scientists say glaciers in this region, and around the world, are increasingly unstable because of human-caused global warming. Across the mountains of Nepal and Tibet, climate change is causing glaciers to melt at an alarming rate.

Planet-heating emissions from burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal are the primary driver of climate change. Scientists say that in addition to reducing climate pollution, renewable energy and battery technologies are increasingly price competitive with traditional energy sources.

“There’s no question that this event was made more likely because of climate change and that we’re seeing more likely other similar glacier hazards occurring,” says Twila Moon, deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. [Continue reading…]