Melting glacier triggers calamitous flashflood in Nepal

 Nepal’s flashflood which had destroyed villages, killed more than 750 people, and led to about 3,000 missing, a large majority of them foreign tourists from India, the United States and China, has inflicted on the Himalayan republic a natural calamity of huge proportion. Rescue workers from Nepal and China, many of them mountaineering guides, have managed to reach the disaster spots along the river. Efforts are on to reach workers stuck in the tunnels and project sites of the river where the large chunk of the glacier crashed, flooding the river. Many of the dead bodies floated down the river. Rescue workers found many of the dead unrecognisable as they were deformed and in many cases only parts of the body remained. Authorities in Nepal are trying DNNA fingerprints of the bodies so that relatives could be traced. 

The path of the disaster as it unfolded has now been inferred from the satellite signals and images. The United Geological Survey (USGS) had initially said that an earthquake triggered the breaking away of a huge ice block at a height of 17,000 feet and fell 3,000 feet into a river. The enormous ice block along with rocks and debris had created a lake in the river, blocking its flow.

This was followed by the huge quantity of ice, rock and debris breaking the reservoir. Then the surrounding villages, houses, roads, all landmarks were swept away. The USGS modified its earlier explanation saying that it was the breaking away of the mega-ice block crashing to the river that had carried the reverberations of a quake. That is, it is the impact of the ice block crashing into the river that shuddered like the seismic recorder.

The slow-motion crash of the huge ice block is being interpreted as the melting of the Himalayan galciers, which is traced to the rising temperatures caused by the increased greenhouse gas emissions, the villain of climate change. Experts warn that if climate change is not taken seriously, then disaster-inducing events caused by melting glaciers would trigger huge damage of life and property. They say that disasters caused by climate change would not be confined to small places, but it will have ripple effects across national borders as well. The Nepalese river Lhende Khola into which the huge ice block fell from a height of nearly 4,000 feet, swells because of the extra sediment it carries, and it flows into Bhote Koshi, then the Trishuli river, which joins the Narayani, which then crosses into India and joins the Gandak in Bihar. The three north Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand now face the threat of floodwaters. Such flooding would have occurred due to torrential rain. But there was no rain even as the Lhende Khola, into which the part of glacier fell, became a menacing river.

Compared to many developing and developed coutnries, Nepal’s carbon emissions are much too low compared to its giant neighbours, China and India. But it is Nepal that would be the first casualty when a climate disaster of the kind that took place on Wednesday happens. So it becomes imperative for small countries like Nepal which are not in the direct line of causation in matters of climate change to take preventive and remedial measures, and insist on financial and tehnological assistance from the developed countries. The developed and developing countries are most likely to shrug their shoulders and deny any connection between the flashfloods and climate change, but the hard fact that climate change is the trigger for the disaster cannot be passed on. Nepal flashfloods are not an alarm signal for Nepal itself but to other countries, from Nepal’s neighbours like India and China, and distant neighbours in Europe and in America. When faced with the challenge of climate change, big and small countries are riding in the same boat. Melting glaciers would mean higher temperatures, and the rise in temperatures is a global phenomenon. It is not confined to countries which have glaciers in their territories.