NEWSLETTER: Did climate change trigger Nepal's glacier collapse?

Two new scientific papers highlighted in a Reuters newsletter link climate change to the late-August glacier collapse that flooded parts of Nepal and Tibet, killing about 1,400 people and leaving thousands missing. One study, using work by the World Weather Attribution group, says rapid regional warming has thinned glaciers and melted deep ice and permafrost in the Himalayas. Researchers said the exact contribution of climate change is hard to quantify, but higher temperatures created conditions that made the Langtang Lirung disaster—covering around 2 sq km—more likely. They reported August mean temperatures about 5°C above normal, with 1.5°C attributed to climate change. A second paper using satellite records dating to the 1970s attributes sea-level rise to ice losses in Greenland and Antarctica.