Nepal’s catastrophe shows who pays the price for global climate change

The flooding and landslides that struck Nepal have focused attention on how rising global temperatures are changing the risks faced by Himalayan communities.

The exact factors behind the disaster still need to be assessed, but experts cited in the report link the broader conditions to human-emitted greenhouse gases released during industrialization. Higher temperatures can melt glaciers and permafrost in high-altitude areas, altering terrain and waterways.

Jon Tunnicliffe, an associate professor of environment at the University of Auckland, said, "Climate change can amplify hazards that already exist by altering the thresholds at which one process triggers another."

The Himalayas are often called the world’s “third pole” because they contain the largest store of ice and snow outside the Arctic and Antarctic. A 2026 study found that glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalayas lost 12% of their total area and 9% of their estimated ice reserves between 1990 and 2020.

Researchers have also warned about glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs. These occur when glacial lakes formed by melting ice overflow or their natural dams collapse, unleashing floods and landslides. A University of Kashmir paper published in January 2026 said the risk has grown in the Himalaya-Karakoram region because mountain temperatures are rising faster than the global average. It recorded 388 earlier GLOF events, most during June, July and August, when glacier melt peaks and monsoon winds bring heavy rain.

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Climate change can amplify hazards that already exist by altering the thresholds at which one process triggers another.