Why it’s so hard to predict a tragedy like Nepal’s glacier collapse

On August 26, a mountainside near the Nepal-Tibet border collapsed, sending roughly seven billion cubic feet of ice and rock a mile down into a river below. The resulting flood moved as fast as 100 miles per hour, destroyed villages dozens of miles downstream, and has killed more than 1,300 people, with thousands still missing.

Researchers say glacial retreat is destabilizing slopes worldwide in ways that are often impossible to predict, and warming is accelerating the process: the world's glaciers have lost about a fifth of their mass in a century, with more loss projected by 2100. Successful warning systems exist in specific, well-monitored spots, like a glacial basin near Juneau tracked by cameras, lasers, and drone surveys, or Peru's decades-long project draining high-risk lakes.

But the Himalayas hold thousands of glaciers spread across remote terrain, and no regional system currently watches continuously for the kind of sudden rock-and-ice collapse that struck Nepal. Scientists are exploring repurposed earthquake-detection networks, fiber-optic cables that sense fractures in ice, and a newly launched U.S.-India satellite as possible tools, noting that even a few minutes of warning let one school principal evacuate 900 students before a similar flood hit Alaska.

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