The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Main Topic: Nepal Climate Tragedy and Glacial Retreat
Dear Diary. Outside of horrendous Northern Hemisphere heatwaves, perhaps what happened yesterday on the Nepalese/Tibet border was the worst climate crisis related disaster so far for 2026. Scientists have been warning about the glacier collapse in the Himalayas and elsewhere around the globe because of climate change. It’s not apparent that climate change can entirely be blamed for yesterday’s catastrophe, but given how warm global temperatures are becoming, I suspect that the extent of the fall of the glacier would not have happened in a colder climate.
By now you have seen awful videos of flooding caused by the fall of the glacier outcropping. The New York Times is trying to keep up with the death count from the catastrophe. Here is their latest writeup, which I invite you to frequent the next few days as damage and number of deaths are assessed:
Landslide Along With Glacial Collapse Likely Set Off Nepal Flooding, Scientists Say
New satellite imagery added to scientists’ understanding of the events that precipitated the deadly flooding in Nepal and Tibet.
Satellite images show a glacier before (top) and after it collapsed in Nepal. Its collapse, according to scientists, may have set off deadly flash flooding.Credit…European Union/Copernicus Sentinel-2; USGS/Landsat 9
By Leo SandsLaura Chung and Robin George Andrews
Aug. 27, 2026
Scientists piecing together satellite imagery and seismological data said on Thursday that a high-altitude landslide coinciding with a glacial collapse likely caused the deadly flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet.
Glaciologists and geologists had already determined that an enormous chunk of a glacier had snapped off on Wednesday morning. On Thursday, a group of scientists analyzing the events preceding the flooding said that newly available images, captured at a time with less cloud cover, show that an enormous chunk of the mountainous bedrock beneath that glacier had also given way.
“The rock that the glacier was sitting on collapsed,” said Kristen Cook, a geomorphologist at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France. The combined force of the collapse sent millions of metric tons of rock and ice into the valley below, she added.
“It was a much larger collapse than we were initially able to see in the satellite imagery,” she said.
The deluge of rock and ice, which pulverized into mud and water as it surged down the mountainside, was so powerful that the U.S. Geological Survey registered the landslide as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event.
That this event registered as an earthquake is not unusual. Whenever a huge amount of energy is transferred to the Earth’s crust — from an earthquake, an asteroid strike, or even a crowd of people jumping up and down at a concert — seismic waves are produced, which are detected by seismometers all over the planet.
This debris flow would have released the same amount of energy as 1,000 tons of TNT. “Perhaps more importantly than energy, we can directly compute the mass from our force estimate. This comes out as nearly 400 million metric tons,” said Stephen Hicks, a seismologist at University College London.
To put it another way, this landslide was comparable to 1,000 Empire State Buildings crashing down into the river valley simultaneously.
Warming temperatures caused by climate change may have destabilized the rock face, scientists said, but they added that it was too early to determine a precise cause.
The landslide and glacial collapse took place on the north face of Langtang Lirung, a Nepalese mountain near the border with Tibet, at an elevation of around 17,000 feet, according to the scientists.
Langtang Lirung peak, part of the Langtang Himal mountain in Nepal, in 2022.Credit…Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto, via Reuters
“Essentially, a chunk of the mountainside collapsed,” said Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada who is part of the group.
Scientists are slowly building a more detailed picture of the chain of events that led to Wednesday’s flooding. Torrents swept through the Himalayan valleys between Nepal and the Tibet region of China, devastating villages, killing hundreds and leaving more than 1,000 people missing.
According to Dr. Cook, the flow of rock and ice incorporated water and river sediment as it tumbled downstream along a network of rivers and tributaries, reaching dozens of miles from the site of the original landslide.
While the new imagery added to scientists’ understanding of the cause of the disaster, many questions remained. Among them is how much rock and ice was released by the landslide, and why the volumes of floodwater were so huge.
Dibas Shrestha, an expert in hydrology and meteorology at Tribhuvan University in Nepal, said in an email that he “couldn’t even imagine the volume of ice-water-rock mix flow that we have witnessed downstream.” Videos taken at the Gyirong border crossing between China and Nepal show a wall of water overcoming the area.
One possibility, scientists say, is that the landslide created upstream river dams that eventually burst, unleashing an enormous gusher of water.
Mohan Bahadur Chand, a Himalayan glaciologist and assistant professor at Kathmandu University, said that one initial hypothesis is that accumulated debris temporarily blocked the Lhende River, leading to a catastrophic overflow.
As higher-resolution satellite imagery becomes available in the coming days, Dr. Chand said it could become clearer how much of the glacier had broken off and what other sediment had been swept into the water. From there, it could be possible to calculate the volume of water that had swept across the region, he said.
Judson Jones contributed reporting.
Leo Sands is a correspondent for the Breaking News Hub of The New York Times based in London.
Laura Chung is a Sydney-based reporter and researcher for The Times, covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Thursday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)