After my initial post on the unimaginably violent and deadly flood in the crowded valleys along the Nepal-Tibet (China) border, I reached out to two experts on this kind of catastrophe and just ran a pop-up Sustain What conversation on the still-unfolding situation and science.
You can watch above or on X/@revkin, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. (If you go there, please SHARE the videos with others.)
My guests were:
* Ramesh Bhushal, a Kathmandu-based journalist who’s been reporting for many years on the profound threat posed by ice and mountainside instability in the Himalayas. Please subscribe to his Substack Himalaya Speaks. Read his 2020 article
* Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary who’s a top expert on this hazard and has been super helpful on Bluesky and elsewhere. Follow him on Bluesky to keep track of trustworthy analysis and developments.
My curtain raiser yesterday pointed to lots of high-quality analysis of this awful event and hauntingly similar ice and rockslide disaster in 2021 that Shugar and Bhushal both assessed in depth from their scientific and journalistic vantage points:
Insert, 8/27, 10pm ET - Stunning before-after imagery of the China-Nepal Gyirong Port/Rasuwagadhi border post:
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Read Bhushal’s 2020 story (republished on Substack) for more on the wider landslide threat in Nepal:
Here are several valuable papers to read when you have time:
Glacier changes in Langtang Catchment, Central Nepalese Himalaya from the Little Ice Age (∼1815 CE) to 2023 CE
Gunjan Silwal, Bethan Davies, J. Rachel Carr, Owen King, Sammie Buzzard, Jonathan L. Carrivick, Prashant Baral, Global and Planetary Change, September 2026
With enhanced warming at higher elevations, fragmentation and disconnection will likely become dominant mode of glacier recession in the region, with significant implications for future glacier evolution, meltwater availability, regional hydrology and associated geohazards.
Decoding the Fate of Himalayan Glaciers under Climate Change: Impacts, Challenges, Research Gaps, and Policy Pathways
Rayees Ahmed, Evolving Earth, 1 January, 2025
Mass Movement Hazard and Exposure in the Himalaya
Saket Dubey, Ashim Sattar, Manish Kumar Goyal, Simon Allen, Holger Frey, Umesh K. Haritashya, Christian Huggel, Earth’s Future, 12 September, 2023
Sudden large-volume detachments of low-angle mountain glaciers – more frequent than thought?
Andreas Kääb, Mylène Jacquemart, Et al., The Cryosphere, 12 April, 2021
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Postscript - At one point in the show I played a clip from Instagram that I noted could be fake. This BBC Verify videos uses it as a case study!
Thank you Ranjit Singh, Deanne Wilson, Tom Lefebvre, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.
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