In February , a massive avalanchetore through a mountain valley in the northerly Indian body politic of Uttarakhand , causing flash flooding and mudslides . A newstudyhas found that debris broke off a glacier above the valley and decay so quickly that the resulting friction melted ice around it , causing the enormous , deadly undulation of water system .
Dramaticfootageof the disaster show a cloudburst of detritus and water roar down a river and crashing right through a decameter . The disaster depart 200 dead , many of them workers at the two hydropower plant life along the river that collapsed and trapped people inside .
Initial local reports said that a ball of the nearby Nanda Devi Glacier had erupt off and fallen into a nearby river , instigate the avalanche . But there was “ a spate of confusion and a hatful of really bad nomenclature go around ” in the medium in the days after the outpouring , say Dan Shugar , an associate professor of geoscience at the University of Calgary and a joint author of the new study . He and a team of other scientist got together to visualize out what really happened .
A general view shows the remains of a dam along a river in Tapovan of Chamoli district on 30 March 2025 destroyed following the flash flood.Photo: Sajjad Hussain / AFP (Getty Images)
The resulting subject , published this week in Science , used orbiter and seismic data , video footage , and digital molding to piece together what caused the crisis . The two things the scientists place out to solve in this glacial whodunit were , said Shugar , “ what was the drive of the issue , and where did all the water come from ? ”
Usually , surges of water system like those observed in February are associated with what ’s called a icy lake outburst flowage . Those go on when the natural dam at the snout of a glacier that lakes can form behind weakens and eventually fail , institutionalize a wall of water down the valley . But there was no grounds of a frigid lake in the satellite imagery , nor any telling fingerprints on the landscape normally left by a glacial lake outburst flood . Shugar noticed a “ cloud of dust snaking along the valley ” that he saw in initial orbiter images as well as clump of the mountain that apparently disappeared the day before and after the event .
“ We have a landslide that ’s playing some role here , but then where the hell is all the water from ? ” Shugar said .
Shugar and his squad go through all the possible sources of that wafture of water , crossing them off one by one . Using all the usable information , the most likely scenario they bring down on is passably wild . Of the 27 million three-dimensional metre of stuff that stagger down the pot that 24-hour interval , around 80 % was bedrock , while only 20 % was literal ice . That means what fell was that ’s called a hanging glacier .
“ It ’s plastered to the side of a mountain , very exorbitant , almost like a tooth of ice stuck onto the side of the passel , ” Shugar said . hang glaciers collapse is not wholly unusual — at this finicky site , another hanging glacier had collapsed a couple of long time ago — but having this amount of bedrock fall is novel .
“ When the bedrock fall , it disintegrates speedily [ from ] more or less solid fundamental principle down to Lucius Clay subatomic particle extremely quickly , ” Shugar said . “ The frictional vim that ’s grow and unblock is in the manakin of heat . The computing that some of my joint author did show that the ratio of rock and ice here combine with the incredible fall stature that we ascertain was almost incisively enough to thaw all the chalk . ”
In other words , the bedrock fell apart so fast that the oestrus melt the ice , cause a huge gush of water that came thundering along with the wave of debris . When most people these days take heed that a wintry collapse cause a disaster , their brain automatically go to mood modification , but this may be a case of geologic hijinks without absolute proof that warming toy a role . Shugar articulate his team lacked the eccentric of location - specific temperature datum they ’d need to definitively draw the flop to clime change .
“ It ’s really , really hard to link this unambiguously to climate change . We ca n’t do it , ” he said . “ Climate change may have played a role here , but we ca n’t once and for all say ‘ yes ’ or ‘ no . ’ ”
However , the cataclysm does highlight how irregular icy regions can be , especially when humans establish substructure in sensitive areas . The vast end bell and massive wave of destruction is a warning sign for icy regions that are chop-chop change and becoming more unstable .
“ As the climate is changing , we do expect more declamatory hazardous events like this , and when multitude are in the direction , they ’ll become disasters , ” Shugar said . “ Maybe the hang glacier in this example did play a role by introduce more meltwater into the slope , peradventure permafrost diddle a role , we ca n’t really say . But expire forward , we expect more of these sort of disaster . When we ’re think about large - scale infrastructure , whether that ’s a hydroplant in Asia or a pipeline in North America , we need to be thinking about not just what these pile landscapes look like today , but what they ’re going to look like in 20 year , 50 old age . We call for to be think about these landscapes as dynamical . ”
GeologyGlaciologyMontane ecology
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