![A road leading to a hydroelectric power plant under construction by Korea South-East Power (KOEN) and Doosan Enerbility in Bidur, Nepal, is blocked by floodwater and debris on Friday (local time). [Yonhap]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/08/29/rcv.YNA.20260829.PYH2026082904250001300_P1.jpg)
Nepal's catastrophic floods have renewed concerns about glacial collapse driven by climate change, with analysts warning that roughly 95,000 glaciers across Asia's high mountain ranges are melting at an accelerating pace.
Dan McGrath, a professor of geosciences at Colorado State University, said Asia's mountain glaciers are losing mass rapidly, according to CNN on Friday (local time).
He said the volume of ice melting each year, if converted to water, would be enough to fill a column as tall as the Empire State Building in New York.
The danger does not end with shrinking glaciers. When meltwater accumulates in high-altitude depressions, it forms vast glacial lakes — and if the ice or rock acting as a natural dam gives way, the resulting outburst flood can devastate communities downstream.
Jason Gulley, a geology professor at the University of South Florida who has studied Nepal's glaciers for more than two decades, warned of this risk in a piece for The New York Times. He said dozens of glacial avalanches, large-scale ice detachments, and combined rock-and-ice collapses have occurred along the China-Nepal border region since the 1990s.
In Nepal's Khumbu region of the Himalayas, a small meltwater pool formed by the retreating Ngozumpa Glacier in 2005 has grown into a lake roughly 228 meters wide over the past two decades.
Experts say the risks will intensify if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced. Projections suggest that up to 75 percent of the glaciers remaining in Asia's high mountain zones could disappear by 2100 if current trends continue. The faster glaciers melt, the greater the likelihood that similar floods will recur across Nepal and the broader Himalayan region.
rim@heraldcorp.com
