Climate

The Himalayas Are Under Pressure From Above, Below and Within

The Himalayas are changing in ways that are becoming harder to ignore. As glaciers retreat and permafrost warms, avalanches, landslides and other hazards are becoming more difficult to predict, while growing settlements are putting more people in harm’s way. The recent disaster in Nepal is a reminder that the region needs better warning systems, safer planning and stronger cooperation before the next disaster strikes.

Published

3 weeks ago

September 5, 2026

Vaishnavi V S

Snow-covered Himalayas and rugged slopes, illustrating the region’s growing vulnerability to climate and geological hazards.

The Himalayas are often described as a region increasingly vulnerable to climate change. But the risks facing the world’s youngest major mountain range are more complicated than warming alone. Glaciers are retreating, permafrost is degrading, avalanches remain a persistent threat and settlements are expanding into unstable mountain terrain. At the same time, the geological forces that created the Himalayas have never stopped.

The recent disaster in Nepal has brought these overlapping risks into sharp focus. Speaking during a discussion on the Nepal floods, Hridayesh Joshi, visiting writer at Carbon Copy, described the event as comparable in scale to the 2013 Kedarnath disaster. He pointed to a succession of disasters across the Himalayas, including Kedarnath, Chamoli, Joshimath and Dharali, as evidence of a growing pattern of extreme events.

But the danger is not coming from a single source.

A Mountain Range That is Still Moving

The Himalayas are not a static landscape. They exist along one of the world’s most active continental collision zones, where the Indian Plate continues to converge with the Eurasian Plate at roughly 40–50 mm a year. The Indian Plate is being pushed beneath the Eurasian Plate, generating enormous stresses in the Earth’s crust and making the region highly earthquake-prone.

The same collision that continues to shape and raise the Himalayas is also responsible for much of their seismic instability. The crust is compressed, folded and fractured as the two plates continue to push against each other.

This geological pressure does not mean that every Himalayan landslide or flood is caused by tectonic movement. But it creates a fundamentally unstable mountain environment in which earthquakes, rock failures and other processes can interact.

The Himalayas are also geologically young. In the Nepal disaster discussed by cryosphere specialist Dr Farooq Azam of ICIMOD, the underlying geology was an important part of the story. Much of the affected area contains sedimentary rock formations that are vulnerable to weathering. That creates a landscape where climate-driven changes can amplify existing geological weaknesses.

The Ice Changing The Terrain

Glacier retreat is altering that terrain further. As glaciers recede, they expose rock surfaces that absorb more heat. They can also leave behind loose debris. At elevations of around 5,000–6,000 metres, permafrost—the frozen ground beneath the surface—can also begin to warm and degrade as temperatures rise.

Azam said the Nepal disaster appeared to involve a combination of climatic and geological processes rather than a single trigger. This matters because a warming mountain does not simply lose ice. It can change the stability of the material holding the mountain together.

ICIMOD reported in March 2026 that ice-loss rates across the Hindu Kush Himalaya have doubled since 2000. The region’s glaciers have lost up to 27 metres of ice thickness since 1975. The consequences can extend well beyond the glacier itself. In the Everest region, for example, a 2024 glacial lake outburst flood was triggered after a rock avalanche struck a glacial lake, generating a displacement wave and releasing about 156,000 cubic metres of water. Nepal has experienced more than 90 GLOFs since the early 1920s.

Avalanches are an older warning

Avalanches add another layer to the Himalayan risk. A regional assessment of snow and ice avalanches identified 681 avalanche events between 1972 and 2022, resulting in more than 3,100 deaths across eight countries in High Mountain Asia. India accounted for 952 recorded deaths and Nepal for 508.

The numbers also reveal why simply counting floods does not capture the region’s vulnerability. Avalanches can affect communities, roads, infrastructure and people living far below the high-altitude slopes.

The research found that most recorded avalanches occurred between January and March. It also noted that only 21% of recorded events had a reported impact, meaning the available database does not represent every avalanche that occurs in the region. Avalanches therefore need to be considered alongside landslides, GLOFs and flash floods rather than treated as an isolated winter hazard.

People are moving into the hazard zone

Natural hazards become disasters when people and infrastructure are exposed to them. Joshi pointed to a dramatic increase in population in parts of the Himalayan region. According to the figures he cited, the population in the area has increased by nearly 600% over the past five decades, while the area under habitation is projected to expand substantially by 2030.

Azam similarly highlighted the absence of a comprehensive land-use policy across the Himalayas. In countries such as Nepal and Bhutan, settlements are often concentrated in gorges, where communities can be particularly exposed to sudden floods, landslides and rockfalls.

This creates a dangerous overlap: climate change is altering the physical environment while development is increasing the number of people and assets exposed to it. Hydropower is a particularly important example. The 2021 Chamoli disaster damaged hydropower infrastructure, while more recent Himalayan disasters have again exposed the vulnerability of power projects and other infrastructure to cascading hazards.

The warning system has a blind spot

One of the biggest problems is that there is no single early-warning system capable of detecting every Himalayan hazard. Azam noted that existing systems are largely designed to detect glacial lake outburst floods. But the Nepal event did not originate from a conventional glacial lake. The critical movement occurred beneath the rocky surface, making it much harder to identify in advance.

The solution, he argues, requires a different level of monitoring: high-resolution imagery, systems capable of detecting ground movement, machine-learning models and more weather stations across the mountains.

That is a formidable challenge. Monitoring the Himalayas continuously is difficult because of their enormous size, extreme elevations and limited accessibility. But the alternative is increasingly expensive.

Climate risk is becoming an economic risk

The consequences are no longer limited to vulnerable mountain communities. Ulka Kelkar of WRI India pointed out that businesses and critical infrastructure are also increasingly exposed to climate-related losses. Hydropower projects in India, for example, have already been affected by Himalayan disasters.

Kelkar also argues that insurance cannot be treated as the only financial response. As climate-related disasters become more frequent and geographically widespread, insurers themselves face growing exposure. She proposes regional catastrophe funds that could combine government compensation, international finance, insurance and reinsurance mechanisms.

The same logic applies to adaptation. Private capital is unlikely to finance enough adaptation on its own because many adaptation measures benefit entire communities rather than generating easily recoverable financial returns. Kelkar argues that climate resilience therefore needs to be integrated into government budgets across sectors.

The Himalayas need a regional response

The Himalayas do not follow national borders, but disaster management largely does. Rivers, glaciers, weather systems and mountain ranges connect India, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Pakistan. Yet data-sharing between countries remains inconsistent. Kelkar noted that some existing arrangements operate only during the flood season, even as changing climate patterns create risks throughout the year. Geopolitical tensions can further disrupt these channels.

That makes regional cooperation as important as local preparedness.

The challenge facing the Himalayas is therefore not simply that climate change is producing more extreme weather. It is that warming is interacting with a young, tectonically active and geologically fragile mountain system, while people and infrastructure are moving deeper into that system.

The Himalayas are moving from below. Ice is changing from above. Rock and frozen ground are becoming less stable. Avalanches and landslides can turn those changes into sudden disasters. The question is no longer whether the Himalayas are hazardous. It is whether the systems built around them can adapt quickly enough.

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Vaishnavi V S

Vaishnavi VS is an Editorial Associate at EdPublica. She holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication from Pondicherry University, India. She writes on education, science, environment, innovation, and public policy.

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Climate

KSBB Workshop Examines Biodiversity, Climate and Environmental Reporting

The Kerala State Biodiversity Board’s three-day media capacity strengthening workshop brought journalists and biodiversity experts together to deepen understanding of Kerala’s rich ecosystems, conservation challenges and the role of informed environmental reporting.

Published

7 days ago

September 19, 2026

EP Staff

Chairmsn of KSBB addresses participants during the Kerala State Biodiversity Board’s media capacity strengthening workshop at SAMETI in Kerala.

Participants listen to Chairman of KSBB Dr. N. Anil Kumar during the Kerala State Biodiversity Board’s three-day Media Capacity Strengthening Workshop held at SAMETI, Kerala.

From shrinking paddy fields and an eroding coastline to rising human-wildlife conflict and the spread of invasive species, biodiversity loss in Kerala is increasingly showing up in the places and problems that shape everyday life. Yet much of this remains reported as separate environmental issues.

A three-day workshop by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board (KSBB) sought to bring these connections into sharper focus, bringing journalists together with scientists, biodiversity experts, policymakers and community practitioners to explore how climate and biodiversity stories can be reported with greater scientific depth and local context.

The Media Capacity Strengthening Workshop on Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation, held from September 17 to 19 at the State Agriculture Management and Extension Training Institute (SAMETI), Anayara, Thiruvananthapuram was organised by KSBB in association with the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA). It was aimed primarily at mid-career journalists covering environment, climate, science, development, agriculture, forests, wildlife and communities. Kerala Environment Minister Sunny Joseph attended the inaugural session, along with KSBB leadership, representatives and other invited guests.

Inauguration of KSBB Media Capacity Workshop — Kerala Minister for Electricity and Environment Sunny Joseph inaugurates the Media Capacity Strengthening Workshop organised by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board at SAMETI by lighting the traditional lamp.

The programme focused on six themes: climate resilience and carbon neutrality, agrobiodiversity and food security, marine and coastal ecosystems, urban biodiversity and heat stress, human-wildlife conflict, and invasive alien species. Field engagements were also included to connect scientific and policy discussions with local ecosystems and communities.

Biodiversity as a Climate Story

The workshop examined Kerala’s 98 Ecologically Sensitive Area villages covering 8,711.98 sq km, and the role of forests, wetlands and other ecosystems in reducing climate risks such as floods, landslides and erosion. These ecosystems also function as carbon sinks and support local livelihoods.

Human-wildlife conflict was another major focus. KSBB’s workshop material records 390 human deaths and more than 5,400 injuries from wildlife attacks between 2021 and 2025, with elephants accounting for 111 fatalities. More than ₹41 crore has been disbursed as compensation since 2021.

Agriculture was discussed through the lens of both biodiversity loss and food security. Paddy cultivation in Kerala has declined by more than 75% since the 1970s, from over eight lakh hectares to less than two lakh hectares. The loss of traditional crop varieties and increasing monocropping were discussed as concerns for long-term agricultural and climate resilience.

The marine and coastal sessions examined Kerala’s 600-km coastline, coastal erosion, declining fish catches, blue carbon and community-based fisheries governance. KSBB’s workshop material notes that nearly 45% of Kerala’s beaches have experienced erosion, while fish catch has declined by about 20% over the past decade.

Urban biodiversity was considered through the example of Thiruvananthapuram, where KSBB has developed a City Biodiversity Index based on the Singapore Index framework. The index maps urban trees, wetlands, ecological corridors and biodiversity parks to bring biodiversity considerations into urban planning.

The workshop also examined invasive species including Senna spectabilis, Mikania micrantha, Eichhornia crassipes and Tilapia, and the pressures they place on native biodiversity, agriculture, forests and aquatic ecosystems.

The Role of KSBB

The Kerala State Biodiversity Board is an autonomous body under the State Environment Department, headquartered in Thiruvananthapuram. It functions under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, the Biological Diversity Rules, 2004 and the Kerala State Biological Diversity Rules, 2008. Its mandate includes conserving and protecting the state’s agro, plant and fish diversity.

The Board’s work includes Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs), People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBRs), Biodiversity Heritage Sites, research and awareness programmes, and Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS). These mechanisms connect biodiversity documentation and conservation with local governments and communities.

The workshop was also aligned with the Kerala State Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (K-SBSAP) 2025–2035, which provides a framework for conserving, restoring and sustainably managing the state’s biological and cultural heritage.

By bringing journalists into conversations with scientists, officials and communities, the three-day programme sought to make biodiversity reporting less confined to technical conservation issues and more attentive to the questions that affect everyday life, from food and livelihoods to heat, floods, wildlife conflict and the resilience of Kerala’s ecosystems.

Climate

India tops the world for population exposed to climate-driven risky heat

Climate-driven heat exposed 117 million people in India to a month or more of risky heat between June and August 2026, Climate Central found.

Published

1 week ago

September 17, 2026

EP Staff

A woman shields herself from the summer heat on a busy street in India.. Image credit: Anurag Jamwal/Pexels

Climate-driven heat exposed 117 million people in India to a month or more of risky heat between June and August 2026, according to a Climate Central analysis.

Between June and August this year, 117 million people in India spent a month or more under heat that would have been far less likely without a warming planet. That single number, from a new global analysis by Climate Central, puts India at the top of the world’s list for population exposed to climate-driven risky heat — ahead of China’s 94 million and Indonesia’s 83 million.

The finding sits inside a larger, starker pattern. Worldwide, over 1.5 billion people experienced 30 or more days of risky heat that climate change made significantly more likely this summer. On any single day of the season, more than a quarter of humanity felt a strong climate change signal in the local temperature. Climate Central’s scientists tracked this using their Climate Shift Index (CSI), which measures how much more likely a given day’s warmth was because of climate change, and flagged “risky heat days” as those hotter than 90% of what a place recorded between 1991 and 2020 — the threshold at which heat starts to strain the body.

The Global Climate-Driven Heat Scoreboard

Europe came out the most unusually hot continent on the planet this year, even though it was not the most populous one affected. Eighty-nine per cent of Europeans — nearly nine in ten — spent a month or more under risky heat. France and the Holy See tied for the largest temperature anomaly of any country, running 3.5°C above their historical norm, and seven of the world’s ten most abnormally hot countries were European. Fifty-four countries recorded their hottest June-to-August since 1970, France, Italy and the United Kingdom among them.

Asia, by contrast, carried the largest raw number of people through this heat: 2.8 billion, or 58% of the continent’s population, spent 30 days or more under conditions strongly shaped by climate change. India and Egypt were the two countries where more than 100 million people each crossed that threshold.

Africa’s story shows up less in totals and more in persistence. Six African countries spent at least 95% of the entire three-month period under a strong climate change influence — Rwanda for 91 days, Uganda for 89, Ethiopia for 88. For those populations, the season did not have an unusually hot patch; nearly the whole summer was one.

In North America, four in five people in the United States lived through a month’s worth of risky summer heat, with the average American gaining 23 such days from climate change and the average Canadian gaining 17.

India’s numbers, city by city

Nationally, India ran 0.7°C warmer than its 1991–2020 June-to-August average, and the average Indian experienced climate change’s fingerprint on local temperature for 39 days across the three months — better than a third of the entire season.

City-level data obtained alongside the release shows how unevenly that heat landed.

City	State	Days with strong climate signal	Risky heat days	Risky heat days added by climate change
Mumbai	Maharashtra	86	24	4
Pune	Maharashtra	76	17	17
Surat	Gujarat	74	26	9
Bengaluru	Karnataka	73	0	0
Madurai	Tamil Nadu	70	23	23
Nashik	Maharashtra	67	20	19
Coimbatore	Tamil Nadu	66	0	0
Visakhapatnam	Andhra Pradesh	65	21	9
Tiruchirappalli	Tamil Nadu	64	29	29
Chennai	Tamil Nadu	60	40	30
Vijayawada	Andhra Pradesh	43	18	10
Srinagar	Jammu and Kashmir	28	53	29

Source: Climate Central, June–August 2026 city dataset.

Two different stories run through these columns, and conflating them misses the point.

Mumbai tops the country for sheer duration: 86 of the 92 days in the season carried a strong climate change signal, more than any other Indian city measured. But of Mumbai’s 24 risky heat days, only four were added by climate change — the city runs hot most of the year regardless, so the climate contribution to its worst days is comparatively small. Pune and Nashik, sitting in Mumbai’s own state, show almost the opposite ratio: nearly every risky heat day they had this summer would not have happened without climate change.

Chennai had both the most risky heat days in the country — 40 — and the most added by climate change — 30. That combination makes it the city where the analysis draws the clearest straight line between a hot summer and a warming climate. Tiruchirappalli and Madurai, both in Tamil Nadu, follow the same pattern: every risky heat day counted in each city was one climate change made more likely.

Srinagar is the outlier worth pausing on. A city known for temperate summers recorded 53 risky heat days, more than any other Indian city in the dataset, of which 29 were attributed to climate change — a scale of departure from its own historical baseline far larger than what Mumbai or Delhi saw from theirs.

Where the heat did not arrive

Not every Indian city ran hotter than usual. Jaipur’s seasonal average came in 0.4°C below its 1991–2020 norm, Kota 0.2°C below, and Bhopal 0.1°C below — small numbers, but real ones, in a summer when most of the country and the world trended the other way. Even so, none of the three escaped the climate signal entirely: Jaipur still logged three risky heat days attributable to climate change, Kota three, Bhopal one. The exceptions are a reminder that a warming climate does not raise every thermometer in lockstep, even as it raises the odds almost everywhere.

What the numbers are measuring

The CSI framework Climate Central uses does not ask whether a heatwave happened — it asks how much more likely climate change made it. A CSI level of 2 or higher, the threshold used throughout this analysis, means the day’s warmth was at least twice as likely because of the human-driven build-up of greenhouse gases. That is a probability statement about cause, not a one-off weather reading, which is what allows the same framework to compare Mumbai’s long hot stretch against Chennai’s sharper, more clearly climate-driven spike.

Kristina Dahl, Climate Central’s vice president for science, described the pattern as one where “human-driven warming is pushing communities beyond safe physical limits” — a line written with Europe and North America in mind as much as South Asia. The India numbers suggest the same pressure is arriving unevenly within a single country: some cities absorbing a long, low-grade climate signal across most of the summer, others taking a shorter but far sharper hit concentrated into their worst weeks.

Climate

August 2026 Was the Warmest Month on Record

August 2026 tied July 2023 as the warmest month ever recorded globally. Record ocean temperatures and strengthening El Niño conditions add another dimension to the climate signal, with implications for India’s already uneven monsoon.

Published

2 weeks ago

September 14, 2026

EP Staff

People gather by a waterfront as the sun sets during a period of rising global temperatures

People gather along a waterfront at sunset as the world records increasingly high temperatures. Representational image. Image credit: Samet Çolakoğlu/Pexels

August 2026 tied July 2023 as the warmest month ever recorded globally. But the significance of the latest record lies beyond the temperature figure itself. Heat was building across the oceans, western Europe endured its hottest summer on record, and in India, a strengthening El Niño was adding pressure to an already uneven monsoon.

The global average surface air temperature in August was 16.96°C, 0.85°C above the 1991–2020 average, making it the warmest August in the ERA5 record. Relative to the estimated 1850–1900 pre-industrial average, temperatures were 1.65°C higher. It was the first month to cross 1.5°C since November 2025.

A single month above 1.5°C does not mean the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature threshold has been breached. That threshold is assessed over a much longer period. What the August figure does show is how far short-term temperatures can now move beyond the historical baseline.

The Oceans Are Sending Their Own Signal

The heat was not confined to the atmosphere. Extra-polar oceans recorded their warmest August in the ERA5 dataset, with an average sea surface temperature of 21.07°C. That was also tied with March 2024 for the highest monthly average recorded for any month.

The tropical Pacific was particularly warm as El Niño conditions strengthened. Around Europe, Atlantic and western Mediterranean waters reached record August temperatures, alongside widespread strong or severe marine heatwaves.
The ocean matters here because its warmth can influence atmospheric circulation, rainfall and marine ecosystems. In 2026, its connection to India’s monsoon was particularly relevant.

India Was Watching the Pacific

For India, the global temperature record arrived against a difficult monsoon backdrop. The India Meteorological Department had forecast below-normal rainfall for the 2026 southwest monsoon. By August 2, cumulative rainfall was 12% below the long-period average, with 47% of districts facing deficient or large-deficient rainfall. IMD attributed part of the suppressed monsoon circulation to the development and strengthening of El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific.

The deficits were not uniform. By early August, Kerala and Mahe were 22% below normal, while 16 meteorological subdivisions had rainfall deficits ranging from 20% to 38%.

That does not mean August’s global heat record caused India’s rainfall deficit. The monsoon is shaped by several interacting climate systems, and El Niño is only one of them. But the concurrence is significant: while the tropical Pacific was registering exceptional warmth, India was dealing with a monsoon season that was already running below its seasonal benchmark.

Europe Shows the Cost of Persistent Heat

Western Europe had its warmest summer on record in 2026, surpassing the previous record set in 2003. Heatwaves arrived early and persisted through the season. Heat was accompanied by prolonged dryness. Severe drought conditions were reported in France, the UK, Hungary, Romania and Serbia, while exceptionally low river flows affected the Rhine, Danube, Southern Bug and Dnieper.

The connection is important: extreme heat does not operate in isolation. When high temperatures persist alongside rainfall deficits, their effects can accumulate across agriculture, water systems, ecosystems and wildfire risk.

The Record Is Becoming the Background

August’s warmth is more revealing when viewed alongside the other records surrounding it. The month saw exceptional ocean temperatures and low sea-ice levels, while June–August was jointly the warmest global summer on record, matching 2024.

August was recorded as the hottest month ever recorded in history. — *Source: Climate Change Service*

The challenge in interpreting such records is to look beyond the headline number. A record month does not mean every region experienced record heat. It means the global climate system is operating from a warmer baseline, while regional weather continues to be shaped by monsoons, El Niño, ocean temperatures and other climate patterns. August 2026 was another record. Its importance may ultimately lie in how quickly records such as this stop looking extraordinary.