Climate change helped trigger Nepal-Tibet disaster, study finds

Image source, NurPhoto via Getty Images Image caption, Thousands of people are dead or missing after massive floods and landslides tore through the Nepal-Tibet border last month

A study has found that climate change had contributed to the glacier collapse that unleashed devastating floods on the Nepal-Tibet border.

More than 1,400 people were killed and thousands are missing following the deluge on 26 August.

There was "absolutely no doubt that human-induced climate change played a role here in the preconditioning of the disaster", said Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London and one of the study's authors.

The World Weather Attribution study, published on Thursday, said the disaster was the result of a "compound event" caused by rising temperatures, thinning glaciers, thawing permafrost and pre-existing geological weaknesses.