Nepal floods expose gaps in warning systems, China data-sharing

KATHMANDU – Victims of Nepal’s catastrophic floods had barely a few minutes’ warning before the waters came rushing through, highlighting gaps in high-altitude weather monitoring and data sharing with neighbouring China.

“People even didn’t get five minutes of lead time,” Dharam Raj Uprety, chief executive of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA), told Bloomberg News in an interview.

“We don’t have weather stations in high mountain areas” because of the “lack of transboundary data-seeding mechanisms” and limited sharing of weather and climate data across national borders. 

That is one of our “biggest challenges”, he said. 

The devastating floods last week that killed at least 800 people and left more than 3,000 missing have exposed a dangerous blind spot in the Himalayas, Uprety said, as warming temperatures destabilise glaciers and mountain slopes faster than the authorities can build systems to monitor them. 

Better forecasting and earlier warnings will not only help save lives but also go some way towards protecting critical infrastructure and limiting disruption to tourism, a vital source of jobs and foreign exchange for the Himalayan economy.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for faster surveys of glaciers and glacial lakes across the Tibetan Plateau to prevent further disasters, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The Communist Party on Aug 28 also ordered stronger monitoring and early-warning systems to improve the authorities’ ability to identify linked disaster risks.

In a statement on social media platform X, the Chinese Embassy in Nepal said China has “always made every effort, within the limits of existing technologies, to conduct monitoring, assessment and analysis and has shared important information with the Nepali side in a timely manner”.

The two nations have maintained “close communication on transboundary disaster management”, it added, without specifying whether China had warned Nepal about the Aug 26 catastrophe. 

The Nepal catastrophe was triggered by a glacial collapse that sent ice, mud, rocks and fast-moving water surging through a valley in the country, wiping out entire settlements in their path.

Videos showed people attempting to flee as walls of water and debris swallowed buildings, tore down bridges and power lines, and washed away trees, boulders and vehicles.

The cost of the damage may reach at least US$5 billion (S$6.37 billion), and reconstruction is likely to be similar to the seven-to-eight-year process of rebuilding after Nepal’s 2015 earthquake, according to Binod Chaudhary, the country’s only billionaire and chairman of the Chaudhary Group conglomerate.

While Nepal has monitoring infrastructure farther downstream, Uprety said large stretches of the high mountains remain poorly observed. 

Installing and maintaining weather stations at extreme altitudes is expensive and difficult, leaving the authorities with limited ability to detect rapidly changing temperatures, permafrost conditions or newly emerging glacial hazards.

Satellite analysis indicates that bedrock beneath a glacier collapsed, triggering the cascading disaster.

Scientists caution that it is too early to attribute the specific collapse directly to climate change, though warming can weaken permafrost that helps bind high-altitude slopes together.

Improving early-warning systems is now a priority, Uprety said.

His team at the NDRRMA – the main body coordinating Nepal’s response to the disaster – had drafted a road map that is expected to be endorsed soon, with a focus on giving communities more time to prepare for disasters, he said.

“Unless we stop making boundaries for climate information”, disasters originating in remote mountain areas will remain difficult to anticipate, he added. BLOOMBERG