by Daniel Brouse

The permafrost tipping point—and its feedbacks with other tipping points—is the most interesting part to me. Permafrost was kind of the glue holding everything together… until 1.5°C. Then the coupled feedbacks start feeding each other, and the whole system begins to unravel. And the mountains crumble to the sea… see? 😉

The Energy That Moves Mountains

• The Mountains Crumble to the Sea
• Nepal–Tibet: Glacier Loss, Permafrost Collapse, Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, Flash Floods, Mudslides and Avalanches
• The Nepal-Tibet Domino Effect: A Continuous Cascade of Failures
• Nepal-Tibet: Energy Like Wet Concrete
• Nepal-Tibet: Fluidization Physics
• Observe Tipping Points Topple → Climate Change Avalanche
• The Physics of When the Earth Starts Moving

The Backyard Experiments: Hydroclimatic Whiplash, Soil Degradation, Insect Decline, and Ecosystem Collapse

By Daniel Brouse

Have You Looked Out Your Back Door for Climate Change?

It’s there.

I noticed an interesting phenomenon: an increase in dead earthworms and millipedes in the swimming pool.

It turns out this is connected to opposite extremes of a coupled feedback loop.

Too wet. Then too dry. Then too wet. Then too dry.

That is hydroclimatic whiplash, and it was destroying the ecosystem that is my backyard.

What initially appeared to be two unrelated observations—earthworms at the bottom of the swimming pool after extreme rainfall and millipedes at the bottom during periods of intense drying—began to look like two sides of the same climate-energy problem: too much water, followed by too little.

The backyard was being hit from both directions.

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TOO MUCH WATER

Earthworms commonly move toward the soil surface when soils become saturated. Heavy rainfall can produce much larger and more rapid changes in soil moisture and oxygen availability than gentle, prolonged rainfall.

The swimming pool then becomes an accidental trap.

The basic sequence is remarkably simple:

[Extreme Rainfall] → [Soil Saturation + Oxygen Stress] → [Surface Migration] → [Accidental Pool Entry]

Once an earthworm reaches the pool deck, there is little it can do to escape the water.

What begins as a survival response to changing soil conditions can therefore end with a dead worm in the pool.

But the earthworms were only the visible part of a much larger biological response occurring beneath the surface.

See: West Chester, Pennsylvania: Hydroclimatic Whiplash and Urban Flooding — Unfortunately, Worms Can’t Swim

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TOO LITTLE WATER

Millipedes are fundamentally creatures of moist microhabitats.

They live in leaf litter, soil, rotting wood, and other environments where humidity remains relatively high. Their survival depends on maintaining water balance in an environment that is normally protected from direct solar heating and rapid atmospheric drying.

When extreme evaporative demand suddenly arrives, that microclimate can collapse.

The same atmospheric conditions that pull extraordinary amounts of water from a swimming pool can also pull moisture from the soil and leaf litter where millipedes live.

Extreme evaporative demand amplifies evapotranspiration, a core component of Earth’s climate system that links soil, vegetation, and atmosphere through continuous water and energy exchange.

The resulting feedback can be expressed as:

[Increased Evaporative Demand] → [Soil & Litter Drying] → [Vegetation Stress] → [Habitat Loss] → [Insect & Soil-Organism Decline]

And once vegetation begins to disappear, another feedback can emerge:

[Reduced Vegetation] → [Reduced Transpiration] → [Reduced Atmospheric Moisture Recycling] → [Reduced Rainfall] → [Increased Drought] → [Further Vegetation & Insect Loss]

The landscape begins losing the biological machinery that helped regulate its own water cycle.

See: West Chester, Pennsylvania: Hydroclimatic Whiplash and Flash Droughts — Unfortunately, Millipedes Can’t Swim

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THE CLIMATE ENERGY OF HYDROCLIMATIC WHIPLASH

Soil Worth Dirt

Soil is alive.

Hydroclimatic whiplash kills it.

Extreme rainfall can cause erosion, nutrient loss, oxygen stress, physical disruption, and mortality among soil organisms.

Extreme drying can produce an entirely different set of stresses: dehydration, vegetation loss, declining microbial activity, loss of organic matter, and collapse of moisture-dependent habitat.

This was evident across the soil layers in my backyard:

Epigeic — Surface Dwellers

Endogeic — Shallow Soil Dwellers

Anecic — Deep Burrowers

Both too much rain and not enough rain resulted in mass casualties within the same week—and on multiple occasions during a single season.

That is not simply a wet-dry cycle.

It is an ecological stress cycle.

The soil receives an extreme pulse of water, followed by extreme atmospheric demand for water.

Then the process repeats.

The organisms living in the soil are caught between extremes.

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WHEN SOIL DIES

When soil dies, it undergoes desertification.

Desertification is the transformation of productive, biologically functioning land into degraded land with declining capacity to support vegetation and ecosystem processes.

As soil loses organic matter, biological activity, structure, and water-holding capacity, it becomes increasingly vulnerable to erosion and drying.

The feedback is vicious:

[Extreme Rainfall] → [Erosion & Soil-Organism Loss] → [Vegetation Decline] → [Less Soil Protection] → [More Erosion]

At the opposite extreme:

[Extreme Heat & Evaporative Demand] → [Soil Drying] → [Vegetation Stress] → [Vegetation Loss] → [Reduced Soil Organic Matter] → [Reduced Water Retention] → [Greater Drying]

The two pathways eventually converge.

The soil loses its ability to hold water.

When soil can no longer retain water effectively, rainfall increasingly becomes runoff rather than stored moisture. When the atmosphere demands water, there is less moisture available to sustain vegetation. The result is a landscape increasingly vulnerable to both flooding and drought.

That is the climate paradox of degraded soil:

Too much water can destroy its structure.

Too little water can destroy its biology.

Repeatedly alternating between the two can destroy its resilience.

As this process advances, the land can cross from a productive biological system into a degraded one.

That is desertification.

And once the soil’s biological engine begins to fail, its capacity to sequester and store carbon declines as well.

The climate feedback then becomes even more serious:

[Soil Degradation] → [Reduced Carbon Storage] → [More Atmospheric CO2] → [Additional Warming] → [Greater Evaporative Demand] → [More Soil Degradation]

Soil therefore acts as both a carbon reservoir and a climate buffer.

Destroy the soil, and you weaken both.

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BACKYARD PHYSICS

The backyard observations can be connected to fundamental physical relationships governing Earth’s water and energy cycles.

Two of the most important are the Clausius–Clapeyron relationship and the Penman combination equation.

The Clausius–Clapeyron relationship describes how saturation vapor pressure changes with temperature.

The Penman combination equation describes how available surface energy and atmospheric drying conditions combine to determine evaporative demand.

Together, they help explain the physics behind extreme evaporation.

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THE CLAUSIUS–CLAPEYRON RELATIONSHIP

The Clausius–Clapeyron relationship describes the temperature dependence of saturation vapor pressure.

In differential form:

d(e_s)/dT = (L_v × e_s) / (R_v × T²)

where:

• e_s = saturation vapor pressure
• T = absolute temperature in kelvins
• L_v = latent heat of vaporization
• R_v = specific gas constant for water vapor

Dividing both sides by e_s gives:

(1/e_s) × (d(e_s)/dT) = L_v / (R_v × T²)

Under typical near-surface atmospheric temperatures, this relationship corresponds approximately to a 7% increase in saturation vapor pressure per 1°C of warming.

In other words, a warmer atmosphere has a substantially greater capacity to contain water vapor before reaching saturation.

That increased capacity matters because it can increase the atmospheric demand for evaporation when water is available.

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EXTREME EVAPORATION

For an open water surface such as a swimming pool, evaporation depends on several interacting variables.

A useful framework is the Penman combination equation, which incorporates both the available energy at the surface and aerodynamic drying.

One common form is:

λE = [Δ(R_n − G) + ρ_a × c_p × (e_s − e_a) / r_a] / (Δ + γ)

where:

• λE = latent heat flux associated with evaporation
• Δ = slope of the saturation vapor pressure curve
• R_n = net radiation
• G = ground or substrate heat flux
• ρ_a = air density
• c_p = specific heat capacity of air
• e_s = saturation vapor pressure
• e_a = actual vapor pressure
• r_a = aerodynamic resistance
• γ = psychrometric constant

The equation contains two major physical components.

1. Available Energy

The term:

Δ(R_n − G)

represents the energy available at the surface to drive evaporation.

Greater available energy generally means greater potential evaporation when sufficient water is available.

2. Aerodynamic Drying

The term:

ρ_a × c_p × (e_s − e_a) / r_a

represents the aerodynamic component.

The difference:

e_s − e_a

is the vapor pressure deficit (VPD).

A larger VPD means the atmosphere is farther from saturation and therefore has greater capacity to remove water from a wet surface.

Wind increases turbulent exchange and continually replaces moist air near the evaporating surface with drier air.

The result can be extreme evaporation.

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WHERE THE PHYSICS MEETS THE BACKYARD

The connection between temperature, atmospheric moisture, and evaporation can be represented as:

[Higher Temperature] → [Higher Saturation Vapor Pressure] → [Potentially Higher VPD] → [Greater Atmospheric Drying Demand]

At the same time:

[Higher Available Energy] + [Greater Atmospheric Drying Demand] → [Greater Potential Evaporation]

A swimming pool has an abundant supply of water.

So when atmospheric evaporative demand increases, the water can continue evaporating.

Soil is different.

Once soil moisture becomes limited, evaporation can become water-limited, even while atmospheric evaporative demand remains extremely high.

This creates a critical climate paradox:

The atmosphere can become increasingly thirsty while the landscape becomes increasingly dry.

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THE BACKYARD AS A CLIMATE SENSOR

The dead earthworms and millipedes in my swimming pool are not, by themselves, proof of climate change.

They are observations of biological responses to environmental conditions.

But observations become scientifically meaningful when they are connected to measurable physical mechanisms.

The backyard contains a miniature version of the larger climate system:

RAIN

↓

SOIL SATURATION

↓

BIOLOGICAL RESPONSE

↓

SURFACE WATER

↓

SOLAR ENERGY

↓

EVAPORATION

↓

ATMOSPHERIC MOISTURE

↓

SOIL DRYING

↓

VEGETATION STRESS

↓

HABITAT LOSS

↓

ECOSYSTEM STRESS

Then the rain comes again.

And the cycle starts over.

---

HYDROCLIMATIC WHIPLASH

The climate problem is not simply that the world is becoming warmer.

It is that warming can alter the intensity, timing, and interaction of water-cycle extremes.

A landscape can experience:

Extreme Rain → Saturation → Flooding → Erosion

followed by:

Extreme Heat → High VPD → Evaporative Loss → Drought

followed again by:

Extreme Rain → Runoff → Erosion → Soil Disruption

followed again by:

Extreme Drying → Vegetation Stress → Habitat Loss

The ecological damage can accumulate even when each individual event is temporary.

The ecosystem does not necessarily get enough time to recover before the next extreme arrives.

That is what makes hydroclimatic whiplash so dangerous.

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FROM THE SWIMMING POOL TO THE PLANET

Though a swimming pool is not a climate model, it is an excellent reminder that climate physics is not abstract.

It operates in the backyard.

It operates in the soil.

It operates in the leaf litter.

It operates in every evaporating puddle.

It operates in every plant releasing water vapor through transpiration.

And it operates in every organism struggling to maintain its water balance as environmental conditions swing between extremes.

The physics begins with energy.

Solar energy warms surfaces.

That energy can become latent heat as water changes phase.

Temperature affects saturation vapor pressure.

Atmospheric dryness creates evaporative demand.

Water availability determines whether that demand can actually be met.

And biological systems respond to the resulting changes in moisture, temperature, oxygen, habitat, and food availability.

That is climate energy hitting the backyard.

Sometimes it arrives as too much water.

Sometimes it arrives as too little.

And sometimes the greatest damage comes from the violent transition between the two.

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THE LESSON FROM THE POOL

The next time you find an earthworm or millipede in the swimming pool, don’t just ask:

“How did it get here?”

Ask:

“What was happening to the ecosystem before it got here?”

Because sometimes the most visible evidence of a changing climate isn’t in a satellite image or a global temperature graph.

Sometimes it is floating in the swimming pool.

And sometimes the smallest casualties are telling us something much larger:

The climate system is not merely changing the temperature.

It is changing the movement of water.

And when water extremes begin arriving faster than ecosystems can recover, the consequences can reach all the way down to the soil beneath our feet.

by Daniel Brouse

Why are millipedes showing up dead at the bottom of the swimming pool?

The answer may seem strange at first: extreme weather is changing the moisture dynamics of the tiny ecosystem around your home.

Earlier this summer, I wrote about earthworms turning up dead in the pool. Their appearance followed intense rainfall after several dry days—a small example of climate-change-driven hydroclimatic whiplash.

After prolonged dryness, intense rainfall can rapidly saturate the soil and displace oxygen from the pore spaces. Earthworms respond by moving toward the surface, where oxygen is more readily available. But when the surface is saturated, they can still be trapped in an inhospitable environment. As they search for better conditions, some ultimately end up in the swimming pool.

See: Urban Flooding — Unfortunately, Worms Can’t Swim

Millipedes are responding to the opposite extreme.

They are showing up after several days without rain, particularly during periods of unusually rapid evaporation. In my backyard, the microclimate can swing from flash rainfall to flash drought within a day or two.

And those swings matter.

When a Swimming Pool Becomes an Evaporation Gauge

Under ordinary summer conditions, a pool might lose roughly 0.25 to 0.5 inches of water per day, depending on temperature, humidity, wind, solar radiation, pool temperature, and other factors.

During the recent extreme conditions, however, evaporation appeared to approach an inch per day—roughly two to four times a typical baseline.

That isn’t simply a story about hotter temperatures.

It is a story about energy and atmospheric demand for water.

The Clausius-Clapeyron relationship is a fundamental principle of thermodynamics. As temperature rises, the atmosphere’s saturation vapor pressure increases by roughly 7% per °C. A warmer atmosphere can therefore support substantially more water vapor.

But Clausius-Clapeyron alone does not explain a localized three- or four-fold increase in evaporation.

The missing piece is the interaction between temperature and the atmosphere’s ability to remove water from the surface.

The Physics of Extreme Evaporation

For an open water surface, evaporation depends on several interacting variables. A useful framework is the Penman combination equation, which incorporates both the available energy at the surface and aerodynamic drying:$$E = \frac{\Delta(R_n-G)+\gamma f(u)(e_s-e_a)} {\Delta+\gamma}$$

The important point is that evaporation is not controlled by temperature alone.

Three major factors can amplify water loss:

1. Vapor Pressure Deficit

The difference between the saturation vapor pressure at the water surface and the actual vapor pressure of the surrounding air is the vapor pressure deficit (VPD):$$VPD=e_s-e_a$$

When hot, dry air moves over a pool, VPD can become very large.

The water surface is effectively surrounded by air with a strong capacity to accept additional water vapor.

That creates a powerful evaporative gradient.

2. Wind

The aerodynamic term, $f(u)$, represents the influence of wind.

Immediately above a pool is a thin boundary layer of relatively humid air. Wind continually removes that moist layer and replaces it with drier air.

Think of it as nature’s hair dryer.

The stronger the atmospheric mixing, the more efficiently water vapor is transported away from the surface.

3. Solar Radiation

Net radiation, $R_n$, supplies energy to the system.

Strong, cloudless sunlight transfers energy into the pool and surrounding surfaces. As the water warms, its saturation vapor pressure rises, increasing the potential for evaporation.

The result is not simply:

hotter = more evaporation.

It is:

heat + solar energy + dry air + wind = dramatically increased evaporative demand.

Visualizing the Whiplash Surge

During a normal summer week, these variables remain within a relatively familiar range.

But during hydroclimatic whiplash, they can change rapidly.

A sequence might look like this:

Dry period → intense rainfall → saturated soil → rapid drying → heat → low humidity → high VPD → wind → extreme evaporation

The same landscape can therefore move from waterlogged to severely moisture-stressed within days.

That is the physical signature of hydroclimatic whiplash.

The swimming pool becomes an unintended local measuring device for that atmospheric forcing.

The Pool as a Heat Sink

There is another interesting component: the pool’s thermal mass.

Water has a high heat capacity. After cool nights, the pool can retain substantial stored thermal energy. When brutally hot, dry air moves over that relatively warm water, the temperature and vapor-pressure gradients can become especially favorable for evaporation.

The atmosphere is essentially pulling moisture out of the pool while the pool supplies some of the energy required to make that phase change possible.

That is why an isolated observation of “one inch of evaporation” should not automatically be interpreted as a simple temperature effect.

It is the result of an energy-balance and mass-transfer process—and these are precisely the weather conditions we have been experiencing.

And that brings us back to the millipedes.

Evapotranspiration and the Penman Combination Equation

In hydrology and climate science, evapotranspiration (ET) is the standard term for the combined movement of water from the land surface into the atmosphere through soil evaporation and plant transpiration.

The topsoil experiences a process similar to what happens at the surface of a swimming pool. When the atmosphere becomes hot, dry, and windy, the vapor pressure deficit (VPD) increases, strengthening the gradient that drives water from the surface into the atmosphere:

Low humidity → high VPD → wind → extreme evaporation

But the process does not stop at the surface. Transpiration draws water from deeper in the soil through plant roots and transports it upward through the plant, where it exits as water vapor through microscopic pores called stomata.

During periods of extreme heat and atmospheric dryness, this combined evaporative demand can rapidly deplete available soil moisture, increasing water stress on vegetation and accelerating the drying of the entire soil–plant system.

The result is a powerful feedback:

Heat + dry air → higher VPD → increased evapotranspiration → declining soil moisture → greater vegetation stress

See: Transpiration, Atmospheric Moisture Recycling, and Climate-Driven Heat Stress in a Warming World 

The Millipede Problem

Millipedes are fundamentally creatures of moist microhabitats.

They live in leaf litter, soil, rotting wood, and other environments where humidity remains relatively high. Their survival depends on maintaining water balance in an environment that is usually protected from direct solar heating and rapid atmospheric drying.

When extreme evaporative demand suddenly arrives, that microclimate can collapse.

The same atmospheric conditions that pull an extraordinary amount of water from a swimming pool can also pull moisture from the soil and leaf litter where millipedes live.

1. The Desiccation Trap

Millipedes are vulnerable to water loss because their bodies are not as well protected against desiccation as those of many terrestrial arthropods.

During periods of high VPD, water is lost more rapidly to the surrounding atmosphere.

The drier the air becomes, the stronger the gradient driving water out of the animal.

For a moisture-dependent organism, that can quickly become a physiological crisis.

2. Microclimate Collapse

Millipedes normally exploit the humid boundary layer beneath leaves, moss, vegetation, and decaying organic material. That tiny environment can be dramatically different from the air temperature and humidity measured a few feet above the ground. But extreme evaporation changes that.

As soil and vegetation dry, the humid refuge beneath the vegetation becomes progressively less effective. The millipedes are then faced with a choice:

Stay and desiccate—or move.

So they move. They may retreat deeper into soil, beneath logs, or into other remaining pockets of moisture. But when those refuges become unsuitable, some millipedes emerge and begin searching for a new moist environment.

3. Their Food Supply Dries Out

Millipedes are primarily detritivores. They feed on decaying plant material, leaf litter, fungi, and other organic matter.

That food web also depends on moisture.

When leaf litter becomes severely dried out, the physical and biological processes that make organic material available to decomposers and detritivores can be disrupted.

The result is a double problem:

The habitat is drying out—and the food system is changing with it.

4. The March Begins

This is where the swimming pool becomes relevant. A millipede doesn’t understand what a swimming pool is. It responds to its immediate environment. When its normal habitat becomes dangerously dry, it searches for a more favorable moisture environment.

A swimming pool represents an enormous source of water compared with the surrounding dry landscape.

Unfortunately for the millipede, a pool is a moisture sink but not a safe habitat. Once it reaches the water, the outcome can be fatal.

Millipedes are not strong swimmers. They can become trapped at the water’s edge, fall into the pool, and drown.

What appears to be a bizarre invasion of millipedes may therefore be the final stage of a much larger environmental chain.

Climate Energy Has a Marching Order

The important point isn’t that climate change “created” millipedes or directly ordered them into the swimming pool.

It is that changes in atmospheric energy and moisture transport can reorganize the physical environment in which they live.

The sequence looks something like this:

Heat → higher atmospheric moisture demand → higher VPD → increased evaporation → drying vegetation and soil → microclimate collapse → millipede migration → swimming pool

At the other extreme:

Dry period → intense rainfall → saturated soil → reduced pore-space oxygen → earthworm emergence → swimming pool

Same backyard.

Different extreme.

Opposite moisture conditions.

And both can produce the same strange result:

dead creatures at the bottom of the pool.

That is what makes hydroclimatic whiplash so interesting. Climate change isn’t always experienced as a dramatic hurricane, wildfire, or flood. Sometimes it arrives as something much smaller.

Sometimes it is measured in inches of water disappearing from your swimming pool.

And sometimes, if you pay attention, the millipedes get their marching orders.

by Daniel Brouse

The Climate Physics Behind the Nepal-Tibet Collapse

“Warming of Nepal’s glaciers has been a continuous process over this timescale and is not something that has only occurred recently due to human activity.”

This statement is misleading and, as a description of the modern climate system, demonstrably wrong.

Yes, Himalayan glaciers have always experienced natural fluctuations. Glaciers advance and retreat. Temperatures and precipitation have varied throughout Earth’s history. But that fact does not explain away the rapid warming and cryospheric changes occurring today, nor does it establish that recent warming is natural.

The relevant question is not whether Nepal’s glaciers have ever warmed before. The question is whether the recent warming that is altering the glaciers, permafrost, precipitation, and meltwater system is being driven by human greenhouse-gas emissions. The evidence for the human contribution to modern global warming is overwhelming.

A primary climate-related mechanism relevant to an event like this is the intensification of the water cycle. For every 1°C of warming, the atmosphere can hold approximately 7% more water vapor, increasing the potential for heavier precipitation when that moisture is released. This is a consequence of the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, not a theory about this particular glacier.

That matters because water is not simply something that falls from the sky and runs downhill. In a glacierized mountain system, water can infiltrate snow and ice, penetrate fractures, reach the glacier bed, enter surrounding sediment and rock, and increase water pressure. Under the right conditions, that can reduce friction and increase the mobility of ice and unstable material.

The area around the collapse has also experienced rainfall and substantial meltwater and basal-water flow. Those observations are important because they provide a plausible physical pathway connecting atmospheric warming and precipitation changes to the mechanical stability of the glacier and surrounding terrain. However, demonstrating that this particular collapse was caused by human climate change requires event-specific observations and attribution analysis; the physics establishes the mechanism, not by itself the precise contribution of each factor.

Warming also contributes to glacier mass loss and can thaw permafrost and permanently or seasonally frozen ground that helps stabilize steep mountain terrain. These processes can weaken the physical structure of the landscape while increasing the amount of liquid water moving through it.

So the connection to human activity isn’t simply, “It got warmer, therefore the glacier collapsed.” The physics is much more interesting—and much more complicated.

Human greenhouse-gas emissions have increased atmospheric and surface temperatures. That warming affects the cryosphere and hydrological cycle. More heat can increase ice melt. A warmer atmosphere can carry more moisture. Precipitation can deliver additional water to an already destabilized system. Meltwater can infiltrate ice and rock, increase water pressure, and alter friction. Thawing frozen ground can reduce slope stability.

Those changes can help load the system toward failure.

The collapse itself is a gravitational event. Gravity supplies the immediate energy that drives the mass downward. The climate connection lies in how human-caused warming can alter the physical conditions under which that gravitational energy is released.

And once the mass begins moving, another fascinating piece of physics takes over: water can actually make a moving granular system more mobile.

We generally think of water as something that slows things down. But water under pressure between particles can reduce the friction holding those particles together.

In simplified form:

σ′ = σ − u

where σ′ is effective stress, σ is total stress, and u is pore-water pressure.

As pore-water pressure rises, effective stress falls. As effective stress falls, frictional resistance can decrease. That can make a slope or debris mass substantially more mobile.

This is one reason a wet, saturated mass can behave so differently from the dry rock, soil, and ice from which it originated. The material does not literally turn into water. Instead, water becomes part of a coupled solid-fluid system in which fluid pressure can support and mobilize solid particles.

Under sufficiently energetic and saturated conditions, a granular mass can become partially fluidized, allowing it to flow and transport enormous quantities of additional material.

That is the “wet concrete” effect.

And it provides an important way to understand the collapse: climate change does not need to physically push the mountain downhill. It can alter the water, ice, temperature, and ground conditions that help determine when a mountain becomes capable of moving.

Then gravity does the rest.

by Daniel Brouse

Introduction

A glacial collapse is a powerful example of how climate change can turn one tipping point into a cascading chain of failures—the domino effect.

The first domino is literal: an enormous mass of ice, rock, snow, and sediment breaks loose and cascades down the mountainside in a massive avalanche or landslide. But the collapse does not end when the material reaches the valley floor. It can trigger the next domino: entrainment flooding.

As floodwater picks up soil, sediment, rocks, ice, trees, and other debris, it can transform into an extraordinarily dense, wet, cement-like slurry. This is no longer simply water flowing downstream. It is a moving mass with enormous mass, density, and velocity—and therefore enormous destructive energy.

As this debris-laden flow accelerates through steep mountain valleys, it can sweep away bridges, roads, buildings, power infrastructure, and entire sections of communities. But the dominoes still do not stop.

The flood can undermine riverbanks, destabilize slopes, overwhelm reservoirs, damage hydropower facilities, and compromise other natural or engineered barriers—including dams and glacial lakes. A single upstream failure can therefore create the conditions for multiple downstream failures.

And then comes the most dangerous part: the cascade can reinforce the very climate and physical feedbacks that made the system unstable in the first place.

The initial collapse can expose dark rock and soil, reducing surface albedo and increasing heat absorption. It can expose and destabilize permafrost. Meltwater and rainfall can infiltrate fractures and sediments, reducing friction and increasing lubrication. Additional water can enlarge glacial lakes and increase pressure against unstable moraine dams. Continued warming can accelerate glacier retreat and meltwater production, while changing precipitation patterns and more intense rainfall can add still more water and mechanical stress to an already destabilized landscape.

The chain becomes:

Glacier retreat → increased meltwater → glacial-lake expansion → permafrost thaw → ice and rock destabilization → landslide or glacial collapse → entrainment flooding → infrastructure failure → secondary lake and dam failures → additional flooding → further destabilization.

The energy does not simply disappear when the first domino falls.

It is transferred from ice to rock, from rock to water, from water to sediment, and from the moving flood into everything in its path.

This is the critical distinction between viewing climate change as a gradual change in temperature and understanding it as a dynamic physical system capable of cascading failures.

The question is no longer simply how much the planet is warming.

The question is:

How much energy is being loaded into the system—and what happens when the dominoes start falling?

A Continuous Cascade of Failures: The Nepal-Tibet Domino Effect

A mountain disaster rarely ends where it begins.

On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, a major glacial collapse in the Nepal–Tibet border region triggered devastating flash flooding. By Friday, August 28, the emergency had escalated again: an enormous new barrier lake, created when landslide debris choked a river confluence, was overflowing continuously under ongoing heavy rain.

The immediate danger is obvious—the potential failure of the unstable debris dam and the sudden release of millions of cubic meters of water downstream.

But the larger story is the cascade.

When ice collapses, rock moves. When rock blocks a river, water accumulates. When water overtops the blockage, the barrier can erode. When the barrier fails, a flood carries enormous quantities of sediment and boulders downstream. That surge can destabilize other slopes, erode riverbanks, damage infrastructure, and potentially trigger additional lake or moraine failures.

One failure can therefore become the next failure.

This is the domino effect of climate energy.

The First Domino: Ice, Rock, Water and Gravity

The massive debris generated by the initial landslide has choked the confluence of the Chhochen Khola and Purepu Tsangpo rivers on the Tibetan side, trapping an estimated 2.5 million cubic meters of water.

Ongoing heavy rainfall is adding even more water to an already unstable system.

The resulting barrier lake is not a conventional engineered dam. It is a temporary structure composed of landslide debris—rock, sediment, ice and soil—whose stability can change rapidly as water rises and begins eroding the barrier.

If the barrier breaches, the result would not simply be a larger river.

It could be a rapidly moving mixture of water, mud, sediment, boulders and debris, capable of scouring river channels, destroying bridges and roads, damaging hydropower facilities, and destabilizing additional natural barriers downstream.

The first domino would have fallen.

The Second Domino: A Network of Vulnerable Glacial Lakes

The danger does not end with the newly formed barrier lake.

The high mountains of the Nepal–Tibet region contain numerous glacial lakes held back by natural moraine and debris dams. Some have expanded dramatically as glaciers retreat and meltwater accumulates.

This creates a dangerous characteristic of mountain watersheds:

The hazards are connected.

A flood originating high in a watershed can travel rapidly downstream, carrying enough water and sediment to erode banks, undercut slopes, destabilize moraines, and overwhelm infrastructure.

That does not mean every lake will fail in sequence. It means that the failure of one component can increase stress on other components of an already unstable system.

Among the glacial lakes and hazard zones requiring close attention are:

Thulagi Glacial Lake — Marsyangdi River Basin

Located in the Manang District, Thulagi Glacial Lake has long been recognized as a significant glacial-lake hazard.

Its vulnerability is associated with the stability of its natural moraine dam and the potential for disturbances—including upstream ice or rock avalanches—to generate sudden waves or overtopping.

Lower Barun Glacial Lake — Sankhuwasabha District

Lower Barun lies in a rapidly changing high-altitude environment where glacier retreat and changing meltwater inputs can alter lake volume and moraine stability.

Its expansion illustrates a fundamental climate problem:

The landscape itself is changing faster than the infrastructure and hazard-management systems built around it.

Lumding Tsho — Solukhumbu District

Lumding Tsho represents another potential component of a connected high-mountain hazard system.

Rapid changes in surrounding glaciers, slopes and permafrost can alter the conditions controlling lake stability. A major avalanche, landslide or flood entering the lake could potentially produce dangerous waves or overtopping.

Hongu 2 — Solukhumbu District

Hongu 2 is another glacial-lake hazard requiring monitoring and risk reduction because of vulnerabilities associated with its natural damming structures.

The important point is not that every lake will suddenly fail.

It is that multiple unstable components exist within interconnected watersheds.

That changes the nature of the risk.

A Transboundary Domino Effect

The geography makes the situation even more dangerous.

The Himalaya is a connected hydraulic system. Water generated at extreme elevations can travel from the Tibetan Plateau into steep Nepalese valleys, where narrow channels concentrate enormous amounts of energy.

A flood does not recognize an international border.

A landslide in Tibet can therefore become an infrastructure emergency in Nepal.

A flood generated hundreds of kilometers upstream can destroy roads, bridges, hydropower facilities, agricultural land and communities downstream.

Past Himalayan GLOF events demonstrate how quickly an upstream disturbance can become a downstream catastrophe.

The July 2025 supraglacial lake outburst north of Langtang Himal is one example of the speed with which high-altitude water hazards can propagate into populated and economically important river corridors.

The critical issue is connectivity.

The mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers are not independent hazards.

They are components of one interconnected system.

Climate Warming Loads the System With More Energy

This is where the story becomes larger than a single landslide or flood.

Climate change is altering the physical conditions that determine how much energy is stored in the mountain environment and how easily that energy can be released.

Warming contributes to:

• Glacier retreat
• Increasing meltwater production
• Expansion of some glacial lakes
• Thawing mountain permafrost
• Destabilization of ice and rock
• Changing precipitation patterns
• More intense rainfall events in some regions
• Increasing exposure of unstable slopes

The result is not simply more water.

It is a landscape containing more potential pathways for rapid energy release.

Water provides mass.

Gravity provides acceleration.

Steep terrain provides a pathway.

And when water interacts with loose sediment, ice and fractured rock, the resulting flow can become dramatically more destructive.

Permafrost: The Mountain’s Hidden Glue

High-altitude permafrost acts in part as a structural component of mountain slopes.

When permanently frozen ground warms and thaws, ice that previously helped bind rock and sediment together can disappear.

That can weaken slopes.

The consequences can include:

Rockfall → landslide → avalanche → river blockage → barrier lake → outburst flood.

Each stage creates the possibility of the next.

The initial failure can also expose previously frozen ground to warmer air, rain and meltwater, potentially accelerating local instability.

This is a critical climate feedback:

Warming destabilizes the mountain. Mountain collapse exposes more material. Exposed material absorbs heat and water. Instability increases.

Albedo Loss: From White Ice to Dark Rock

Ice and snow reflect a large proportion of incoming solar radiation.

Rock, soil, mud and exposed debris absorb considerably more.

When glaciers retreat or collapse, their reflective surfaces are replaced by darker terrain.

That creates a local energy imbalance:

Less reflection → more absorption → more warming → more melting and thawing.

Albedo loss is therefore another feedback mechanism operating alongside glacier retreat and permafrost thaw.

The mountain landscape is not simply losing ice.

It is changing the way it absorbs and stores energy.

Friction, Lubrication and the Release of Stored Energy

There is another physical mechanism that matters: friction.

Rock, ice and sediment can remain relatively stable when friction holds them in place.

But meltwater and rainfall can penetrate fractures and saturated sediments, reducing effective friction and increasing lubrication along some surfaces.

Under glaciers, meltwater can also act as a lubricant, allowing ice to move more rapidly across the bed.

The basic physical principle is straightforward:

When friction decreases, movement becomes easier.

That means climate-driven increases in meltwater can affect not only the amount of water entering a watershed, but also the mechanical stability and mobility of ice, sediment and rock.

The result is another pathway through which climate energy can become kinetic energy.

The Economic Domino Effect

The physical cascade rapidly becomes an economic cascade.

Hydropower

Himalayan hydropower facilities are particularly vulnerable because they are located directly within steep, confined river corridors.

Floods carrying enormous quantities of sediment, gravel and boulders can:

• Damage intake structures
• Fill reservoirs with sediment
• Destroy transmission infrastructure
• Erode turbines and mechanical equipment
• Block access roads
• Force prolonged shutdowns

The destruction of a single hydropower facility can therefore produce consequences far beyond the immediate flood zone.

Roads and Bridges

High mountain communities depend on relatively few transportation corridors.

When a bridge or highway is destroyed, there may be no practical alternative route.

A single failure can isolate entire communities and make emergency response and reconstruction substantially more difficult.

Transboundary infrastructure—including major crossings such as the Friendship Bridge—can become critical points of failure.

Agriculture

Floodwater does not simply deposit fertile soil.

A high-energy debris flood can bury agricultural land beneath layers of:

• Rock
• Gravel
• Sand
• Mud
• Coarse sediment
• Organic debris

Fields can become unusable for multiple growing seasons.

The agricultural domino effect becomes:

Flood → soil burial → crop loss → food insecurity → income loss → displacement.

The Ecological Domino Effect

The ecological consequences can be equally profound.

Rivers Become Sediment Conveyors

Extreme sediment loads can dramatically increase turbidity and reduce water quality.

Fine sediment can smother aquatic habitat while larger debris physically alters channels.

Fish populations can decline, disrupting food webs that extend from aquatic insects and fish to birds, mammals and human communities.

Protected Ecosystems Are Not Immune

Mountain ecosystems are among the most fragile environments on Earth.

Floods and landslides can destroy habitat within protected areas such as Langtang National Park.

Species adapted to narrow ecological zones have limited ability to escape rapidly changing landscapes.

The loss of habitat therefore becomes another domino:

Physical destruction → habitat fragmentation → population stress → biodiversity loss.

The Human Health Domino Effect

A major flood also creates an immediate public-health emergency.

Floodwaters can destroy sanitation systems and contaminate drinking-water supplies with sewage, animal waste, debris and other pollutants.

Where clean water becomes unavailable, the risk of waterborne disease increases.

But health consequences extend beyond infectious disease.

Survivors may lose:

• Homes
• Livelihoods
• Schools
• Transportation
• Family members
• Community networks

The psychological consequences of sudden disaster can persist long after the floodwaters recede.

Displacement Becomes the Final Domino

When communities are repeatedly exposed to catastrophic flooding, landslides and infrastructure failure, relocation can become unavoidable.

That produces a final cascade:

Climate disruption → disaster → infrastructure loss → economic collapse → displacement.

People displaced by climate-related disasters may face years of uncertainty rather than a temporary interruption.

And when multiple communities experience the same process simultaneously, the effects can spread well beyond the original disaster zone.

This Is What a Cascade Looks Like

The most important lesson from the Nepal–Tibet emergency is not simply that a glacier collapsed.

It is that the consequences of climate change increasingly emerge as connected chains of physical failure.

The sequence can look like this:

Warming

↓

Glacier retreat + permafrost thaw

↓

Ice and slope destabilization

↓

Landslide / avalanche / glacial collapse

↓

River blockage

↓

Barrier lake formation

↓

Lake expansion + overtopping

↓

Glacial Lake Outburst Flood

↓

Sediment + boulders + debris

↓

River-channel erosion

↓

Secondary landslides and infrastructure failures

↓

Hydropower disruption

↓

Road and bridge destruction

↓

Agricultural losses

↓

Water contamination

↓

Ecosystem collapse

↓

Economic disruption

↓

Displacement

The dominoes are connected.

And the energy driving them is not theoretical.

It is stored in ice, water, rock, gravity and the atmosphere.

Climate change is altering how much energy is available, where it is stored, and how quickly it can be released.

That is why the question is not simply:

How much is the planet warming?

The more important question is:

How Is Climate Energy Hitting You?

Because when the Earth starts moving, one failure can become another—and another—and another.

by Daniel Brouse

Density. Velocity. Gravity. Friction. Entrainment.

Climate change is often described in terms of temperature: another degree of warming, another heat record, another fraction of a degree above a historical baseline.

But temperature is only the beginning of the story.

The more consequential question is:

What happens when warming changes how much energy and mass are available to move—and how easily they can move?

The atmosphere, oceans, glaciers, snowpack, soils, mountains, and rivers are all components of a connected physical system. They store energy and mass. Under certain conditions, that stored energy can be released rapidly through wind, water, ice, avalanches, landslides, floods, and debris flows.

And once something starts moving, density, velocity, gravity, friction, and entrainment can interact to dramatically amplify the consequences.

---

The Physics: Density × Velocity²

For fluid flow, dynamic pressure is proportional to density multiplied by the square of velocity:

q ∝ ρv²

More precisely, dynamic pressure is:

q = ½ρv²

This simple relationship explains why velocity is such a powerful amplifier.

For example:

• A 20 mph wind produces 4× the dynamic-pressure scale of a 10 mph wind.
• A 40 mph wind produces 16×.
• A 50 mph wind produces 25×.
• A 60 mph wind produces 36×.

Velocity is therefore not a linear amplifier.

Double the velocity → 4× the velocity-squared term.

Triple the velocity → 9×.

And this is before considering density.

---

Density: How Much Mass Is Moving?

Density determines how much mass is packed into a given volume.

Approximate densities illustrate the enormous difference:

• Air: ~1.2 kg/m³
• Water: ~1,000 kg/m³
• Ice: ~917 kg/m³
• Rock: ~2,500–3,000 kg/m³

Water is therefore roughly 800 times denser than air.

Ice is roughly 760 times denser than air.

Rock can be roughly 2,000–2,500 times denser than air.

At the same velocity, these differences matter enormously.

But there is an important distinction.

The simple ρv² relationship describes dynamic pressure in a moving fluid. It should not be applied mechanically as though a rock avalanche were simply “rock behaving like air or water.” Moving ice and rock involve additional physics—especially mass, momentum, gravitational potential energy, kinetic energy, friction, and collisions.

The underlying principle, however, remains powerful:

More mass moving faster carries more energy and momentum.

---

Gravity: The Energy Stored in Height

Gravity is one of the great energy reservoirs of the Earth system.

A glacier sitting high in a mountain valley contains enormous gravitational potential energy because of its mass and elevation.

So does a mountainside.

So does water stored behind a natural or artificial dam.

So does a glacial lake perched above a downstream valley.

Gravitational potential energy is commonly expressed as:

PE = mgh

where:

• m = mass
• g = gravitational acceleration
• h = elevation

When that stored energy is released, it can become kinetic energy:

KE = ½mv²

This creates another important connection between mass and velocity.

A small object moving rapidly can be destructive.

An enormous mass moving rapidly can be catastrophic.

And when the moving mass begins picking up additional material, the system can become even more powerful.

---

Friction: The Brake on the System

But gravity does not automatically make everything move.

Friction is the brake.

Friction resists movement between surfaces. It helps keep glaciers attached to their beds, soil on hillsides, rocks on mountains, and sediment within channels.

In simplified terms:

Gravity drives movement.
Friction resists movement.

The balance between those forces can determine whether a system remains stable—or begins to move.

This is particularly important in glaciers and steep mountain environments.

---

Meltwater: When the Brake Gets Wet

Under a glacier, meltwater can travel through cracks, crevasses, channels, and conduits until it reaches the glacier bed.

There it can increase water pressure between the ice and underlying rock.

That matters because increased water pressure can reduce the effective normal force pressing the glacier against its bed, potentially reducing basal friction and allowing the ice to slide more easily.

In other words, meltwater can do more than add water to the system.

It can reduce resistance to movement.

The simplified conceptual chain becomes:

Warming → melting → more meltwater → increased basal water pressure → reduced friction → enhanced sliding

But the actual relationship is complex. More meltwater does not automatically mean faster glacier movement. The effect depends on how water is distributed and drained beneath the glacier. Efficient drainage can relieve pressure, while poorly drained or rapidly delivered water can increase basal pressure.

The important point is that lubrication can alter the balance between driving force and resistance.

The same broader principle applies to unstable slopes.

Water infiltrating soil, fractured rock, snow, and ice can change pore-water pressure and reduce effective resistance to failure. A slope that was stable under one set of conditions can become unstable when water changes the mechanical balance.

So another pathway emerges:

More water → less effective resistance → greater potential for movement.

And once movement begins:

greater movement → greater velocity → greater kinetic energy.

Climate change can therefore influence not only how much energy enters a system, but under some circumstances how easily that stored energy can be released.

---

Entrainment: When Moving Material Picks Up More Material

There is another amplifier:

Entrainment.

Moving water can pick up sediment.

Floods can carry gravel and boulders.

Avalanches can incorporate snow, ice, trees, and rock.

Landslides can transform into debris flows as they mix with water and incorporate additional material.

A moving glacier can transport enormous quantities of sediment and rock.

This creates a potentially powerful feedback:

Movement → entrainment → more mass → greater momentum → greater destructive potential

The flow is no longer carrying only the material that initially started moving.

It is gathering additional mass along the way.

---

When Water Becomes a Weapon

Consider extreme rainfall.

Rain falls onto a landscape.

Some infiltrates.

Some becomes runoff.

As rainfall intensity increases, runoff can become increasingly rapid. Gravity accelerates water downslope. The moving water begins eroding soil and sediment and can pick up increasingly large particles.

Now the flow is carrying:

water + soil + gravel + rocks + trees + debris

The physical character of the event has changed.

It is no longer simply a flood.

It can become a debris flow or sediment-laden flood, capable of enormous erosion and impact.

This is why the consequences of extreme rainfall can be disproportionately larger than the increase in rainfall itself.

---

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods

The same principles operate in high mountain environments.

Glaciers can dam lakes.

Meltwater can increase lake volume.

Ice or rock can destabilize the surrounding terrain.

A sudden collapse, avalanche, or breach can release enormous quantities of water.

A glacial lake outburst flood, or GLOF, can rapidly send a pulse of water downstream.

As that water accelerates under gravity, it can scour the valley and entrain sediment, boulders, trees, and infrastructure debris.

The result can become a cascading process:

Stored water → sudden release → acceleration → erosion → entrainment → greater mass → amplified destruction

The original trigger may be relatively localized.

The resulting moving mass may not be.

---

When Glaciers and Mountains Collapse

The same energy cascade can occur when ice and rock themselves become unstable.

A glacier, ice shelf, frozen slope, or mountain face can store enormous gravitational potential energy.

When structural stability is lost, that energy can be released rapidly.

Ice, snow, rock, and debris accelerate downslope.

Collisions generate additional energy transfer.

Material can fracture and fragment.

Snow and rock can be entrained.

Water can be displaced.

And if the moving mass enters a lake, fjord, river, or ocean, it can transfer energy into the water and generate powerful waves.

The system can therefore move through multiple physical states:

Ice → collapse → acceleration → impact → water displacement → wave → downstream damage

This is not simply “melting.”

It is a mass-and-energy transfer through a connected Earth system.

---

Dickson Fjord: Greenland, 2023

The September 2023 event at Dickson Fjord in Greenland provides a remarkable illustration.

A massive rock-and-ice landslide entered the narrow fjord, displacing water and generating a tsunami-like wave. The confined geometry of the fjord allowed the resulting water motion to oscillate for days.

The event demonstrates how changes affecting ice, permafrost, and mountain stability can interact with water and topography to produce consequences far beyond the original failure.

The important lesson is the chain:

Mass failure → gravity → acceleration → water displacement → wave energy

One component of the Earth system triggers another.

---

Nepal–Tibet and the Himalayas

The high mountains of the Nepal–Tibet/Himalayan region provide another setting where these interactions can become particularly dangerous.

Here, glaciers, snowpack, steep rock faces, permafrost, glacial lakes, and rapidly flowing rivers exist within an extraordinarily steep landscape.

Ice and snow avalanches can incorporate rock.

Rock avalanches can interact with glaciers and snow.

Failures can enter lakes and displace water.

Floods can then transport the resulting debris downstream.

The potential cascade becomes:

Ice + snow + rock → avalanche → acceleration → water displacement → flood → debris entrainment

Again, the initiating event is only one part of the story.

The pathway of energy matters.

---

The Nonlinear Cascade

Put all of these components together and the system begins to look very different.

Climate warming

↓

More heat and altered precipitation

↓

Melt + intense rainfall

↓

More water available to move

↓

Changes in pore pressure and basal lubrication

↓

Potential reduction in friction / resistance

↓

Destabilization

↓

Gravity releases stored potential energy

↓

Acceleration

↓

Velocity² amplification

↓

Ice + water + snow + rock + sediment

↓

Entrainment adds mass

↓

Momentum and kinetic energy increase

↓

Water displacement / waves / debris flows

↓

Amplified physical impact

This is the central concept:

The climate system does not have to increase every variable dramatically to produce a dramatically larger consequence.

Several smaller changes can interact.

More water.

Less resistance.

Greater instability.

More available mass.

Higher velocity.

More entrainment.

Each can alter the conditions experienced by the next part of the chain.

---

This Is Not “Exponential” by Default

It is important to be precise.

The underlying physics does not mean that every climate impact is mathematically exponential.

The velocity-squared relationship is nonlinear.

Kinetic energy also scales with v².

Gravitational potential energy scales with mass and elevation.

Friction determines resistance to motion.

Water pressure can alter effective stress and friction.

Entrainment can increase the moving mass.

These nonlinear processes can interact and produce disproportionately large impacts relative to the initiating change.

The result can sometimes look exponential in its consequences even when no single component follows a simple exponential equation.

That distinction matters.

The physics is powerful enough without exaggerating it.

---

The Earth Is a Connected Energy System

This changes how we should think about climate risk.

The danger is not simply:

“The temperature went up.”

The more important question is:

“What did that additional energy change?”

Did it increase atmospheric moisture?

Did it intensify rainfall?

Did it accelerate runoff?

Did it increase meltwater?

Did it alter water pressure beneath a glacier?

Did it reduce effective resistance to sliding?

Did it destabilize frozen ground?

Did it weaken a slope?

Did it increase the amount of material available to an avalanche or debris flow?

Did a moving flood begin carrying rocks and trees?

Did a landslide enter a fjord or lake and displace water?

The climate signal can therefore propagate through a chain of physical processes.

Heat can become water.

Water can become motion.

Motion can become erosion.

Erosion can become entrainment.

Entrainment can become mass.

Mass moving under gravity becomes momentum and kinetic energy.

And that energy eventually reaches something we care about:

a road, a bridge, a home, a community, an ecosystem, or a coastline.

---

The Physics

The physics can be summarized in five words:

Density. Velocity. Gravity. Friction. Entrainment.

Density determines how much mass is contained in a moving volume.

Velocity can amplify fluid dynamic pressure and kinetic energy through the v² relationship.

Gravity provides a pathway for converting elevation into motion.

Friction normally acts as a brake—but water can sometimes reduce effective resistance through lubrication and changes in water pressure.

Entrainment can add more mass to a moving system as it travels.

Together, these processes create the possibility of cascading amplification.

The danger of climate change is therefore not measured only by the number on a thermometer.

It is also measured by what begins moving when the Earth system is pushed beyond its previous conditions.

The atmosphere moves.
The oceans move.
Water moves.
Glaciers move.
Mountains move.
Rock moves.
And when those systems begin interacting, energy can move from one component to another with astonishing speed.

The critical question is no longer simply:

How much warmer is the planet?

It is:

How much stored energy and mass are being made available to move—and what happens when the brakes come off?

That is how climate energy can hit you.

---

Footnote:

There was a video of what appeared to be large boulder rolling along the top of the entrainment and sometimes appearing to be bobbing up and down.

The bulk of the rock appears to have come through first, driven by the entrainment and water flow. That process essentially carved out a channel, which was then followed by an enormous mass of mud—up to three stories deep—that completely buried villages.

As for whether what we’re seeing is rock or ice, it was probably a combination of both. I heard one report describe the flow as being like “wet concrete,” which is actually a pretty good way to visualize the density and behavior of the material.

I also saw a video of a bridge collapse that really demonstrated the power of the flow. I was amazed by what looked like the “buoyancy” of the bridge. The entrainment was so dense and forceful that the bridge essentially “floated” on top of the moving mass, continued downstream, and then took out another bridge—which also appeared to “float” on top of the flow.

Both structures were ultimately carried downstream, taking out virtually anything and everything in their path. That is the kind of energy and momentum you get when water, sediment, rock, ice, and debris become one extremely dense, moving mass.

q = ½ρv²

If you’re interested in the physics, I wrote it out in detail. I thought you might be particularly interested in the lubrication/friction component, especially since you’ve been describing what appears to be that process in some of your comments. Under the right conditions, meltwater can reduce friction beneath the ice, contributing to what is known as basal sliding (or basal slip).

I’ve also seen footage showing substantial water flowing out from beneath the glacier, which makes the basal-flow question particularly interesting. There was also a glacial lake at the bottom of the system and a hydroelectric plant downstream—well, there was one before the event—leading me to believe there is substantial glacial meltwater.

Another factor is the thawing permafrost and peat that had been helping stabilize the rock and sediment. Add the unseasonably warm conditions and significant precipitation in the preceding days, and you have multiple processes acting together: meltwater infiltration, increasing water pressure, reduced basal friction, thawing ground, and gravity-driven ice and rock movement.

That’s why I’m hesitant to characterize what happened as simply an “ice collapse” or a “rockslide.” It appears to have involved a coupled ice-rock-water system. The ice-water mixture at the top of the fall may have been predominantly ice, but by the time that mass traveled roughly a kilometer downhill under an acceleration of about 32 ft/s², much of the ice would likely have melted or fragmented. As it accelerated, it was also entraining water, rock, sediment, and debris, rapidly changing the composition and behavior of the flow. Once the material began moving, the entrainment produced an extremely dense and mobile flow like “wet concrete.” When you see these villages buried under that material, it almost looks like the ground has turned into solidifying concrete or quicksand—an incredibly dense, water-saturated mass that can engulf and bury structures… and people in minutes. The rescue teams are reaching for people almost like they’re conducting an ice rescue—crawling on their bellies across the surface because the material is so unstable. It gives me a whole new perspective on the physics of climate change.

by Daniel Brouse

We’re crossing 1.5°C in a hurry—and tipping points are beginning to topple.

This is where tipping points get your attention: you can actually observe them.

Climate change is not a smooth, linear progression. As thresholds are crossed, individual tipping elements can begin interacting with one another. Feedbacks can couple across the Earth system, changes can propagate faster, and the acceleration of change can itself increase.

What once looked like gradual change can suddenly become a rapidly evolving cascade.

HISTORICAL OBSERVATION

When the last Ice Age ended, Earth experienced “Meltwater Pulse 1A”—a dramatic period roughly 14,500 years ago when sea levels surged upward by about 66 feet over approximately 500 years. Geological evidence from Barbados, Tahiti, and Sunda indicates that sea-level rise reached astonishing rates, sometimes exceeding 40 mm per year.

The lesson from the paleoclimate record is not that history will repeat itself exactly, but that the Earth system is capable of producing rapid, nonlinear changes when large stores of ice and water cross critical thresholds.

OBSERVE CASCADING TIPPING POINTS TODAY

For the last 40 years, sea-level rise has increased from roughly a millimeter to several millimeters per year. People often respond, “So what? What difference does a few millimeters a year make?”

But a sudden-release event is fundamentally different from 40 years of gradually melting ice.

Large volumes of meltwater can be temporarily stored or dammed behind and beneath glaciers, creating the potential for abrupt releases when a critical threshold is crossed.

DICKSON FJORD — GREENLAND

In 2023, a massive rock-and-ice avalanche involving approximately 25 million cubic meters of material plunged into Dickson Fjord and generated a seiche that produced seismic signals detectable around the world for nine days.

This wasn’t simply ice melting.

It was a sudden gravitational release from a destabilized mountain system.

NEPAL–TIBET

A massive ice-and-rock avalanche generated its own seismic signature.

Seismic analysis indicates that the shaking was not an earthquake that triggered the landslide. Rather, the enormous mass movement itself generated seismic waves equivalent to those associated with a magnitude 4.4–5.2 earthquake.

A huge section of glacier reportedly detached from roughly 5,200 meters (17,000 feet) near Langtang Lirung, fragmented during its descent, and transformed into an extraordinarily mobile mixture of ice, water, rock, sediment, boulders, and trees.

This is the critical distinction.

We aren’t simply watching glaciers melt.

We are watching a destabilizing Earth system capable of producing sudden releases, massive gravitational failures, seismic energy, debris flows, river blockages, and catastrophic floods.

The concern is not that every tipping point suddenly collapses at once.

The concern is that tipping points can couple.

One failure can increase stress on another system.

Another threshold is crossed.

Another feedback activates.

The cascade accelerates.

THAT IS THE CLIMATE CHANGE AVALANCHE.

Slow → Accelerating → Tipping → Cascading → Rapidly Changing

Cascading tipping points are now observable in real time.

As we continue to race past 1.5°C, expect to see many more events like these as climate-driven changes increasingly interact with already destabilized Earth systems.

by Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee

Seismic Climate Events: When Cryosphere Instability Becomes an Earth-System Hazard

I’ve written quite a bit about “Sudden Sea Level Pulses: How ‘Cork Release’ Events Could Rapidly Reshape Coastlines,” which you might find interesting. I expect we will see several feet of sea-level rise for several years in a row this century.

The big examples in Earth’s past occurred when proglacial lakes suddenly broke through ice dams during the last deglaciation.

When the last Ice Age ended, the Earth experienced “Meltwater Pulse 1A”—a dramatic period roughly 14,500 years ago when sea levels surged upward by about 66 feet in just 500 years. Data from Barbados, Tahiti, and Sunda confirm that the ocean rose at astonishing rates—sometimes more than 40 mm per year. We should expect similar patterns again.

I find sea-level rise very intriguing. However, the problem has always been that it is too “slow” for anybody to care. What’s a couple of millimeters a year?

It took us 10 years to confirm that sea-level rise was doubling every ~100 years—2²-fold on a centennial basis. Since the late 1990s, that doubling time has collapsed to 3–10 years. The collapsing doubling times indicate that SLR acceleration is accelerating at approximately 2⁶-fold on a decadal basis.

Though this jerk/third-derivative behavior is alarming to me, it still doesn’t seem to get people’s attention. This is just one set of climate-impact datasets. Many others show the same rate of acceleration.

Now, we’re crossing 1.5°C in a hurry.

This is where jerk behavior will get people’s attention.

We are fairly confident there are several feet or more of dammed-up meltwater. Jerk behavior puts a much higher probability on jerk-like reactions.

The result isn’t going to be a meter of sea-level rise overnight. It is much more likely to be a serious breach in Greenland that raises sea levels perhaps a foot the first year, two feet the next year, and another foot the following year. Then it may go back to millimeters or inches a year for a few years.

This is one of those feedbacks that is very difficult to comprehend.

Greenland has a lot of dammed-up meltwater. Greenland’s geology is shaped like a bowl. If the ice were to melt in place, most of it would likely stay in the bowl.

But hold on—not so fast.

Sudden-release events on Greenland are not the same thing as slowly melting ice over the last 40 years.

When the geology gives way, as it did in 2023’s Dickson Fjord seiche, the consequences can be extraordinary. That massive rock-and-ice avalanche, involving approximately 25 million cubic meters of material, created a tsunami that registered worldwide as an earthquake for nine days.

Recently, in Nepal–Tibet, a similar event demonstrated how a massive climate-sensitive mass movement can generate its own seismic signature. Seismic analysis indicates that the recorded shaking was not an earthquake that triggered the landslide. Instead, the enormous ice-and-rock avalanche generated seismic waves equivalent to those associated with a magnitude 4.4–5.2 earthquake.

A massive section of glacier—reported to have detached from an elevation of roughly 5,200 meters (17,000 feet) near Langtang Lirung—broke free and rapidly fragmented as it descended thousands of feet. The enormous mass of ice and rock transformed into a highly mobile mixture of ice, water, sediment, boulders, and trees.

The most likely mechanism is the sudden release of water stored beneath or within the glacier. That water could have dramatically reduced friction beneath the moving mass, allowing the avalanche to accelerate and travel farther than a conventional rockfall or icefall. Rather than behaving like a simple avalanche, the mixture became a rapidly moving debris flow—a slurry of water, ice, sediment, and rock capable of behaving almost like liquid concrete.

The immense mass then crashed into the upper catchment of the Lhende Khola, a river valley along the Nepal–Tibet border. The debris temporarily choked the narrow valley, creating an unstable natural landslide dam.

The Outburst Surge

Summer glacier melt and seasonal monsoon rainfall continued feeding water into the blocked drainage. As water accumulated behind the debris barrier, pressure increased until the unstable dam failed.

The resulting outburst released a massive surge of water and sediment downstream, producing a destructive wall of water and debris through the connected Himalayan river system.

The significance extends beyond the immediate flood. A warming cryosphere can destabilize glaciers and mountain slopes, while extreme precipitation supplies additional water to an already unstable system. A single gravitational collapse can then trigger river blockage, dam failure, flash flooding, and a measurable seismic signal.

This is the kind of cascading interaction that makes seismic climate events fundamentally different from conventional earthquakes: the climate-sensitive Earth surface itself becomes the source of the seismic energy.

Seismic Climate Event

It is an example of what can be described as a seismic climate event: climate-driven changes in glaciers, permafrost, snow, and mountain stability can increase the potential for enormous mass movements, which in turn release sufficient mechanical energy to generate measurable seismic signals.

The broader danger is the cascade.

Warming can destabilize the cryosphere. Cryospheric destabilization can trigger massive avalanches and landslides. Those failures can block rivers, generate flash floods and debris flows, and even produce detectable seismic waves.

The resulting disaster is therefore not the product of a single hazard, but of multiple interconnected Earth-system processes interacting in rapid succession.

Greenland gets even more interesting.

That bowl-like shape was caused by the weight of the glacier. As the glacier and meltwater quake into the sea, there will be fairly rapid rebound, and the bowl bottom will rise back up. This rebound is already much faster than earlier predictions.

This all brings Antarctica into the picture, potentially coupling with Greenland. That could be really drastic compared with Greenland alone.

In particular, Sidd said:

“Yes, I saw that. Under-ice hydrology is hard to observe, but there have been efforts with maps made of Greenland and Antarctica—probably incomplete. I still think Greenland will melt largely in place; Antarctica is the big one.”

See: Greenland Melting Is Inevitable

So how much faster the new-normal sea-level rise will be after such an event is quite uncertain—as is how long it will be until the next sudden release.

The important point is that climate change does not necessarily operate as a smooth, linear progression.

Sometimes the Earth system stores energy and mass until a threshold is crossed. Then the response can become abrupt. This is an observable tipping-point cascade, where one threshold crossing can destabilize another system and trigger a rapid sequence of interconnected changes.

That is the fundamental concern with seismic climate events: the climate system is increasingly interacting with a destabilizing cryosphere and a mechanically active landscape, creating the potential for cascading events that are far faster than the gradual changes that initially caused them.