Two reports by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), released in March 2026, warned that rapidly melting glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya were escalating risks of catastrophic floods and other cryosphere-related disasters. The reports found that glacier ice loss across the region had doubled since 2000, with the smallest and most vulnerable glaciers shrinking rapidly and intensifying hazards such as glacial lake outburst floods. They also revealed that glaciers in the region have lost up to 27 metres of ice thickness since 1975. This week, a catastrophic flash flood triggered by a glacier collapse struck the Nepal-China border region, causing deaths and bringing the earlier warnings into sharp focus.