尼泊尔冰川崩塌引发山洪致数百人遇难
Nepal disaster shows how mountains are becoming less stable | Zero: The Climate Race
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On the morning of 26th August, a Himalayan glacier collapsed, causing a flash flood that ran through a high mountain valley in Nepal, wiping out entire communities. The videos are terrifying with cameras across the region capturing the very moment that a slurry of ice, rock, and water tore through towns with enough force to crush trucks, buildings, and even bridges. At the time of recording this on August 28th, hundreds are reported killed and thousands are still missing.
8月26日上午，一座喜马拉雅冰川发生坍塌，引发山洪，席卷了尼泊尔的一条高山山谷，摧毁了整个社区。视频画面令人恐惧，该地区各地的摄像头捕捉到了冰、岩石和水的混合物以足以压碎卡车、建筑物甚至桥梁的力量撕裂城镇的瞬间。截至8月28日录制本期节目时，据报道已有数百人遇难，数千人仍下落不明。
It is a tragedy that has devastated Nepal. The kind of disaster that may become more common as glaciated landscapes melt because of global warming. This is zero. I axrati. This week, why the world's mountains are ticking time bombs. Joining me this week is Lou Delbello covering energy, commodities, and climate for Bloomberg News based in New Delhi. She's been reporting on the floods. Lou, welcome to Zero.
这是一场令尼泊尔遭受重创的悲剧。随着全球变暖导致冰川景观融化，这类灾害可能会变得更加常见。这里是Zero。我是Axarati。本周，探讨为什么世界上的山脉是定时炸弹。本周与我连线的是卢·德尔贝洛（Lou Delbello），她常驻新德里，为彭博新闻社报道能源、大宗商品和气候问题。她一直在报道此次洪水。卢，欢迎做客Zero。
Hi, thank you for having me.
你好，谢谢邀请我。
So, before we get into what caused the flood, you've not been to this particular region, but you have traveled into the Himalayas as part of your reporting on climate and development in that region. Can you describe what it looks like, how people live there? Yeah. So I've been obviously I've been in Delhi for many years and actually we are quite close to what we call the hills here and so I've been uh both to Nepal and uh to the kind of Indian side of the Himalayan region and it's a quite interesting area because it's the youngest major mountain range of the world and I think you can observe this by the way the landscape looks.
那么，在进入洪水成因之前，你虽然没有去过这个特定地区，但作为你在该地区报道气候和发展工作的一部分，你去过喜马拉雅山区。你能描述一下那里的景象以及人们的生活方式吗？是的。显然，我在德里待了很多年，实际上我们离这里所谓的“山区”很近，所以我曾去过尼泊尔，也去过喜马拉雅地区的印度一侧。这是一个非常有趣的区域，因为它是世界上最年轻的主要山脉，我认为从地貌特征上就能观察到这一点。
It's very very uneven. Uh the mountain the peaks are very tall and every 500 m each kilometer the landscape changes in some of the biodiversity some of the way the rocks look and it's generally an area that is very difficult to navigate as well and you can really see these landscapes are dotted with landslides pretty much any season uh you will have some landslides here and there. Sometimes you might get stuck on a mountain road and uh a big machine will turn up out of nowhere and start freeing up the road and you will wait there for 2 three hours until they remove the boulders that have precipitated from the from the mountain wall.
地形非常崎岖不平。山峰非常高耸，每升高500米或1公里，景观就会发生变化，包括生物多样性、岩石外观等。总体而言，这也是一个非常难以通行的地区，你可以清楚地看到这些景观中几乎在任何季节都点缀着滑坡。有时你可能会被困在山路上，突然会有一台大型机械不知从哪里出现，开始清理道路，你需要在那里等待两三个小时，直到他们移除从山壁上崩塌下来的巨石。
So this is kind of the Himalayan life. You know, now I've uh had the luck to be able to see the Alps, the Rocky Mountains, and as a teenager, I tked in the Himalayas uh near Sarpass in 2002. And honestly, there is nothing like the Himalayas. They are just stunning. And of course, it's also a big part of the Hindu pilgrim route, especially one of the Hindu pilgrimage sites, uh Kalash Manserov. one route goes through this particular region.
所以，这大致就是喜马拉雅山的生活。你知道，我有幸看到了阿尔卑斯山、落基山脉，并且在2002年十几岁时，我在喜马拉雅山的萨拉普斯附近徒步旅行。老实说，没有什么能比得上喜马拉雅山。它们简直令人叹为观止。当然，它也是印度教朝圣路线的重要组成部分，特别是其中一个印度教朝圣地——卡拉萨·曼萨罗瓦（Kalash Manserov）。有一条路线穿过这个特定地区。
So let's talk about how exactly did this disaster unfold.
那么，让我们谈谈这场灾难究竟是如何发生的。
So this disaster has been uh quite a different uh type of disaster. Normally we observe lots of flash floods when you have lots of precipitation and typically you know because these things happen relatively often every year you can expect some flash floods some uh you know disasters related to unstable uh terrain. people are quite prepared and they tend to you know watch the weather forecast. The service is quite uh is quite well disseminated.
因此，这场灾难是一种相当不同类型的灾害。通常，当有大量降水时，我们会观察到许多山洪暴发。而且通常你知道，因为这些事情每年相对经常发生，你可以预料到会有一些山洪暴发，以及一些与不稳定地形相关的灾害。人们准备得相当充分，他们往往会关注天气预报。气象服务的传播相当广泛。
Um but this time uh there was no warning and that's what made this disaster particularly severe and then so many lives uh were lost in part because of this. There hadn't been any strong rains uh prior to the disaster nor any precipitations were expected. We are in a monsoon season still, but um these were like uh relatively mild and pleasant days, no precipitation. But what happened is that a big chunk of a glacia detached, dislodged from the mountain wall and collapsed in a tributary of one river and created a um a strong impact so strong that it was recorded initially as an earthquake.
嗯，但这次没有预警，这正是导致这场灾难特别严重的原因，也因此失去了这么多生命。在灾难发生之前，并没有下过任何大雨，也没有预计会有任何降水。我们仍处于季风季节，但这些日子相对温和宜人，没有降水。但发生的事情是，冰川的一大块从山体上脱离并崩塌到一条河的支流中，产生了强烈的冲击，其强度之大，最初被记录为地震。
So initially researchers thought that it was simply an earthquake that had unleashed the flash floods but actually it was just this giant piece of ice that had precipitated and it created also a dam kind of a temporary dam. So, water accumulated and finally burst. And that's the origin of these horrible images that we've been seeing uh all over social media of literal towns being wiped out and completely like submerged in mud in a matter of seconds.
因此，研究人员最初认为这只是一场地震引发了山洪，但实际上只是这块巨大的冰块坠落，并形成了一种临时水坝。于是，水积聚并最终决堤。这就是我们在社交媒体上看到的那些可怕画面的来源：城镇在几秒钟内被夷为平地，完全淹没在泥浆中。
And so far, you know, the victims the victim count is like uh well over 400, but um over 1500 more than 1,500 are still missing. And so we can expect the count will be much higher. Yeah, this is us recording the conversation on the afternoon of 28th of August, 2 days after the flood. And yeah, the images and the videos have been stunning. One measure of river height went from 7 m to 12 m in a matter of minutes. And so that's like a 5 m 15 ft wall of water, ice, and rock all coming down.
到目前为止，你知道，受害者人数已超过400人，但还有超过1500人失踪。我们可以预期死亡人数会更高。是的，这是我们于8月28日下午录制这段对话的，也就是洪水发生两天后。是的，这些图像和视频令人震撼。一个河流高度测量值在几分钟内从7米上升到12米。这就相当于一道5米（15英尺）高的水墙、冰和岩石倾泻而下。
We've seen satellite images in a lot of places. The news coverage has had some of the on the ground images, but what does it look like now, especially in those places where all this debris went through with this ferocity?
我们在很多地方都看到了卫星图像。新闻报道中有一些地面拍摄的画面，但现在的景象究竟如何？尤其是在那些 debris（碎片/残骸）以如此猛烈之势穿过的地方呢？
Yeah, basically um everything has been wiped out like when uh these big waves are hit, no building can survive that kind of impact, that kind of violence. And more uh kind of perhaps even more grim is the what it leaves behind which is this thick layer of silt. And that's why it's going to be so difficult to you know recover the body or potential victims of more victims because uh they be submerged in this like thick mud.
是的，基本上可以说一切都被夷为平地了。当这些巨浪袭来时，没有任何建筑能经受住那种冲击和暴力。而更令人沮丧的是它留下的后果：一层厚厚的淤泥。这就是为什么要找回尸体或潜在受害者会如此困难，因为他们会被淹没在这层厚厚的泥浆中。
It looks very gray. It's kind of like almost cement because it's kind of uh silt and and probably stone in nature. And so it's just really jarring images that keep rolling in and we might see more as a situation is still not completely stable. People know about the North Pole and the South Pole, the two regions of the planet that have the most amount of ice. But this part of the world, the Himalayas, the Hindukush, the Karakuram mountains, they are so big and there's so much ice in them that they're often referred to as the third pole.
看起来非常灰暗。有点像水泥，因为从本质上讲它是淤泥，可能还夹杂着石块。因此，不断涌入的画面令人触目惊心，随着局势尚未完全稳定，我们可能会看到更多这样的景象。人们都知道北极和南极，即地球上拥有最多冰层的两个区域。但世界上的这一部分——喜马拉雅山、兴都库什山脉、喀喇昆仑山脉——它们规模巨大，其中的冰量极多，因此常被称为“第三极”。
Now, can you explain the link between climate change and the collapse of glaciers in the region? So yeah, the third pole is it's called like that because it's the third biggest frozen uh water reserve on the planet after the two kind of north and south pole and it has a particular is a particularly relevant in terms of influence of regional climates and in turn our ability to model global climate as well and in turn it's also influenced by uh climate change in a very unique way especially because um again it's a very young mountain range so it's very unstable.
那么，你能解释一下气候变化与该地区冰川崩塌之间的联系吗？是的，“第三极”之所以这么称呼，是因为它是继南北两极之后地球上第三大的冰冻水库。它在区域气候的影响方面具有特殊性，进而也影响我们模拟全球气候的能力；同时，它也以一种非常独特的方式受到气候变化的影响，特别是因为这是一条非常年轻的山脉，因此非常不稳定。
So what happens to the ice if it gets destabilized? It brings with it a lot of rocks, a lot of silt. It's not a stable part of uh of the region at all. And in part um we also have the influence of the monsoon. Monsoon is what brings the bulk of the water to the region. So in a span of about 3 4 months uh we will see maybe 60 to 80% of the water uh for the entire year. coming down on the fields on the mountains and on the cities that populate the area.
那么，如果冰层变得不稳定会发生什么？它会带来大量的岩石和淤泥。该地区根本不是稳定的部分。此外，我们还受到季风的影响。季风为该区域带来了大部分水源。因此，在大约三到四个月的时间内，我们将看到全年约60%到80%的水量降落在该地区的田野、山脉以及居住着人口的城市上。
But this obviously happened with it comes with a certain degree of risk because if the monsoon is particularly intense, it might create flooding phenomenon this year. There was a particularly interesting study by the isimode which is a research center based in Nepal. They were warning that because of the effect of Elino, which is a warming uh weather pattern, um the weather would be drier than usual, which can bring its own unique risks and the monsoon will be more muted.
但显然，这种情况伴随着一定的风险，因为如果季风特别强烈，今年可能会引发洪水现象。尼泊尔的一个研究机构 isimode 进行了一项特别有趣的研究。他们警告说，由于厄尔尼诺（El Niño）的影响——这是一种变暖的天气模式——天气会比平时更干燥，这会带来其独特的风险，而季风也会减弱。
Uh there will be slightly less precipitation at times. and um they had warned back in June that we might see more things like droughts, wildfire and other potential dangers.
有时降水量会略少。而且他们在六月就警告过，我们可能会看到更多的干旱、野火和其他潜在危险。
So about 10% of the Earth's land mass is covered by ice in some form. But some places over the past two decades have lost 40% of that ice mass already. In this region, we know that these kinds of ice avalanches aren't new. They have happened in the past but temperatures have gone up much more rapidly over the last two decades. What kind of impact does that make to the regi
因此，地球陆地面积的约 10% 以某种形式被冰覆盖。但在过去二十年中，一些地区已经失去了 40% 的冰量。在这个地区，我们知道这类冰崩并非新鲜事。过去也曾发生过，但在过去的二十年里，气温上升速度快得多。这对该地区会产生什么样的影响？
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