‘Godzilla’ event currently brewing could push 50 million people into acute hunger before the end of next year
A series of strong El Niño climatic patterns in recent decades, such as the “Godzilla” event currently brewing that is set to warp weather around the world, have been supercharged by the broader overheating of the planet caused by the burning of fossil fuels, a major new study has found.
El Niño is a naturally occurring phenomenon, taking place every two to seven years, when the waters of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean heat up, causing a cascade of impacts around the world. The latest developing El Niño, set to peak later this year, is set to be the strongest in living memory and has been informally dubbed a “Godzilla” event.
Thermal drone footage shows a Microsoft-backed AI datacenter powering its operations with dozens of unpermitted generators
The largest planned AI datacenter in New Jersey is being accused of violating federal law after a visual investigation found the site running dozens of unpermitted gas-powered generators.
Thermal drone footage captured by the non-profit newsroom Floodlight last week showed the partly completed DataOne facility in Vineland was operating at least 45 of the site’s 62 generators at the time.
It’s official: Australia’s data centre boom will not be solely powered by renewables.
At the National Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the federal government softened its stance on using coal and gas to power energy-hungry data centres.
Initially, the government said it would require new data centres to rely on renewables, backed up by batteries and gas. However, this has changed. Its new standards, set to be legislated in early 2027, leave room for some jurisdictions to use fossil fuels instead. Queensland and the Northern Territory have welcomed this shift.
So what are these new standards? And how do they fit into Australia’s energy “clean energy” transition?
Desperate for data
In our increasingly online world, data centres are a critical piece of digital infrastructure. These facilities store and process data around the clock. And they are needed to meet surging demand for generative artificial intelligence (AI), used in everything from health care to journalism.
However, both in Australia and overseas, local communities are increasingly worried about the potential risks of a rapid data centre rollout. These include strained water supplies, less land for housing, and persistent noise. Higher power bills are another concern, given how much energy data centres consume. The Australian Energy Market Operator estimates they will represent 13% of national grid demand by 2035–36, up from just 3% in 2025–26.
This week, Australia’s state and federal leaders agreed to develop mandatory standards for large data centres. These will regulate how much energy, water and land these facilities use. They will also cover skills and training, such as providing apprenticeships for workers involved in constructing and operating data centres.
However, the new standards leave responsibility for planning approvals in the hands of each state and territory. And questions remain around whether the proposed rules would apply to existing data centres, of which there are more than 250 across Australia, not just future projects.
New standards are a step in the right direction. However, they leave some major regulatory gaps, particularly when it comes to individual states.
The federal government’s previous position required new data centres to pay for grid upgrades, avoid pushing up household bills and source additional clean energy, rather than simply rely on existing supply.
However, the new standards grant carve-outs for Queensland and the Northern Territory to use coal and gas. Queensland argues its publicly owned electricity system allows it to manage any cost or supply issues. The NT argues it should be free to use local gas, given it lies outside the National Electricity Market, which is largely limited to the eastern states.
Technically, this state-by-state approach could work. Data centres need “firm” power, or electricity that is available when renewable generation drops or is disrupted. The Australian Energy Market Operator says batteries, pumped hydro and gas can act as firming technologies.
Enforcement is key
However, these carve-outs must not compromise the government’s goals of lowering climate emissions and ensuring that energy remains affordable.
That is why enforcement matters. Consider New South Wales, for example, whose new policy framework is built on six key principles. These include strong environmental and efficiency standards and no net costs to consumers and communities.
Developers wanting to build data centres that meet these requirements can get a faster 75-day assessment of their planning application. Non-compliant proposals are not automatically rejected, but do lose access to this fast-tracked process and can be modified, approved with conditions, or simply refused.
To properly enforce our new standards, Australia must learn from other regions.
The European Union requires major data centres to report their energy and water use. It is also developing a ratings system to compare how efficient each centre is, alongside minimum standards for energy consumption and water use.
In Ireland, the government considers various factors – including grid demand and broader renewable energy goals – when assessing new data centre proposals.
Australia, like many countries, is racing to regulate its rapidly expanding data centre sector.
To do so, we can draw on international approaches that mandate clear approval processes and public reporting.
We must also engage communities throughout the development process, starting with early consultation. This will ensure data centre projects offer concrete benefits, such as shared energy infrastructure and structured apprenticeships, not just increased capacity.
We need more research about how data centres affect water supplies, peak power prices, noise levels and emissions. Importantly, studies must use real operating data, not just estimates provided by developers.
The federal government has given states and territories more say in how they power data centres. But strong enforcement is key to ensuring every project keeps energy costs low, protects the environment, and offers lasting benefits for local communities.
More than 150 people are dead and hundreds more missing after an enormous wave of water, ice, mud and rock cascaded more than 170 kilometres down the Bhote Koshi River valley in Nepal. The valley is the main link between Kathmandu in Nepal and Lhasa in Tibet. At least 34 Australians are missing. There was little warning.
Footage of the debris-laden flash flood is shocking. It is, unfortunately, not surprising.
As an expert in glaciers, I have tracked their accelerating retreat around the world as they melt – and the disasters that can follow. Early analysis suggests the abrupt collapse of a glacier triggered the disaster.
As climate change intensifies, glaciers worldwide are melting – even in high regions such as the Himalayas. The Himalayas are especially vulnerable, because the steep slopes of many of these very tall mountains are made of permafrost – rock and soil frozen for centuries. As temperatures rise, these slopes are beginning to melt or destabilise. If an earthquake or slope failure occurs, it can trigger a sudden and devastating debris flow.
It’s too early to say this was the exact cause. But we know that the great ice stores of the Himalayas – known as the world’s “third pole” because it contains the largest amount of snow and ice after the Arctic and Antarctic – are no longer safe.
What do we know about this disaster?
What happened in Nepal is likely due to an enormous ice-and-rock landslide sweeping down a mountain pass and gathering up ice, water, rock, trees and dirt.
The landslide was so large it was originally thought to be an earthquake, as the seismic energy registered as a 4.4 magnitude quake on seismographs.
By the time it reached Gyirong Port – a China-Nepal border crossing – the wall of debris resembled a tsunami of dirt. Early estimates suggest the wave may have been 30 metres high.
A flood-damaged section of a highway in Nuwakot, central Nepal, following the flooding.Subaas Shrestha/Getty Images
What are the likely causes?
Sometimes, disasters like these can be caused when glacial meltwater trapped in a lake by a landslide breaks free. One of these events – known as a glacial lake outburst flood – hit Nepal in 2024.
But early analysis suggests this isn’t the case here. Satellite imagery suggests the landslide may have carved away large parts of a glacier, triggering its collapse.
We don’t know yet what caused the glacier to collapse. But glaciers worldwide are broadly in retreat – and flood and debris flow disasters can follow.
A smaller flood hit the same district in Nepal last year, killing nine people. Also last year, a melting glacier in Switzerland triggered a huge debris flow that destroyed the village of Blatten. In 2023, a landslide and subsequent flood in my home country of Georgia killed 33 people at a mountain resort.
But this disaster is one of the largest so far.
Permafrost is vulnerable
The high-elevation glaciers of the Himalayas can respond differently to climate change than glaciers at lower elevations or in relatively warmer regions. Thawing and degrading permafrost can also contribute by making steep Himalayan slopes less stable.
Permafrost is ground containing rock, soil and ice that has remained at or below 0°C for many years. As the climate warms, the ground can thaw, weakening the ice that helps bind rock and soil together.
On steep mountain slopes, this loss of frozen ground can make slopes less stable and make rockfalls, landslides and other forms of ground movement more likely. An earthquake, rockfall or other disturbance can then trigger a rapid downslope movement of rock, soil and debris.
Can these disasters be prevented?
No one died when the Swiss glacier collapsed. That’s because early warning systems were in place. Authorities evacuated residents before it fell.
As temperatures rise and climate-related disasters become more frequent or severe in some regions, early warning systems will become increasingly important for villages and towns located near glaciers or thawing permafrost.
These systems can monitor rapidly rising river levels, intense rainfall and seismic waves to alert authorities before disaster strikes.
However, installing and maintaining effective early warning systems can require significant investment. That’s a challenge for lower-income and developing countries. In good news, the Green Climate Fund last year announced funding for better monitoring systems in Nepal.
There’s another problem, too. Meltwater from Himalayan glaciers feeds rivers that are vital to billions of people across Nepal, Pakistan, India and China.
As the climate warms, increased glacier melt can temporarily increase river flows and, in some places, contribute to flood risk. But as glaciers continue to shrink, their contribution may eventually decline and lead to less water availability – particularly during the dry season.
Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, investment in early warning systems and better monitoring of vulnerable mountain regions can help communities prepare. These measures cannot prevent every disaster, but they can save lives and give people a better chance to adapt to a changing climate.
Levan Tielidze has received funding from the Australian Research Council.
A catastrophic flash flood has struck northern Nepal on the Tibetan border, killing at least 157 people and leaving hundreds missing, including at least 34 Australians. The death toll is expected to rise.
Foreign tourists are among those feared dead or missing. Nepal’s tourism ministry reported 403 tourists unaccounted for, including 341 foreign nationals.
Footage shows torrents of mud and debris sweeping through settlements and carrying buildings and vehicles with them.
Early evidence suggests this was not an ordinary rain-driven flash flood, but what disaster science describes as a “cascading event”. So what do we know so far?
Not an ordinary flood
Investigators are examining a chain of events high in the Himalayas where one natural hazard seems to have triggered another.
Such phenomena are known as “cascading hazards” – chain reactions where an initial event directly triggers a sequence of subsequent events, often creating a much larger disaster.
We know the flooding struck the steep, fast-flowing Bhotekoshi river system near Nepal’s border with Tibet at around 9am local time on Wednesday morning. It travelled downstream through the mountain district of Rasuwa and into neighbouring districts, including Nuwakot and Dhading.
The flooding carried a huge volume of water. It’s reported the Trishuli River rose by as much as nine metres within 30 minutes at one monitoring point downstream.
In parts of the historic hilltop town of Nuwakot, local officials report scores or hundreds of houses being swept away. Nepal’s Department of Roads says at least 19 motorable bridges and around 40 kilometres of roads have also been damaged or washed away. A 42km road connecting Betrawati with the Rasuwagadhi border crossing between Nepal and China’s Tibet autonomous region has been destroyed at multiple points.
What caused such a massive flood?
Rainfall does not appear to explain the scale of the flood. No heavy rainfall was recorded in the affected area beforehand.
The strongest evidence so far points to a massive glacial collapse high in the mountains. Satellite images show a large section of glacier breaking away at an altitude of around 5,200 metres and falling more than 1,200m into the valley below.
The key question is how that avalanche produced such a huge volume of fast-moving water and debris. The most compelling explanation so far comes from Nepal’s hydrology department. Satellite images appear to show the avalanche blocking the river with ice and debris about 20km upstream of the Nepal-Tibet border. It’s been suggested that water accumulated behind this temporary dam before it failed and sent a sudden surge downstream.
When one hazard triggers another
The disaster in Nepal shows why cascading events can be particularly difficult to anticipate, prepare for and survive.
The Nepal flood may have involved several links in a cascading chain. An ice and rock collapse produced an avalanche. The avalanche entered a river, where it may have blocked the flow and temporarily stored water. Its failure then produced or intensified the flood downstream.
Cascading hazards are different from “compound hazards”, where multiple hazards combine or occur together without one necessarily triggering another. In a cascade, it is the causal links between the hazards that matter.
These chains can also amplify as they progress. A hazard beginning in a remote location can trigger a much more destructive hazard affecting people far away.
As in the case of the catastrophe in Nepal, the hazard itself can also change form. What starts as an ice and rock collapse can ultimately reach communities as a debris-laden flood.
Beyond individual hazards
The Nepal disaster is still an unfolding event, and the exact sequence that produced the flood will become clearer in the coming days.
But it already points to a broader challenge for disaster risk management. We tend to classify and assess hazards separately, such as fires and floods.
But cascading hazards do not fit into conventional categories. Managing them requires understanding where individual hazards can occur, but also how one can trigger or amplify another.
Australia’s National Emergency Management Agency has warned that the growing trend of concurrent and cascading disasters is expected to continue and, in many cases, increase.
We need to better understand what these chains of hazards could look like in our own local environments, such as the intense storms and flooding that hit the Otways in Victoria in January. This will help us assess risk and plan for natural disasters.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
