This week devastating flash flooding hit the Nepal-China border, leaving at least 600 people dead and around 2500 more missing, including five New Zealanders.This year alone we've already recorded a number of tragic disasters across the planet caused by heatwaves, cyclones, floods and droughts. Some of them could be linked to increasingly turbulent weather patterns as the climate changes.But how do we make sense of the link between seismic activity, ocean currents and rising temperatures?Earth Sciences New Zealand principal scientist Graham Leonard said while details were still emerging about the disaster in Nepal, a large volume of rock and ice broke away from an area more than 600 metres wide high up in the mountains in the headwaters near the Nepal border with China in the Tibet Autonomous Region.It collapsed suddenly and the material fell rapidly about 2km."So it was moving fast. It transformed into a large valley debris flow... It generated a lot of water and was picking up sediments and boulders as it went."It travelled about 60km through river valleys until it was finally able to spread out onto a wide alluvial fan."Earth Sciences New Zealand principal scientist Graham LeonardJeff McEwan, Capture StudiosScientists like Leonard were still trying to work out why such "a remarkable amount of water" was generated.Initially, the ground tremor was thought to be a 5.2 magnitude earthquake.While the disaster could not be directly linked to climate change and global warming, a warmer planet was generating conditions that destablised high mountains and rock and ice and making them "a lot more frequent". Glaciers, ground water and permafrost were also being adversely affected, Leonard said."Nepal and high mountainous areas are definitely a hot spot."Warming meant more landslides, bigger debris events and more flooding on the plains.The same thing was also happening in New Zealand's Southern Alps with Aoraki Mt Cook being pushed up and glaciers eroding rapidly.Screen recordings of surveillance camera footage posted on Chinese social media platforms, reportedly show flash flooding hitting the Gyirong Port in the Tibet Autonomous Region on August 26, 2026.-Rough run for quakesRegarding the recent run of earthquakes, including in New Zealand, he said it had been a rough few months globally.Earthquakes were connected globally when they were measured, especially for those above 5 on the Richter scale."They go through the planet and around the planet."For the run of quakes in New Zealand recently, in Fiordland, Taumarunui, around the East Coast and Edgecumbe they would have "stressed up the ground around them"."But they won't have influenced the stress between those different places - it's too far apart. ...But they are connected through the fact we are on a plate boundary and we have faultlines and earthquakes all over the place."It was a reminder that people needed to check their foundations and brick chimneys, have emergency supplies and a family escape plan, he said.An undersea volcano eruption in Tonga on 15 January, 2022.Tonga Meteorological Services / EyePress via AFPTongan volcano 'erupted into space'Referring to the global interconnectedness of an event having an impact in other parts of the world, Leonard recalled the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai undersea volcano in Tonga in 2022."It sent a shock wave in the atmosphere and a tsunami around the entire global atmosphere and oceans because it was so huge."That eruption overshot the atmosphere and erupted into space because of the explosivity of a big cauldera collapse like generated Lake Taupō."He said it was so enormous it was heard in Aotearoa as well as in the other direction, Alaska."It was incredibly loud," he said.The atmospheric pressure in the ocean was so great it was able to generate a metres-high tsunami as far away as South America, Leonard said.El Niño is tracking to be the strongest in the last 100 years and "we're in it, starting now", he said."It's a natural process but climate change is amplifying this."The country was already seeing drier conditions in the east, westerly windflows and "spikier" conditions, meaning higher temperatures."It's going to be an interesting period and a very strong El Niño."