Is Climate Change to Blame for the Mount Everest Avalanche?

Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. (Wikimedia/Shrimpo1967)

The icy slopes of Mount Everest have seen hundreds of deaths in the years since 1922, when seven people perished during the British Mount Everest Expedition.
An April 18 avalanche claimed at least 12 lives, in what may be the single deadliest climbing event in the history of the world's tallest mountain (29,029 feet). The death toll may rise, because other climbers are still missing, according to the BBC.
All of the deceased were guides from the ethnic Sherpa community, who were securing ropes for the start of the spring climbing season. And many Sherpas insist that Mount Everest and other mountains in the area have become more dangerous because of climate change. [Ice World: Gallery of Awe-Inspiring Glaciers]
"In 1989 when I first climbed Everest there was a lot of snow and ice, but now most of it has just become bare rock. That, as a result, is causing more rock falls, which is a danger to the climbers," said Apa Sherpa, a Nepali climber, as quoted in Discovery News.

"Also, climbing is becoming more difficult, because when you are on a [snowy] mountain you can wear crampons, but it's very dangerous and very slippery to walk on bare rock with crampons," he added.

Avalanches and climate change

Avalanches have been around for centuries, of course, and researchers can't blame any single event on climate change. Some evidence exists, however, that a warming planet and changes in precipitation may increse the likelihood of certain types of avalanches at certain times of the year.
A 2001 study from the Annals of Glaciology found that increases in temperature and precipitation could slightly decrease the risk of avalanches in mid-winter in France, but could significantly increase the risk of spring avalanches.
Those findings were echoed in a 2013 report from the journal Applied Snow and Avalanche Research, which found that in Canada's Glacier National Park, an increase in rain (instead of snow) during the winter could result in greater instability in the snowpack, leading to more late-winter avalanches.

http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/climate-change-blame-mount-everest-avalanche-20140421