Editor's note: Yang Zhao is the chief editor of CGTN's Sci-Tech section.
Against the backdrop of a changing climate, the story we most often tell about glaciers is one of disappearance.
They are melting. They are retreating. Satellites and cameras record their decline. Glaciers have become one of the most visible victims of global warming.
But the recent disaster in the Himalayas offers a different warning: cross a certain threshold, and a glacier can become something else – the starting point of a chain of disasters.