The report by the World Weather Attribution cautioned that climate change was not the sole cause of the Aug. 26 disaster. A large 2015 Nepal earthquake may have weakened the rock years before the collapse, their analysis found.

"This disaster was not an extreme weather event, but the fingerprints of climate change are still clear to see in long-term changes," said Ben Clarke, a climate researcher at Imperial College London who worked on the analysis, in a press statement.

More than 1,300 people were killed and over 5,000 remain missing after a massive section of rock and overlying glacier collapsed near Nepal's border with China. The resulting torrent of water, ice, boulders and sediment swept through communities along the Trishuli River corridor and caused billions of dollars in damage.

Climate scientists said that across the Himalayas rising temperatures are causing glaciers to retreat and thawing permanently frozen ground that helps bind fractured mountain rock together. That means climate change can alter not only weather hazards such as heat and heavy rain, but the stability of the mountains themselves—threatening communities concentrated in narrow river valleys below.

The analysis did not determine whether the collapse would have happened without climate change, caused mainly by the release of greenhouse gases when fuels like oil, gas and coal are burned. However, researchers concluded that warming intensified several processes that made the slope less stable over decades.