This before-and-after image shows the ice sheet vanishing from a valley in the Aru Range of Tibet.

(NASA)

At a Glance

One of the largest recorded ice avalanches in the world occurred in Tibet's Aru Range in July.Scientists still don't know exactly why it happened, but they suspect climate change is responsible for the massive slide.

On July 17, one of recorded history's largest ice avalanches was triggered in Tibet.

Located in a narrow valley of the Aru Range, the ice slide left behind a pile of debris nearly 4 square miles in size , according to NASA. Nine people were killed by the avalanche, as well as hundreds of sheep and more than 100 yaks, the report added.

Only one other ice avalanche is comparable in size; it broke free from the KolkaGlacier in the Caucasus Mountains in 2002, NASA also said. What's more, scientists are still not sure what could cause something like the July 17 ice avalanche to occur.

"This is new territory scientifically," Andreas Kääb, a glaciologist at the University of Oslo, told NASA. "It is unknown why an entire glacier tongue would shear off like this. We would not have thought this was even possible before Kolka happened."

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In the animated image above, you can see the scope of the ice that was lost during the slide. The photos were captured about a month apart– one on June 24 and the other on July 21. In the second image, the ice sheet is totally gone, lost forever to the waterway at the base of the valley.

The first image was captured by NASA's Operational Land Imager aboard Landsat 8, while the "after" photo was taken by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite, according to NASA.

In the wake of the disaster, experts suggested climate change , China Daily reported. Rising temperatures have been known to melt and crack the glaciers, and scientists warned more falling ice could be seen in the region in the future, the report added.

"Climate change is causing more glacial hazards ," Tian Lide, a glaciologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, told Nature.com. "There is an urgent need for more monitoring and research efforts, especially in populated areas in high mountains."

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The Aprapaho Glacier in Colorado in 1898. (NASA)