Science-policy-practice interface

To commemorate World Tsunami Awareness Day – marked each year on 5 November – UNDRR held an innovation showcase and policy dialogue, generously hosted by the Permanent Mission of Japan in Geneva.

Running a global glacier model at daily rather than monthly resolution across more than 12,500 glaciers reproduces observed mass loss better and projects a 5 to 10 per cent larger glacier contribution to 21st-century sea-level rise.

An experiment comparing a complete warning message with versions each missing one element found hazard impact had the greatest effect on understanding, belief, personalisation and decision-making – more than the hazard name or guidance.

New modelling suggests the tropical Pacific could stay in an El Niño-like state for centuries even after net zero is reached, with a larger share of El Niño events turning extreme. The longer emissions take to fall, the more of them.

Federal agencies in the United States already use drones to map wildfires and detect hotspots. The Forest Service is now testing ground robots, and researchers are training machine-learning models on drone imagery to predict how fast a fire will spread.

Firefighter and researcher Marc Castellnou sends weather balloons into towering wildfire plumes to measure temperature, wind and humidity, opening a new way to anticipate when a fire turns extreme – and why some keep burning fiercely at night.

This guide summarizes global evidence on extreme heat and health, showing rising heat-related illness, death and economic losses, and highlighting Heat-Health Action Plans, surveillance, governance and equitable adaptation as key responses.