Research briefs

Official flood maps shape disaster preparedness, insurance decisions and urban planning, but large parts of USA are unmapped or under-mapped, so some communities may be left unaware of risks they face, limiting their ability to prepare for future floods.

Georgia Tech researchers tested how well existing outburst flood models reproduced the actual event to find the models consistently underestimated flood conditions. Even improved models struggled to accurately capture the height and timing of floodwaters.

Team from Kyoto University and Kobe University developed a method to identify wind damage and assess mitigation benefits using high-resolution drone and satellite imagery. Homes with blue tarps after a hurricane were used as a proxy for wind damage.

Twenty ensemble members from a 600-year climate simulation reveal that drought extremes are intensifying more rapidly than in the past with respect to moderate droughts.

Before booking a holiday, it pays to check the weather.

UCalgary scientist Dan Shugar lead author of study published in the journal Science on megatsunami more than twice height of the Calgary Tower.

A Stanford Medicine-developed app shows that older adults’ geographic movements — also known as their life-space mobility — shrink in extreme heat that makes leaving the house difficult.

A current system in the Atlantic Ocean that shapes regional climates and distributes ocean nutrients also serves as a control knob to help regulate temperatures across the planet, new research has found.