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Displaying 75 of about 75 resultsClimate change increases frequency of extreme events such as flooding. This reinforces the need to develop methods for more precise and faster flood forecasting in order to better protect the population in the future. A research team from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) has prese…
Temperatures have steadily increased since global records began in 1850. According to NOAA, the rate of warming since 1982 is more than three times as fast: 0.36°F (0.20°C) per decade. 2023 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850 by a wide margin, and the past decade, between 2014 and 2023, was also the warmest year in the historica…
As the climate warms and Antarctica’s glaciers and ice sheets melt, the resulting rise in sea level has the potential to displace hundreds of millions of people around the world by the end of this century.A key uncertainty in how much and how fast the seas will rise lies in whether currently “stable” parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet can become “uns…
Earthquakes and landslides are famously difficult to predict and prepare for. By studying a miniature version of the ground in the lab, scientists at the UvA Institute of Physics have demonstrated how these events can be triggered by a small external shock wave. Bring a flotation device: it involves the ground briefly turning into a liquid!Unlike a true…
In late 2023, a series of earthquakes struck off the coast of eastern Mindanao, an island in the southern part of the Philippines. A tsunamigenic magnitude 7.4 earthquake occurred on Dec. 2, which was followed by numerous aftershocks, including some greater than magnitude 6. Just two days later, another earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 struck about 70…
An interview with Juan Bazo, climate scientist with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, by Susana Arroyo Barrantes, IFRC Americas Regional Communications ManagerSusana Arroyo: In October 2023, Hurricane Otis caused a lot of astonishment after it went from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in just 12 hours. According to the U.S. Nati…
In an era marked by escalating geopolitical conflicts, the sanctity and resilience of the global scientific community have never been more crucial. This report, "Protecting Science in Times of Crisis: How do we stop being reactive and become more proactive?" emerges at a critical juncture, addressing the urgent need to protect scientists, academics, and…
This report brings together best practices in earthquake risk reduction from China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, as well as Mongolia, which were shared in a regional online workshop organized in August 2023 by the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) as part of a collaboration bet…
To assess a community’s risk of extreme weather, policymakers rely first on global climate models that can be run decades, and even centuries, forward in time, but only at a coarse resolution. These models might be used to gauge, for instance, future climate conditions for the northeastern U.S., but not specifically for Boston.To estimate Boston’s futur…
When allergy season hits, many blame their reactions on the local flora in the spring. However, African Saharan-Sahelian dust plumes, large enough to register on weather radar, travel around the globe every summer, bringing their own form of air pollution.Dr. Shankar Chellam, professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and…
In this paper, the authors evaluate the extent to which artificial intelligence (AI) trained on open, public datasets can be used to improve global access to forecasts of extreme events in global rivers. On the basis of the model and experiments described in this paper, they developed an operational system that produces short-term (7-day) flood forecast…
An inspiring initiative to bolster resilience against climate change in Vanuatu has seen the island nation take proactive steps to harness traditional knowledge within its communities. Local Civil Society Organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations from across the archipelago are now equipped with essential skills to navigate the challenges p…
A global team of researchers has made strides in refining weather forecasting methods using machine learning. Scientists have been looking for better ways to make weather forecasts more accurate. Despite the maturity of ensemble numerical weather prediction (NWP), the resulting forecasts are still, more often than not, under-dispersed. As such, fo…
The landslide in Brienz (GR) in 2023 kept Switzerland on tenterhooks for weeks. Researchers from ETH Zurich, WSL and SLF used a model to provide a highly accurate blind prediction of where the sliding mass would come to rest. ETH Professor Johan Gaume explains how the model works and where its limitations lie.Johan Gaume, Joint Professor of Alpine Mass…
Australian scientists are getting closer to detecting bushfires in record time, thanks to cube satellites with onboard AI now able to detect fires from space 500 times faster than traditional on-ground processing of imagery.Remote sensing and computer science researchers have overcome the limitations of processing and compressing large amounts of hypers…