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Hurricane-proof data center built inside 770,000 gallon water tank
The city of Altamonte Springs, Florida decided that the best protection against downtimes caused by hurricanes is to build the city’s data center inside a 770,000 gallon water tank; the dome-shaped tank offered 8-inch-thick walls of reinforced concrete and was situated only 100 feet from City Hall
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Large parts of the world are drying up
The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa, and South America, have been drying up in the past decade as a result of intensified “evapotranspiration” — the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere
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Giant blimps to ferry hospitals, buildings to disaster zones
Giant airship will be able to lift up to 150 tons — more than seven times the weight that helicopters are able to carry; the airship, which will be able to move aid — or even portable hospitals and entire buildings — to remote areas or disaster zones, harnesses aerostatic lift, meaning it is able to fly using lighter-than-air (LTA) gases that keep it buoyant rather than aerodynamic lift
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California prepares for the Big One
The scientific community in California is growing more and more wary of the potential for a major seismic event since the last that occurred was in 1857; a recent study projected that there was a 99 percent chance that a 6.7 magnitude earthquake would strike somewhere in California during the next thirty years
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DHS seeks comments on small business preparedness plan
DHS seeks public comments on a private sector readiness certification program specifically tailored to the needs of small businesses; this first-of-its-kind program will tailor voluntary private sector preparedness certification standards to specifically meet the needs and capabilities of U.S. small businesses
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New hazardous asteroid discovered
A new stellar “potentially hazardous object” (PHO) has been discovered: The object is about 150 feet in diameter and was discovered in images acquired on 16 September; it will come within four million miles of Earth in mid-October
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Cold water-pumping submarines to reduce ferocity of typhoons
Typhoon intensity tends to remain level when ocean surface temperatures are high; reduction in the surface-water temperature would reduce the ferocity of the typhoon; Japanese company receives a patent for a typhoon-intensity-reduction system based on submarines pumping cold water from the depth of the sea to the surface in the typhoon’s path
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New door design to save lives in earthquakes
New door design would save lives during earthquakes; the door looks unremarkable but, in an emergency, it can swivel horizontally on a central pivot a little less than a meter above the ground; at the same time, the door folds horizontally so the bottom half of it remains on the ground, anchoring it to the floor and providing additional protection
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Bridge column withstands 6.9 quake in tests
Engineers in California test a bridge column design capable of withstanding a 6.9 quake; nearly all of California’s 2,194 state-owned bridges have been retrofitted better to withstand tremors; local cities and counties across California own 1,193 with work done on 729 of them
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Videos of quakes 5.5 available for downloading 1.5 hours after occurrence
A Princeton University-led research team has developed the capability to produce realistic movies of earthquakes based on complex computer simulations that can be made available worldwide within hours of a disastrous upheaval; movies of every earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or greater will be available for download about 1.5 hours after the occurrence
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Louisiana worried about Corps' levee armoring plans
Louisiana says the Corps of Engineers is $1 billion short for completing levee construction around New Orleans, while the Corps says it has enough money; the disagreement over the cost of completing levee construction centers on a long-simmering argument over the last construction task scheduled for earthen levees throughout the system: deciding what type of armoring will keep the levees from washing away if they are overtopped
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Geoengineering may affect different regions differently
Geoengineering approaches would succeed in restoring the average global temperature to “normal” levels, but some regions would remain too warm, whereas others would “overshoot” and cool too much; in addition, average rainfall would be reduced
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Vulnerable IT infrastructure means loss of revenue
Europeans businesses are losing approximately 17 billion Euros a year in revenue owing to IT disruptions; on average, European businesses suffer IT failures lasting an average of fourteen hours per company a year, amounting to nearly one million hours of down-time costs
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Asteroids: Earth will be hit by a shotgun blast instead of a single cannonball
Scientists find that many asteroids are not solid rocks, but a collection of small gravel-sized rocks, held together by gravity; instead of a solid mountain colliding with Earth’s surface, the planet would be pelted with the innumerable pebbles and rocks of which it is composed, like a shotgun blast instead of a single cannonball; this knowledge could guide the defensive tactics to be taken if an asteroid were on track to collide with the Earth
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U.S.: hundreds of levees no longer safe -- property owners to pay flood insurance
To keep a levee accredited, local governments or other responsible parties must certify that it can handle a flood so severe that it has a 1 percent chance of occurring each year; FEMA has revoked its accreditation of hundreds of levees nationwide, concluding that they no longer meet its standards that ensure protection during major floods, a decision that forces thousands of property owners to buy federal flood insurance
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More headlines
The long view
Proactively Planning for Community Relocation Before and After Climate Disasters
Between 1980 and mid-2023, 232 billion-dollar disasters occurred in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, with the number of disasters doubling annually since 2018. As the frequency, intensity, and destructiveness of climate change-driven disasters increase, accompanied by an increase in recovery costs, more experts are calling for a managed retreat of entire communities from disaster-prone areas to safer ground.
Number of People Affected by Tropical Cyclones Has Increased Sharply Since 2002
The number of people affected by tropical cyclones has nearly doubled from 2002 to 2019, reaching nearly 800 million people in 2019, according to a new study. More people are affected by tropical cyclones in Asia than any other region, but every affected world region saw an increase in the number of people exposed to tropical cyclones, which are expected to become more intense and possibly more frequent as the climate warms.
Coastal Populations Set to Age Sharply in the Face of Climate Migration
As climate change fuels sea level rise, younger people will migrate inland, leaving aging coastal populations — and a host of consequences — in their wake. While destination cities will work to sustainably accommodate swelling populations, aging coastal communities will confront stark new challenges.
Damaging Thunderstorm Winds Increasing in Central U.S.
Destructive winds that flow out of thunderstorms in the central United States are becoming more widespread with warming temperatures. New research shows that the central U.S. experienced a fivefold increase in the geographic area affected by damaging thunderstorm straight line winds in the past 40 years.