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Avalanche Detection Using Passive Radar
In winter, avalanches pose the biggest danger in mountains. Avalanche monitoring is therefore of critical importance to ensure the safety of people and infrastructure.
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On Hurricanes and Hoaxes: A Case for Finding Common Ground
Conspiracy theories offer an easy, emotionally satisfying answer to a complicated problem. Instead of facing the reality of climate change, or reckoning with their own complicity, people can choose a different story: that climate disasters are manipulated, that scientists are corrupt, and that the crisis is exaggerated for political gain.
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Crisis Management Agencies Facing Crises
Ninety-five percent of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency’s funding comes from federal sources.
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Trump’s Cuts to Federal Wildfire Crews Could Have “Scary” Consequences
President Donald Trump’s moves to slash the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of wildland firefighters and support personnel, fire professionals warn, leaving communities to face deadly consequences when big blazes arrive this summer. States, tribes and fire chiefs are preparing for a fire season with minimal federal support.
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Trump Says He’s Sending Water to LA. It’s Actually Going to Megafarms.
The president’s executive orders on California water will help irrigate Central Valley farms. They won’t do anything to fight wildfires.
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What It Takes to Regrow a Community After Wildfire
As it recovers, Altadena finds inspiration in other wildfire-devastated communities that have replanted lawns, gardens, and green spaces with fire-resistant native species.
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Can Voice-to-Text AI Help Scientists Predict Earthquakes?
By using automatic speech recognition designed to encode waveforms for translation, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory were able to modify this voice-to-text AI to correctly predict the timing of a slip during a repeating collapse sequence producing approximately magnitude-5 earthquakes at the Kīlauea volcano on Hawai’i.
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Perfect Storm: Megafires Set the Stage for Debris Flows
Storms now pounding Southern California are raising the specter of more danger for residents — debris flows in areas already reeling from devastating fires. Flows pose bigger threat than typical mudslides.
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Trump Wants States to Handle Disasters without FEMA. They Say They Can’t.
Trump has called the FEMA a “disaster” and suggested it might “go away.” He said states would best take care of hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires on their own, with the federal government reimbursing some of the costs. But emergency managers say the federal agency’s role is irreplaceable.
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Huge Areas May Face Possibly Fatal Heat Waves if Warming Continues
A new assessment warns that if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2 degrees C over the preindustrial average, widespread areas may become too hot during extreme heat events for many people to survive without artificial cooling.
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Strengthening School Violence Prevention
Violence by K-12 students is disturbingly common. Ensuring that schools have effective ways to identify and prevent such incidents is becoming increasingly important. Expanding intervention options and supporting K-12 school efforts in Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) would help.
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Get Rid of FEMA? Trump-appointed Group to Look at Shifting Disaster Response to States.
Governors and state legislatures may have to bolster their natural disaster response and recovery efforts in the coming years as President Donald Trump looks for ways to shift the federal government’s role onto states.
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Climate Change Primed LA to Burn — Catastrophically
A new analysis finds that human-caused warming helped dry out the vegetation that turned Los Angeles into a firestorm.
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How Emotions Influence How People Deal with Natural Disasters
Researchers led by a University of Montrel architecture professor look at how fear, anger and pride combine to shape responses to climate risks in four Latin American communities.
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In Times of Crisis, States Have Few Tools to Fight Misinformation
While officials in Southern California fought fire and falsehoods, Meta —the parent company of Facebook and Instagram —announced it would eliminate its fact-checking program in the name of free expression. As social media companies are pushing back against efforts to crack down on falsehoods, questions are asked about what, if anything, state governments can do to stop the spread of harmful lies and rumors that proliferate on social media.
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The long view
The Surprising Reasons Floods and Other Disasters Are Deadlier at Night
It’s not just that it’s dark and people are asleep. Urban sprawl, confirmation bias, and other factors can play a role.
Why Flash Flood Warnings Will Continue to Go Unheeded
Experts say local education and community support are key to conveying risk.