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Project to Look Below the Surface to Make NYC More Resilient
Hurricanes Ida and Henri caused flooding in New York City, demonstrating the need for comprehensive, quickly accessible data about the spatial relationships between utility conduits, water and waste systems, fuel transit pipelines, transportation tunnels, and other infrastructure beneath our feet.
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Record-Breaking Texas Drought More Severe Than Previously Thought
In 2011, Texas experienced one of its worst droughts ever, with the dry, parched conditions causing more than $7 billion in crop and livestock losses, sparking wildfires, pushing power grids to the limit, and reducing reservoirs to dangerously low levels. A new study finds that the drought was worse than previously thought.
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“Risk Triage” Platform Pinpoints Compounding Threats to U.S. Infrastructure
As climate change amplifies the frequency and intensity of extreme events in the United States and around the world, and the populations and economies they threaten grow and change, there is a critical need to make infrastructure more resilient. But how can this be done in a timely, cost-effective way? Modeling tool developed by MIT researchers focuses on multi-sector dynamics.
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Looking to the Past for Answers on Future Tsunami Threats
Large and destructive tsunamis in the past few decades — in the Indian Ocean in 2004, Chile in 2010 and Japan in 2011 — have underscored the threat tsunamis pose to coastal regions. Now new research is aimed at better predicting areas threatened by such fast-developing natural disasters.
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New Tool Mappin Floods Since 1985 Will Aid Disaster Planning
Free online World Flood Mapping Tool will help plan urban and agricultural development, effective flood defenses, disaster readiness, and identify supply chain vulnerabilities
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Little Difference between Managed, Unmanaged Flows of Urban Stormwater
A new study suggests that expensive efforts to control urban stormwater by investing heavily in green infrastructure — such as water-quality ponds, infiltration basins, porous pavement and riparian plantings — may not have much of an impact.
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Minor Volcanic Eruptions Could “Cascade” into Global Catastrophe
Researchers call for a shift in focus away from risks of “super-volcanic” eruptions and toward likelier scenarios of smaller eruptions in key global ‘pinch points’ creating devastating domino effects.
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Current Southwest Drought Is a Preview of Things to Come
Scientists found that the record-low precipitation that kicked off the unprecedented drought parching the U.S. Southwest since 2020 could have been a fluke—just the rare bad luck of natural variability. But the drought would not have reached its current punishing intensity without the extremely high temperatures brought by human-caused global warming.
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Predicting, Managing, and Preparing for Disasters Like Hurricane Ida
Since Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana almost exactly 16 years ago, the National Academies have helped produce scientific insights and recommendations through initiatives to help policymakers avoid the worst impacts of future disasters.
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Small Increases in Greenhouse Gases Will Lead to Decades-Long “Megadroughts” in U.S. Southwest
Recent NOAA-funded research found that even small additional increases in greenhouse gas emissions will make decades-long “megadroughts” – similar to the drought which has descended on the U.S. southwest nearly twenty years ago — more common.
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Bringing the Power of AI to help Firefighters
With $5 million in support from the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program, researchers will bring the power of AI to help firefighters strategize how best to plan these controlled burns, as well as manage unexpected blazes.
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Improving Use of Flood Insurance
DHS S&T and partners will study improvements to flood insurance, identifying ways to expand the use of flood insurance to reduce the financial losses suffered by homeowners and creditors in future storms.
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Avoiding Water Bankruptcy in the Drought-Troubled Southwest: What the U.S. and Iran Can Learn from Each Other
In August, the U.S. government issued its first ever water shortage declaration for the Colorado River, triggering water use restrictions. The fundamental problem is the unchecked growth of water consumption. The Southwest is in an “anthropogenic drought” created by the combination of natural water variability, climate change and human activities that continuously widen the water supply-demand gap.
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Big Fires Demand a Big Response: How 1910’s Big Burn Can Help Us Think Smarter about Fighting Wildfires and Living with Fire
The aftermath of 1910 Big Burn in Northwestern U.S., the Rockies, and parts of British Columbia, led to bold decision-making in forest and fire management techniques and directives. Now, more than a century later, the 21st century’s big burns are a signal that things have gone terribly wrong.
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Long Power Outages After Disasters Aren’t Inevitable – but to Avoid Them, Utilities Need to Think Differently
Americans are becoming painfully aware that U.S. energy grids are vulnerable to extreme weather events. Hurricanes in the east, wildfires in the west, ice storms, floods and even landslides can trigger widespread power shortages. And climate change is likely making many of these extreme events more frequent, more severe or both.
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The long view
Trump Aims to Shut Down State Climate Policies
President Donald Trump has launched an all-out legal attack on states’ authority to set climate change policy. Climate-focused state leaders say his administration has no legal basis to unravel their efforts.