Natural disasters

The Use of Earthquake Science for Assessing Risks to Gas Pipelines
New study highlights the need to continue efforts to systematically quantify nationwide earthquake risk to gas pipelines in the United States, which manages the largest gas pipeline network in the world.
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Simulation Models of Potential Asteroid Collisions
An asteroid impact can be enough to ruin anyone’s day, but several small factors can make the difference between an out-of-this-world story and total annihilation.
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Improving Estimates of Population Exposed to Sea Level Rise: Not as Straightforward as It May Seem
An analysis of data from 2015 finds that between 750 million and more than a billion people globally resided in the ≤ 10 meters low elevation coastal zone (LECZ), up from 521 million and 745 million in 1990. Understanding the number and location of people living LECZ is necessary for policy makers and communities preparing for and adapting to impacts from sea level rise caused by climate change.
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Increasingly Frequent Wildfires Linked to Human-Caused Climate Change: Study
New research strengthens the case that climate change has been the main cause of the growing amount of land in the western U.S. that has been destroyed by large wildfires over the past two decades.
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2021’s Climate Disasters Revealed an East-West Weather Divide, with One Side of the Country Too Wet, the Other Dangerously Dry
Alongside a lingering global pandemic, the year 2021 was filled with climate disasters, some so intense they surprised even the scientists who study them. Many of these extreme weather events have been linked to human-caused climate change, and they offer a glimpse of what to expect in a rapidly warming world. In the U.S., something in particular stood out: a sharp national precipitation divide, with one side of the country too wet, the other too dry.
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Has Winter Blown Off Course?
What in the world is going on in the West? Some say that climate change has affected this year’s winter in the Western region of the country, while others are wondering what the lack of snowpack might mean for regional water supply, which is already in a precarious state.
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New Tool Pinpoints Natural Disaster Risk Down to County Level
NOAA has released an innovative mapping tool that provides county-level information on natural disaster hazards across the United States. This new feature provides significant enhancements to the state-level data on NOAA’s Billion-Dollar Disasters website.
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Tornadoes and Climate Change: What a Warming World Means for Deadly Twisters and the Type of Storms That Spawn Them
The deadly tornado outbreak that tore through communities from Arkansas to Illinois on the night of Dec. 10-11, 2021, was so unusual in its duration and strength, particularly for December, that a lot of people including the U.S. president are asking what role climate change might have played – and whether tornadoes will become more common in a warming world. Both questions are easier asked than answered, but research is offering new clues.
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On the Move: How Nations Address Climate-Driven Migration
One of the most consequential human responses to climate change is and will continue to be the mass movement of people. Rising temperatures which reduce agricultural opportunities can lead to mass migrations away from struggling communities. As the environmental impacts of climate change increase in scope and severity, more and more people will move to new places to preserve or enhance their lives and livelihoods. How do nations address, and plan to address, the growing wave of migrants fleeing their home countries in search for better living conditions?
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Storm Drains Keep Swallowing People During Floods
An alarming number of people (especially children) have drowned after disappearing into storm drains during floods. The deadly problem should be easy for federal, state and local government agencies to fix, but tragedy strikes again and again.
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Texas Energy Regulators, Gas Industry Try to Reassure the Public That the State’s Power Grid Is Ready for Winter
As state regulators and the companies that power the grid take steps to avoid another catastrophe like February’s winter storm, climate experts say this winter will likely be milder.
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Helping Calculate Likelihood of Worst-Case Scenarios
If you had to guess, what would you think is most likely to end all life on Earth: a meteor strike, climate change, or a solar flare? New statistical method could help accurately analyze low-probability, high-risk events such as earthquakes, pandemics, or meteor strikes.
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Community-Based Solutions to Enhance Disaster Resilience
The NSF announced a $15.9 million in awards to teams to conduct and evaluate ready-to-implement pilot projects that address community-identified challenges. A significant portion of the funds was awarded to projects focusing on resilience to natural disasters in the context of equipping communities for greater preparedness to and response after disasters such as floods, hurricanes and wildfires.
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Ground Improvement Technique Ahead of Earthquakes
Helping engineers better understand and predict the “liquefaction” hazard during earthquakes and more reliably mitigate it.
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Balance of Power—Building a Resilient Electric Grid
Events such as blackouts and outages are increasing in frequency as the nation’s infrastructure ages and climate change leads to extreme weather events. Hotter, wetter summers and harsher winters require more reliance on heating and cooling utilities, placing higher stress on the nation’s electric grid. Newtechnology can ‘help keep the lights on’ during emergencies.
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