Natural Disasters News

May 21, 2024

Top Headlines

Warming Climate Intensifies Flash Droughts Worldwide

May 21, 2024 — Sudden, severe dry spells known as flash droughts are rising in intensity around the world, with a notable exception in mountainous Central Asia, where flash drought extent is shrinking, according to new research. Heat and changes to precipitation ...

Subduction Zone Splay Faults Compound Hazards of Great Earthquakes

May 20, 2024 — Groundbreaking research has provided new insight into the tectonic plate shifts that create some of the Earth's largest earthquakes and ...

Clues from Deep Magma Reservoirs Could Improve Volcanic Eruption Forecasts

May 10, 2024 — New research into molten rock 20km below the Earth's surface could help save lives by improving the prediction of volcanic ...

Heavy Snowfall and Rain May Contribute to Some Earthquakes

May 8, 2024 — Episodes of heavy snowfall and rain likely contributed to a swarm of earthquakes over the past several years in northern Japan, researchers find. Their study shows climate conditions could initiate some ...

Latest Headlines

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Highly Sensitive Fiber Optic Gyroscope Senses Rotational Ground Motion Around Active Volcano

May 21, 2024 — Researchers have built a prototype fiber optic gyroscope for high resolution, real-time monitoring of ground rotations caused by earthquakes in the ...

Take Cover! Survey Shows Tornado Warnings Widely Misunderstood

May 9, 2024 — A study showed that about half of those surveyed in the mid-South could not accurately identify a tornado ...

Researchers Show That Slow-Moving Earthquakes Are Controlled by Rock Permeability

May 7, 2024 — A research group explores how the makeup of rocks, specifically their permeability -- or how easily fluids can flow through them -- affects the ...

Lake Tsunamis Pose Significant Threat Under Warming Climate

May 6, 2024 — The names might not be familiar -- Cowee Creek, Brabazon Range, Upper Pederson Lagoon -- but they mark the sites of recent lake tsunamis, a phenomenon that is increasingly common in Alaska, British ...

Do Earthquake Hazard Maps Predict Higher Shaking Than Actually Occurred?

May 1, 2024 — A research team studied earthquake hazard maps from five countries and found that all the maps seemed to overpredict the historically observed earthquake shaking intensities. In analyzing the ...

Details of Hurricane Ian's Aftermath Captured With New Remote Sensing Method

Apr. 29, 2024 — Using aerial imagery data and LiDAR, a study remotely identified the hardest-hit areas of Southwest Florida's Estero Island in the aftermath of ...

Researchers Introduce New Way to Study, Help Prevent Landslides

Apr. 26, 2024 — Landslides are one of the most destructive natural disasters on the planet, causing billions of dollars of damage and devastating loss of life every year. A global team of researchers has provided ...

Marginalized Communities Developed 'Disaster Subculture' When Living Through Extreme Climate Events

Apr. 23, 2024 — An assistant professor conducted a study in which he lived among one of the poorest, most marginalized communities in Seoul, South Korea. In the ...

Scientists Trigger Mini-Earthquakes in the Lab

Apr. 19, 2024 — Earthquakes and landslides are famously difficult to predict and prepare for. By studying a miniature version of the ground in the lab, scientists have demonstrated how these events can be triggered ...

CO2 Worsens Wildfires by Helping Plants Grow

Apr. 16, 2024 — By fueling the growth of plants that become kindling, carbon dioxide is driving an increase in the severity and frequency of wildfires, according to a new ...

Rock Permeability, Microquakes Link May Be a Boon for Geothermal Energy

Apr. 11, 2024 — Using machine learning, researchers have tied low-magnitude microearthquakes to the permeability of subsurface rocks beneath the Earth, a discovery that could have implications for improving ...

Cloud Engineering Could Be More Effective 'Painkiller' for Global Warming Than Previously Thought

Apr. 11, 2024 — Cloud 'engineering' could be more effective for climate cooling than previously thought, because of the increased cloud cover produced, new research ...

Research Examines Tweets During Hurricane María to Analyze Social Media Use During Disasters

Apr. 9, 2024 — Understanding how social media is used during a disaster can help with disaster preparedness and recovery for future ...

Mathematical Innovations Enable Advances in Seismic Activity Detection

Mar. 26, 2024 — Scientists successfully addressed mathematical challenges in conventional Spectral Matrix analysis, used to analyze three-component seismic signals, by introducing time-delay components. The new ...

Unintended Consequences of Fire Suppression

Mar. 25, 2024 — A new study reveals how fire suppression ensures that wildfires will burn under extreme conditions at high severity, exacerbating the impacts of climate change and fuel ...

What Kinds of Seismic Signals Did Swifties Send at LA Concert?

Mar. 13, 2024 — Seattle may have experienced its own Swift Quake last July, but at an August 2023 concert Taylor Swift's fans in Los Angeles gave scientists a lot of shaking to ponder. After some debate, a ...

Ready for the Storm: Researchers Analyze Infrastructure, Demographics to See Where Tornadoes Are Most Disruptive

Mar. 13, 2024 — Researchers examined demographics, infrastructure and more than seven decades of weather data to determine which places in Kentucky are most vulnerable to ...

Advanced Noise Suppression Technology for Improved Search and Rescue Drones

Mar. 6, 2024 — Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are beneficial in search and rescue missions during natural disasters like earthquakes. However, current UAVs depend on visual information and cannot detect victims ...

Climate Change Threatens Thousands of Archaeological Sites in Coastal Georgia

Feb. 28, 2024 — Thousands of historic and archaeological sites in Georgia are at risk from tropical storm surges, and that number will increase with climate change, according to a new ...

Study Finds Drought Fuels Invasive Species After Wildfires

Feb. 28, 2024 — Scientists uncover the intricate dance between drought, wildfires and invasive species in Southern California's coastal sage scrub ...

Climate Change Linked to Rise in Mental Distress Among Teens, According to Drexel Study

Feb. 22, 2024 — Worsening human-induced climate change may have effects beyond the widely reported rising sea levels, higher temperatures, and impacts on food supply and migration -- and may also extend to ...

Cooler, Wetter Parts of Pacific Northwest Likely to See More Fires, New Simulations Predict

Feb. 22, 2024 — Forests in the coolest, wettest parts of the western Pacific Northwest are likely to see the biggest increases in burn probability, fire size and number of blazes as the climate continues to get ...

Biggest Holocene Volcano Eruption Found by Seabed Survey

Feb. 22, 2024 — A detailed survey of the volcanic underwater deposits around the Kikai caldera in Japan clarified the deposition mechanisms as well as the event's magnitude. As a result, the research team found ...

New Detection Method Aims to Warn of Landslide Tsunamis

Feb. 21, 2024 — Researchers have devised a way to remotely detect large landslides within minutes of occurrence and to quickly determine whether they are close to open water and present a tsunami ...

Wildfires Linked to Surge in Mental Health-Related Emergency Department Visits

Feb. 20, 2024 — A new studyshows wildfires lead to an increase of anxiety-related emergency department visits in the western United States, amplifying the concerning parallel trajectory of two escalating public ...

Earthquake Fatality Measure Offers New Way to Estimate Impact on Countries

Feb. 16, 2024 — A new measure that compares earthquake-related fatalities to a country's population size concludes that Ecuador, Lebanon, Haiti, Turkmenistan, Iran and Portugal have experienced the greatest ...

Early-Stage Subduction Invasion

Feb. 15, 2024 — Our planet's lithosphere is broken into several tectonic plates. Their configuration is ever-shifting, as supercontinents are assembled and broken up, and oceans form, grow, and then start to ...

Ancient Rocks Improve Understanding of Tectonic Activity Between Earthquakes

Feb. 7, 2024 — Rocks once buried deep in ancient subduction zones -- where tectonic plates collide -- could help scientists make better predictions of how these zones behave during the years between major ...

What Turned Earth Into a Giant Snowball 700 Million Years Ago? Scientists Now Have an Answer

Feb. 7, 2024 — Inspired during field work in South Australia's Flinders Ranges, geoscientists have proposed that all-time low volcanic carbon dioxide emissions triggered a 57-million-year-long global ...

New Method to More Accurately Spot Underground Nuclear Tests

Feb. 7, 2024 — A more accurate way of identifying underground nuclear tests, including those conducted in secret, has been ...