Knowledge Base highlights and editors' picks

Top stories and editors' picks from the most recent additions. Explore the whole Knowledge Base.

Every week the PreventionWeb team of editors selects the latest news and research, reports and publications on disaster risk reduction – here is their selection of the latest must-read content.

Update

22 May 2023

An Asian grass helps Mexican farmers build resilience to climate change

Planting vetiver grass in tropical regions is a cheap and simple way to prevent soil erosion, capture carbon dioxide and detoxify the soil, with this nature-based solution already in use for decades in India and now becoming increasingly popular elsewhere

Mongabay

Research briefs

23 May 2023

Eruption of Tonga underwater volcano found to disrupt satellite signals halfway around the world

An international team has used satellite- and ground-based ionospheric observations to demonstrate that an air pressure wave triggered by volcanic eruptions which severely disrupted satellite-based communications.

Nagoya University

Update

22 May 2023

Helping more people stay safe with flood forecasting

Flood Hub is expanding to 80 countries, providing forecasting up to 7 days in advance of a flood to 460 million people.

Google

Update

21 May 2023

‘Painting with fire’: how northern Australia developed one of the world’s best bushfire management programs

Right now, hundreds of bushfires are burning across northern Australia. But this is not a wildfire catastrophe – in fact, these burns are making things safer in one of the most fire-prone landscapes in the world.

Conversation Media Group, the

Research briefs

18 May 2023

UAF scientists find novel way to measure earthquakes

Sensors that detect changes in atmospheric pressure due to ground shaking can also obtain data about large earthquakes and explosions that exceed the upper limit of many seismometers, according to new research.

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Update

22 May 2023

Economic costs of weather-related disasters soars but early warnings save lives

Extreme weather, climate and water-related events caused 11 778 reported disasters between 1970 and 2021, with just over 2 million deaths and US$ 4.3 trillion in economic losses, according to a new figure from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

Update

19 May 2023

Closing the early warnings gap

'Early Warnings for All - Closing the gap and scaling up good practices', a Risk Reduction Hub side event at the Midterm Review of the Sendai Framework, explored how the world can close the gap and scale up implementation of early warning systems.

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)

Research briefs

18 May 2023

In years after El Niño, global economy loses trillions

New study is among the first to evaluate the long-term costs of El Niño and projects losses that far exceed those estimated by previous research.

Dartmouth College

Update

18 May 2023

How AI is making weather forecasts more accurate

Two NASA scientists estimate that the Zeus AI model can generate more accurate forecasts faster than U.S. government models such as the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Northeastern University

Update

17 May 2023

Global temperatures set to reach new records in next five years

Global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fuelled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño event, according to a new update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

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