Research briefs

As drought becomes a more regular occurrence, a new study looks at the U.S. Drought Monitor, the nation’s preeminent drought classifier, to see how it has reflected climate change since 2000.

By introducing a new paradigm for studying landslide shapes and failure types, a global team of researchers has provided help for those who work to predict landslides and risk evaluations.

Researchers in North Carolina have created a coastal evolution model to analyze how coastal management activities on barrier islands, meant to adapt to sea-level rise, interact with natural processes that would otherwise keep barrier islands above water.

The results, published in the journal Earth’s Future, suggest significant and widespread effects on air quality, climate, health, and economics under the most extreme wildfire scenarios.

SLF researchers expect an elevated wildfire danger in the Alpine Foreland from 2040 onwards due to changing meteorological conditions. The danger currently remains very low in that region, but there is likely to be a shift as a result of climate change.

A key uncertainty in how much and how fast the seas will rise lies in whether currently “stable” parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet can become “unstable”. One such region is West Antarctica’s Siple Coast.

Locations around the globe are experiencing climate disasters on a regular basis. But some of the most marginalized populations experience disasters so often it has come to be normalized.

A new study goes deep into the Gulf of Alaska to examine the sixth-largest underwater landslide and investigate why a similar event hasn’t happened since.

New research has uncovered a feedback loop that may be accelerating the melting of the floating portions of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, pushing up global sea levels.

By studying a miniature version of the ground in the lab, scientists at the UvA Institute of Physics have demonstrated how earthquakes and landslides can be triggered by a small external shock wave.