Research briefs

Western disturbances are hanging out over India for longer, adversely affecting water security in the country.

To support national guidelines, experts say adaptation measures must be tailored to local conditions, and basic research enhanced.

A lengthy drought that caused widespread disruption to commercial ships passing through the Panama Canal in 2023 would have been “unlikely” without the influence of El Niño, according to a rapid attribution study.

A new study shows that even on days where there is no official heatwave warning, the threat from heat remains. The authors showed the association of a newly formulated India heat index (IHI) with daily all-cause mortality in the three cities.

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.