A new model of geomagnetically induced currents revisits how space weather damaged a New Zealand grid transformer in 2001, and shows how much worse it could be in a space weather superstorm.
Hazards & Disasters
Posted inNews
Damage Assessment by Laser Could Focus Postearthquake Response
Airborne lidar surveys taken before and after a powerful 2016 earthquake in Japan revealed the potential for such surveys to identify hard-hit buildings quickly.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Measuring Emissions from Smoldering Peat Fires
A new study measures emission factors for tropical peatland fires in Malaysia.
Posted inScience Updates
A New Massive Open Online Course on Natural Disasters
Two professors put their college course online. Enrollment jumped more than 20-fold, and a forum for exchanging ideas with a multigenerational international community was born.
Posted inNews
Were Mexico’s September Quakes Chance or a Chain Reaction?
Last year, two major earthquakes—one 12 days after the first—shook Mexico. New analysis blames this very unlikely event on chance. But one of the pair may have triggered a third large nearby temblor.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Mapping Extreme-Value Geoelectric Fields
To help mitigate magnetic storm interference on electric power grid operations, extreme-value geoelectric fields have been mapped across the mid-Atlantic United States.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
How Does Snow Affect the Intensity of Mountain Precipitation?
A new investigation into the sensitivity of extreme precipitation in a changing climate indicates that more winter rainfall and protracted snowmelt may require local adaptations to winter flooding impacts.
Posted inScience Updates
Assessing the Many Influences of High-Latitude Dust
First International Conference on High Latitude Cold Climate Dust (HLCCD); Reykjavík, Iceland, 22–25 May 2017
Posted inEditors' Vox
Modeling Megathrust Zones
A recent paper in Review of Geophysics built a unifying model to predict the surface characteristics of large earthquakes.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Airborne Fireball
A surprise sighting of a meteor in the sky above southeast Michigan.