On Wednesday 7 October 2026 at 6 pm I will deliver my NTU inaugural lecture entitled “Landslides in a changing climate”. This is a public lecture, so all are welcome.
In UK universities, there is a long tradition of inaugural lectures for newly appointed professors. Wikipedia describes an inaugural lecture as follows:-
“An inaugural lecture is a formal public lecture given at a university by a newly appointed full professor, the holder of a chair. It marks the professor’s official introduction to the academic community. These lectures are often attended by colleagues, students, and sometimes the general public. They are a way to showcase the professor’s expertise and to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution.“
Whilst I have been a professor in a variety of institutions since some time in the early Cretaceous, I am of course a newly appointed professor at NTU. As such I get the privilege of an inaugural lecture.
This is scheduled for Wednesday 7 October 2026, 6 pm (UK time) at the City Campus of NTU. It is a public event, so anyone can attend. I have chosen to title this: “Landslides in a changing climate”. This is the synopsis:-
Landslides are one of the most deadly but poorly appreciated natural hazards. Occurring on every continent on the planet, and indeed on other planets as well, they are responsible for thousands of deaths and billions of pounds worth of losses annually.
Over the 40 year career of Professor Petley, there has been growing evidence that the pattern of landslides is being heavily modified by the effects of human-induced climate change, which is altering both large-scale weather systems, such as the Asian monsoon, and localised rainfall events, such as cloudbursts.
This lecture will draw upon examples from New Zealand, the Himalayas and the UK to examine how both our understanding of the impacts of climate change on landslides, and the patterns of loss from landslides have changed. Reviewing initially the devastating August 2026 landslide and debris flow in Nepal and Tibet, in which over 5,000 people were killed, it will explore the ways in which new technologies have allowed huge improvements in our understanding of landslides. It will review global patterns of landslide losses, and investigate the ways in which these have are being changed by the rapid shifts occurring in our climate. Finally, it will review future prospects for landslide triggered losses, emphasising that both climate driven changes in the hazard and human driven changes in vulnerability mean that losses are likely to accelerate in the coming years.
You are welcome to attend – the event details are here:-
https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/events/events/2026/10/professor-dave-petleys-inaugural-lecture