Natural Disasters57
-
Track the Number of People in Irene’s Path
As Hurricane Irene barrels up the East Coast, the number of people affected is rising. Based on calculations at 2 pm on Saturday, more than 47 million people were within 100 miles of the storm track; and nearly 69 million within 200 miles, according to Columbia’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network(CIESIN). Visit CIESIN’s…
-
A Famine Foretold
Climate and food security expert Jim Hansen lays out the root causes of food insecurity in East Africa.
-
Remote Sensing Critical for Monitoring Drought
Remote sensing scientist Pietro Ceccato talks about how satellite information is being used to monitor conditions in East Africa.
-
Climate Underpinnings of East Africa Drought
Watch a video interview of climate scientist Brad Lyon on the conditions leading up to the ongoing drought in East Africa. He says there’s a chance of La Niña forming later in the year, which could have devastating consequences for a region already plagued by widespread famine.
-
Undersea Clues to Haiti’s Earthquake History
For all of its violent destruction, the earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, hardly scratched the surface of the island. But scientists now say they have found some of the best clues to understanding the quake under water.
-
The Year of Drought and Flood
It seems that this year the world is experiencing a crisis of both too little water and too much. And while these crises often occur simultaneously in different regions, they also happen in the same places as short, fierce bursts of rain punctuate long dry spells.
-
Collecting Data Offshore Alaska, But Just Barely
One of the core objectives of our project is to image the part of the plate tectonic boundary that locks up and then ruptures to produce great earthquakes. To examine deep parts of the interface between the Pacific plate and the North American plate in the Aleutian subduction zone, we need to go as close…
-
Lurking Under Bangladesh: The Next Great Earthquake?
Beneath Bangladesh: The Next Great Earthquake? from Earth Institute on Vimeo. After the recent great quakes that have swept away entire coastlines and cities in Japan, Haiti and Sumatra, scientists are now looking hard at the nation that may suffer the gravest threat of all: Bangladesh. A new documentary from the Earth Institute follows seismologists as they trace signs of…
-
Summoning ocean bottom seismometers from the deep
After leaving our seismometers on the seafloor offshore Alaska for a few days to record sound waves generated by the air guns of the R/V Langseth, we returned to collect them. The recovery of OBS always involves a certain amount of suspense.
