In the early morning hours of Monday, 6 February, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria. The quake was followed by a magnitude 7.5 event nine hours later, along with more than 200 aftershocks. The scope and scale of the earthquake is overwhelming, and our hearts go out to all … Read more
Starting today, AGU members have until 31 October to comment on revisions to a position statement outlining the role of scientists, policymakers and communities in building resilience to disruptions. AGU encourages all members to read and comment on the position statement because the expert writing panel relies on this feedback. Resilience is the ability of … Read more
AGU’s global community of Earth and space scientists has contributed research and expertise to our understanding of—and solutions for—climate change, natural hazards, and their related impacts on people. Climate change, the increasing severity of extreme weather, and resulting floods are health and economic crises that we cannot ignore. To highlight the role that science plays … Read more
Tomorrow, 13 October, is International Day for Disaster Reduction, created by the United Nations in 1989 to promote risk-awareness and natural disaster reduction. Now, as then, the need for proactive action is clear to help save lives and reduce devastating economic losses. Since 13 October last year, the United States has seen flooding from Tropical … Read more
The San Andreas Fault takes its name from the eponymous reservoir that it crosses along the San Francisco Peninsula. The California Coast Range landscape owes much to the repeated deformation of earthquakes and subsequent landscape response. At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906 an earthquake rupture ripped along the San Andreas Fault from just offshore … Read more
Seven years ago on 11 March 2011, the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake ripped hundreds kilometers of fault northeast of the island of Honshu, spawning a 38-meter-high tsunami that devastated a 1000 km-long stretch of coastline that had been described in the 1700s by Bashō as the most beautiful in all Japan (Ehrlich, 2013). The meltdown … Read more
By Anne Sheehan, AGU Seismology Section President-Elect, Professor of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, and Fellow, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder Eight years ago, on January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, resulting in over 220,000 fatalities (Source: Munich Re) and … Read more
By Ross S. Stein, President of the AGU Tectonophysics Section, CEO of Temblor.net, and Adjunct Professor of Geophysics, Stanford University Fire and Rain Over the past week, those of us living in northern California, and perhaps people throughout the arid western U.S., have watched in horror as fires continue to sweep through the wine country, … Read more
By Linda Rowan, AGU Societal Impacts and Policy Sciences (SIPS) Focus Group President, and Director of External Affairs, UNAVCO Inc. Earth science captures the public’s attention when a natural disaster strikes, when natural resources are needed or when Earth’s environment faces a threat. As the Earth science community prepares to celebrate Earth Science Week from … Read more
By Ramesh P. Singh, Ph.D., AGU Natural Hazards Focus Group President, and Chapman University Professor of Earth System and Remote Sensing On 8 September 1900, the town of Galveston, Texas, close to Houston, was hit by a category 4 hurricane with strong winds of 135 miles per hour and storm surges up to 15 feet … Read more