What is a 100 year flood? A 100 year flood is an event that statistically has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year. A 500 year flood has a .2% chance of occurring and a 1000 year flood has a .1% chance of occurring. The map below relates [the] amount of rainfall that […]
By Kim Chipman and Jim Polson May 14 (Bloomberg) — For Tammy Wolfer of Louisiana, the worst part about the oil slick looming off the Gulf of Mexico coast isn’t that it cut her income from working at a marina and ruined plans to buy a house this year. The worst part is waiting to […]
By Brian K. Sullivan May 4 (Bloomberg) — The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season may rival some of the worst in history as meteorological conditions mirror 2005, the record-breaking year that spawned New Orleans- wrecking Katrina, forecasters say. The El Nino warming in the Pacific is fading and rain is keeping dust down in Africa, cutting […]
ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2010) — Scientists call for more risk-based facility design and improved prevention, response planning Hurricane Katrina was the cause of more than 200 onshore releases of petroleum and other hazardous materials, a new study funded by the National Science Foundation has found. According to comprehensive research using government incident databases, about 8 […]
Caption by Rebecca Lindsey In addition to their battering of human habitats—cities and residential neighborhoods—hurricanes cut a destructive swath through migratory bird habitat. A recent study that combined field surveys of birds with before-and-after satellite images of forests concluded that migratory bird species located as far as 60 miles (100 kilometers) from a hurricane’s path […]
By MATTHEW MOORE, URBAN AFFAIRS EDITORApril 2, 2010 OWNERS of houses at risk of being washed into the sea will have the right to dump protective sandbags, weighing up to one tonne each, on public beaches for 12 months without seeking council approval, under new draft laws. And home owners will also be able to […]
By Rob Gutro, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite has been called a “flying rain gauge in space” because it measures rainfall from its orbit around the earth. This week, ex-tropical storm Paul gave TRMM a workout measuring heavy rainfall the storm left behind in areas of northern […]
ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2010) — On 3-4 February 2010, tropical cyclone Oli hit western French Polynesia. From 7 February 2010, the Coral Observation Department at CNRS’s National Institute of Earth Sciences and Astronomy (INSU), based at the Centre de recherches insulaires et observatoire de l’environnement (CRIOBE, CNRS/EPHE) in Moorea, rapidly undertook an inventory of the […]
Australia and New Zealand have begun airlifting aid to the Pacific island nation of Fiji, battered by a powerful cyclone which sparked sea surges. The planes are taking relief supplies, including tarpaulins, and are also carrying out surveys of the damage. A state of emergency was declared after Cyclone Tomas struck on Monday and Tuesday, […]
Trend in annual linear snow cover (% per decade) from 1990 to 2001 as obtained from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) EASE Grid weekly snow cover and sea ice extent dataset (Armstrong and Brodzik, 2005). Trend is based on a least-square linear fit. February 03, 2010Julie Chao 510-486-6491 JHChao@lbl.gov The fact that […]
