Latest news with #naturaldisaster
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Major disaster from three years ago could impact Australia's winters for years
A major natural disaster that occurred two years ago could be impacting Australia's climate this winter, and may continue to do so for a number of years. Scientists say they are 'surprised' by the results in their study, which showed the effects may be felt around the world for up to a decade. On January 15, 2022, an underwater volcano off the Pacific nation of Tonga exploded, releasing 1,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. It was one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recent history, and sent up to 150 million tonnes of water vapour into the stratosphere. A study into the long-term impacts of that water vapour injection found it may temporarily alter local climates, including cooler winters in Australia, warmer winters and spring in North America, drier summers over northern Eurasia, and more rain over China's east coast. Lead author and senior lecturer of the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW, Martin Jucker, told Yahoo News it was "really unusual" for volcanoes to leave such a long-lasting impact. "Volcanoes are generally known to impact the global climate, but that's usually a cooling due to all the smoke and for a few years. It's usually more like two to three years, not eight years." He also said the research was complex, as a multitude of things can impact the weather and worsen or placate their findings. 'One very important thing about our study is that we look into the future, and there's no way to know how the global mean temperature or sea surface temperature, El Nino, El Nina, and all of these things, how they would look in the future. So we didn't include any of those effects. I only included the volcano and nothing else,' Jucker said. In Australia, the study found anomalies in surface temperature that could see winters get up to 1°C cooler. Those in Western Australia may also see slightly lower temperatures in summer and autumn. Australia's surface temperature anomalies were described in the study as the 'most persistent, with significant cooling from year 1 to 8'. The research also picked up slightly more rain than usual in WA, and wet anomalies over northern Australia. Interestingly, the anomalies peak at years three and four after the eruption, which would be this year and next year. The three-year lag is because of the composition of the stratosphere, Jucker said. 'There are no weather systems, there's no clouds, no rain, or anything, and everything moves much more slowly. This water vapour was put into the stratosphere very locally, just above the volcano. So it needed time for this water to distribute itself across the entire globe and that takes a few years," he said. The changes can be difficult to perceive, Jucker said, and may not even be noticeable until looked at as an average over the next four years or so. 'I still hope we do [see the changes] because I just find it exciting. I'm waiting to see if we can confirm it from a scientific point of view. 'We find this effect only if we average over a long time. So four years, from now to 2029, we average, and then we see this effect. Even after year three, we don't even see these effects if we just look down one individual year, for instance.' While the study found weather anomalies around the world, the cooling in Australia and warming over North America don't have an overall impact on global temperature as they 'cancel out'. "Now, what we did find is these regional impacts which would be starting about now, so three years after. And so they globally, they sum up to zero, but locally, there's a cooling," Jucker said. "There's a cooling that we expect in winter over Australia over this time period, but there's a warming in North America in their winter, for instance. So all of these things cancel out, but regionally they're there." He added that, like all scientific studies, it's important to remember that his findings are not definitive. "So even when I say, we expect colder winters over Australia, it's really the probability of it being colder is higher. But it could be warmer, and that's fine. That would still be within our results. It's just that the probability of it being colder is higher," he said. One prediction that has so far proven correct in Jucker's study is that the volcano's eruption would contribute to a hole in the ozone layer. The large hole appeared from August to December in 2023, which is what his simulations picked up almost two years in advance. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@ You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
CBS News
11 hours ago
- General
- CBS News
Wayfarers Chapel announces prospective campus in Rancho Palos Verdes
After the ongoing land movement in Palos Verdes forced its closure last year, the Wayfarers Chapel may have found a new hilltop to call home. The National Historic Landmark's prospective campus is located on Battery Barnes next to Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall, above Point Vicente Lighthouse and Golden Cove. It's roughly 1.7 miles away from the shuttered Portuguese Bend location. The National Historic Landmark's prospective campus is located on Battery Barnes next to Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall, above Point Vicente Lighthouse and Golden Cove. It's roughly 1.7 miles away from the shuttered Portuguese Bend location. Wayfarers Chapel Over the last two years, land movement has severely damaged roads, homes and utilities in Rancho Palos Verdes, eventually leading the region's major natural gas and electricity providers to shut off their services to hundreds of residents. Since August, the Portuguese Bend slide has impacted about 650 homes. The ongoing natural disaster prompted FEMA and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services to implement a $42 million voluntary buyout program, allowing residents to sell their homes at "fair market value." In October, geologists gave residents a small glimmer of hope after confirming that the slide had decelerated from an average of 13 inches a week to 8 inches, a roughly 38% decrease. Further studies conducted by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed that the movement slowed to about 4 inches a week in the fall of 2024. Once rebuilt, the Wayfarers Chapel campus would include a visitors center, a museum, a cafe and gardens. The 100-seat, glass chapel designed by famous architect Lloyd Wright originally opened in 1951. Wayfarers Chapel gained its National Landmark status in 2023. However, the decades-long Portuguese Bend landslide forced it to close in February 2024. In July 2024, construction crews fully disassembled the historic church while it waited for a new location. "We look forward to rebuilding and serving the community for another 75+ years," Wayfarers Chapel wrote on its website.
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
A collapsing glacier destroyed a Swiss village. Is climate change to blame?
A small village in the Swiss Alps has been engulfed by ice, mud, and rock in a rare natural disaster that points to an uncertain future as unstable mountainous glaciers can break apart in destructive avalanches. A swirling and volatile combination of climate change effects, fragile natural environments and human development contribute to the danger, leaving experts concerned about what the future may hold. While similar avalanches occasionally happen in the Alps, one hasn't impacted a populated region for over a hundred years. "It's critical to realize that we now have left the space of historical precedence and entered an era where we face new hazards from locations that have never been a problem in the past and where protection may be technically hardly possible or financially unfeasible," Christian Huggel, a professor of environment and climate at the University of Zurich, told USA TODAY via email. Studying this kind of disaster isn't easy, partly because such "ice-rock-debris" avalanches often occur in isolated areas so gathering good data is a challenge. "Statistics are difficult here but it seems that the past 5-10 years have brought more such critical situations in the Swiss Alps than in the earlier past. We should definitely prepare for more of the kind in the future," Huggel said. As much as 90% of Blatten, Switzerland, is now engulfed by ice, mud, and rock after what scientists suspect is a dramatic display of the impact of climate change on mountain communities. "We've lost our village," Matthias Bellwald, the mayor of Blatten told a press conference after the slide. "The village is under rubble." A video shared widely on social media showed the dramatic moment when the glacier partially collapsed, creating a huge cloud that covered part of the mountain as rock and debris came cascading down towards the village. More: Swiss glacier collapses, burying village: Video, satellites show Blatten before and after While recently rare in the Alps, "events of the dimension of the 'ice-rock-debris avalanche' in Blatten are known from and studied in regions like the Himalayas or Alaska over the past several decades," Huggel told USA TODAY via email. A similar event happened in April 2024, but did not affect population centers, said Huggel. But the destruction of large parts of a village (with 300 inhabitants) "has in fact no historical precedence in the 21st and 20th century." Before that, there was a landslide in Goldau in 1806 and one in Elm in 1881, where more than 400 and 100 people lost their lives, respectively, Huggel said. "Higher average annual temperatures may lead to more glaciers, especially in steep terrain, becoming 'unstuck' from their beds, or mountain permafrost, which can keep mountain slopes frozen together, thawing and making such slopes less stable," said Bruce Raup, a senior associate scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Raup told USA TODAY that globally speaking, such events happen in steeper, younger mountain ranges such as the European Alps and the Himalaya where erosional processes are more active. Risk is higher if there are people or infrastructure near potential mass movements, or downstream where a blocked stream could lead to flooding. ABC News reports that an uptick in glacier melt had been observed at Birch Glacier, and emergency managers ordered hundreds of villagers to evacuate. Huggel called what happened next "a complex interaction of various processes of rock slope instability." According to Raup, "the event was a massive rock avalanche/landslide falling onto a glacier that then collapsed and went down together with the rock mass." While various factors were at play in Blatten, it was known that local permafrost had been affected by warmer temperatures in the Alps. The loss of permafrost can negatively affect the stability of the mountain rock, which is why climate change had likely played a part in the deluge, Huggel said. (This story has been updated to add new information.) Contributing: Reuters This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Swiss glacier collapse caused a disaster. Is climate change to blame?
BreakingNews.ie
a day ago
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Death toll from quarry collapse in Indonesia rises to 14
At least 14 people were killed after a quarry collapsed the previous day in Indonesia's West Java province, officials said on Saturday. More than two dozen people were trapped in the rubble when the Gunung Kuda quarry in Cirebon district collapsed on Friday. Rescuers pulled a dozen injured people and 10 bodies from the debris during a gruelling search effort. Advertisement They retrieved three more bodies late on Friday, and another worker died in hospital, bringing the death toll to 14, said the National Search and Rescue Agency in a statement. Five people have been taken to hospital with serious injuries. Local television reports showed emergency personnel, along with police, soldiers and volunteers digging desperately in the quarry in a steep limestone cliff, supported by five excavators, early on Saturday. Authorities said six to eight people are still believed to be trapped. Rescuers search for victims at the site of a collapsed natural stones quarry in Cirebon district, West Java province, Indonesia (Basarnas via AP) The cause of the collapse is still under investigation, and police have been questioning six people including the owner of the quarry, said local police chief Sumarni. Advertisement West Java governor Dedi Mulyadi said in a video statement on Instagram that he visited the quarry before he was elected in February and considered it dangerous. 'It did not meet the safety standard elements for its workers,' Mr Mulyadi said, adding that at that time: 'I didn't have any capacity to stop it.' On Friday, Mr Mulyadi said that he had ordered the quarry shut, as well as four other similar sites in West Java. Illegal or informal resource extraction operations are common in Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to those who labour in conditions with a high risk of injury or death. Advertisement Landslides, flooding and tunnel collapses are just some of the hazards associated with them. Much of the processing of sand, rocks or gold ore also involves the use of highly toxic mercury and cyanide by workers using little or no protection. Last year, a landslide triggered by torrential rains struck an unauthorised gold mining operation on Indonesia's Sumatra island, killing at least 15 people.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Who Should Consider Getting Flood Insurance? These Days, Almost Everyone.
With the Atlantic hurricane season about to start, this may be good time to consider buying flood insurance for your home — even if you don't live in a hurricane-prone area. Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this month that they were expecting more than the average number of hurricanes during the season, which begins June 1 and runs through November. NOAA predicts as many as 19 named storms, with six to 10 of them strengthening into hurricanes. An average season has 14 named storms with seven becoming hurricanes. Flood insurance should not be seen as important only for property owners near the ocean, insurance experts note. While properties near the coast are in particular peril, areas far inland have had severe flooding in recent years as a warming climate spawns intense storms that drop heavy rainfall. Won't my homeowner insurance policy cover flood damage? No. Standard homeowner insurance policies don't cover damage from floods, which are the most common and costly natural disaster in the United States. Flood protection — which typically covers damage from rising water entering a home — requires a separate policy, available from the federal government's National Flood Insurance Program or from certain private insurers. Borrowers with federally backed mortgages in certain high-risk areas are generally required to carry flood coverage, but it's largely optional otherwise. What if I don't live near a coastline? You should still evaluate buying flood coverage, insurance experts say. Consider this example. In September, Hurricane Helene made landfall on Florida's gulf coast as a powerful Category 4 storm, then moved inland, traveling hundreds of miles north. The storm drenched parts of six states and caused record flooding in western North Carolina. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
