A viral video created with artificial intelligence (AI) shows the catastrophic impact that a volcanic eruption at Mount Fuji could have on Tokyo, Japan, and its 37 million inhabitants. Fortunately, the informational video is not timed to any increased risk of an eruption — it's merely a public service announcement tied to Japan’s Volcanic Disaster Preparedness Day 2025.

The AI-generated video, released Aug. 22 by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, warns of the speed with which volcanic ash could travel from the volcano to Japan's capital city before raining down on its roads, buildings, railways and other infrastructure. Clouds of debris from Mount Fuji could reach Tokyo in just one to two hours, subtitles beneath the video read, paralyzing the city's transport networks, cutting power supplies and affecting the respiratory health of millions of people.

"The moment may arrive without any warning," the subtitles, translating the video's narration from Japanese to English, say. "If Mt. Fuji erupted, volcanic ash may fall on Tokyo and impact us in a wide variety of ways."

In the video, a woman receives an alert on her phone warning of an eruption at Mount Fuji, which is located 60 miles (100 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo's city center. The clip then takes the viewer on an AI-generated tour of the potential impacts of volcanic ash on Tokyo's transport links, power lines, water supplies, residential buildings and inhabitants.

"It only takes a minimal accumulation of ash on runways and rails to render planes and trains unusable," the subtitles in the section of the video about transport infrastructure say. "A small amount of ash on roads may impact the operation of 2WD [two-wheel drive] vehicles, as the ash fall limits visibility and increases the risk of slippage, creating hazardous driving conditions."

Large amounts of ash may block Tokyo's sewers, contaminate freshwater supplies, crush power lines and collapse wooden roofs, according to the video. The city could also be plunged into darkness as ash particles block the sun, and access to food and other essentials may be temporarily suspended. Additionally, people might suffer adverse health effects from inhaling the particles, with pre-exiting respiratory conditions worsening with exposure.

Related: Supervolcanic 'hell' caldera in Japan is home to 17 different volcanoes — Earth from space

Mount Fuji is Japan's highest peak, measuring 12,389 feet (3,776 meters) tall. The last time the volcano erupted was in 1707, and the subsequent ashfall lasted for two weeks, according to the video. While Mount Fuji used to erupt about every 30 years, it has now been dormant for 318 years, but some experts think that it could blow at any moment.

However, the timing of the video is unrelated to any signs of an eruption, and there is no suggestion that Mount Fuji is close to exploding, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said in a statement seen by CNN. "The simulation is designed to equip residents with accurate knowledge and preparedness measures they can take in case of an emergency," government officials wrote in the statement.

Preparedness measures include stocking up on food and first aid supplies. In the video, parents show their child a pantry filled with canned food, water and medicines ready in case of an emergency.

The video was released for Volcanic Disaster Preparedness Day 2025, but this isn't the first time Tokyo's government has warned of the risk from Mount Fuji, according to CNN. In March, officials published guidelines recommending that people stock two weeks' worth of essential supplies in their homes at all times.

The Japanese government has been modeling earthquake and volcanic eruption scenarios for years, yet these investigations don’t coincide with specific risks from Mount Fuji or other geological features, Naoya Sekiya, a professor and risk communication expert at the University of Tokyo, told NBC News.

"There's no particular significance to the timing," Sekiya confirmed.

Japan is home to 111 active volcanoes — about one-tenth of the world's total — due to its position on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped belt of volcanoes around the Pacific Ocean. The country is located on the border between four tectonic plates that grind against each other and often collide, triggering swarms of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Perhaps the best known natural disaster to strike Japan was the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The magnitude 9 earthquake was the strongest in Japan's recorded history, with warnings going out to Tokyo residents just one minute before the shaking began.

A new hurricane categorization system could help people better prepare for storms by incorporating risks from storm surges and rainfall into the categories, a study published this month reveals.

Storm surges — elevated seawater levels near coasts — and rainfall cause almost 80% of hurricane deaths, yet they are not accounted for in the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (SSHWS), which forecasters currently use to categorize a hurricane's severity and plays a key role in communicating hurricane risk to the public. Some experts have previously argued that the threat of storms is not always properly reflected in the SSHWS's 1 to 5 category ratings, which are based solely on wind speed.

"There have been too many instances of incredible loss of life and destruction because a low category number on the SSHWS [...] did not match the danger of the storm," Jennifer Collins, a professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida and co-author of the new study, said in a statement.

The SSHWS estimates potential property damage from sustained wind, ranging from "some damage" in a Category 1 hurricane to "catastrophic damage" in a Category 4 or 5 storm. But property damage isn't the only potentially deadly effect of a hurricane. A low-category hurricane may still cause a tremendous tidal surge and unleash torrential rain, triggering devastating floods and other hazards.

One example is 2005's Hurricane Katrina, which was listed as a Category 3 based on wind speeds. But storm surge and rainfall were responsible for most of the 1,800 deaths caused by Katrina and contributed hugely to the $125 billion in damage, according to the new study.

Another example is Hurricane Florence, which made landfall in South Carolina in 2018 as a Category 1. The low danger rating did not alert communities to the catastrophic flooding that killed 55 people across the southeastern U.S., the researchers said.

Related: Birth of a hurricane: What meteorologists look for as they hunt for early signs of a tropical cyclone forming

"Frequently, people use the storm's category to decide whether to evacuate," Collins said. "That's incredibly dangerous because if they hear it's only a tropical storm or Category 1, too often no alarm bells go off, and they see no cause for concern."

To address the SSHWS's shortcomings, Collins and colleagues developed an alternative hurricane warning system in 2021. Dubbed the Tropical Cyclone Severity Scale (TCSS), this system has six categories and takes into account wind speed, storm surge and rainfall — the three biggest hazards from hurricanes.

The TCSS assigns scores between 1 and 5 to each of the three hazards depending on their predicted severity for a given hurricane. These scores are then combined into a final score, which is established using three rules in different scenarios.

First, the final score is never lower than the highest of the three individual hazard scores. Second, if two individual hazards have the same scores of 3 or higher, then the final score increases by one — so, if storm surge has a score of 2 but wind and rainfall are both 3, then the hurricane is classed as a Category 4. The third rule is that a final score of 6 is given if either two hazards have scores of 5, or if two hazards have scores of 4 and the third is a 5.

"The higher category is important," Collins said. "Many people base their decision to evacuate on that number, not just the details of the hazard."

A "more realistic" system

Researchers have been working on the TCSS for several years, but the new study looked to confirm its effectiveness at warning the public of a hurricane's dangers. To test their warning system, Collins and her colleagues sent 4,000 participants living along the Gulf and East coasts forecasts for 10 fictitious hurricanes affecting their communities.

Half of the participants received warnings in the SSHWS format, while the other half received warnings using the TCSS system. They then completed an online quiz about how they would react in the different scenarios. The team’s findings were published Aug. 19 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Participants who were sent TCSS forecasts were more likely to identify the main hazard from a hurricane correctly, and significantly more likely to evacuate for non-wind hazards than those who were sent SSHWS forecasts, according to the study.

Correct identification of the main hazard boosted participants' intent to take relevant precautions, such as shielding their houses against flooding with sandbags and erecting window protections against the wind. On the other hand, participants who had incomplete information about a storm were more likely to miscalculate risks or take no measures at all.

The results suggest that shifting away from the SSHWS would improve the public's understanding of hurricane risks and lead to more informed decision-making ahead of storms, Collins said.

"I'm fairly optimistic that now is the time," she said. "We now know many people make decisions based on the category messaging, so we need to ensure that we are communicating with a scale which is more realistic of the severity of the hurricane."

2025's Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be more ferocious than usual, according to forecasts by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The hurricane season, which begins on June 1 and runs until Nov. 30, is predicted to have a 60% chance of above-normal activity. There are expected to be 13 to 19 named tropical storms — with wind speeds of 39 mph (63 km/h) or higher — six to 10 of which are expected to become hurricanes, with three to five of these hitting major hurricane status — with wind speeds above 111 mph (179 km/h).

Years with normal levels of hurricane activity experience 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

"NOAA and the National Weather Service are using the most advanced weather models and cutting-edge hurricane tracking systems to provide Americans with real-time storm forecasts and warnings," U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a statement on May 22.

Tropical storms usually form over the warm ocean waters near the tropics. If a storm becomes a rotating, organized thunderstorm system with wind speeds below 39 mph (63 km per hour), it is defined as a tropical depression, but once wind speeds exceed that level, the event is considered to be a tropical storm and is given a name from a pre-decided list. Storms become hurricanes once wind speeds reach 74 mph (119 km/h), with hurricanes being subdivided into five categories. Category 3, 4 and 5 hurricanes are classified as major hurricanes.

The hurricane season runs when ocean and atmospheric conditions are most favorable for tropical storms. Tropical storms need warm sea surface temperatures to form and strengthen, as well as little difference in wind speed and direction between the lower and upper levels of the atmosphere — known as vertical wind shear — which enables storms to organize vertically. Peak hurricane activity usually happens in September, when ocean temperatures and atmospheric conditions are most optimal. Before June and after November the ocean is generally too cool, and wind shear is higher.

Related: La Niña is dead — what that means for this year's hurricanes and weather

Above-average hurricane activity is predicted this year because of warmer-than-average ocean temperatures and weak wind shear, allowing for more frequent and more powerful storms to form.

This year's Atlantic storms will be named, in order of appearance: Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dexter, Erin, Fernand, Gabrielle, Humberto, Imelda, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Melissa, Nestor, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastien, Tanya, Van, and Wendy.

NOAA has a 70% confidence in its predictions of this year's storm frequency. Last year, before the 2024 hurricane season, NOAA predicted that there would be 17 to 25 named storms, eight to 13 hurricanes, and four to seven major hurricanes — an even more severe forecast than this year's outlook. However, the season actually resulted in 18 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and five major hurricanes.

Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall along the Texas coast in July 2024, was the earliest Atlantic Category 5 hurricane on record, while Hurricane Helene hit the Florida Gulf Coast on Sep. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane, and is considered the deadliest hurricane in the continental U.S. since 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

"As we witnessed last year with significant inland flooding from hurricanes Helene and Debby, the impacts of hurricanes can reach far beyond coastal communities," acting NOAA administrator Laura Grimm said in the statement. "NOAA is critical for the delivery of early and accurate forecasts and warnings, and provides the scientific expertise needed to save lives and property."

In the Pacific, where the hurricane season also runs from June 1 to November 30, activity is forecast to be lower than average in 2025, with NOAA predicting a 30% chance of below-normal storm activity, a 50% chance of normal activity, and only a 20% chance of above-normal activity. Between one and four named storms are predicted in the central Pacific for the season, where a near-normal season has 4 or 5 tropical storms.

Atmospheric ripples from Hurricane Helene spread far north of Florida as the devastating storm made landfall, new NASA images show.

The agency's Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) captured concentric bands of atmospheric gravity waves stretching across the Southeast as the hurricane progressed miles away.

"Like rings of water spreading from a drop in a pond, circular waves from Helene are seen billowing westward from Florida's northwest coast," AWE principal investigator Ludger Scherliess, a physicist at Utah State University, said in a statement.

Atmospheric gravity waves are vertical ripples that move through quiet areas of the atmosphere, dividing the air into peaks and troughs. According to NASA, these waves can be created by large thunderstorms, wind bursts, hurricanes, tornadoes and even tsunamis. (They are different from gravitational waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space-time that result from violent cosmic events, such as black hole collisions.)

Related: Hurricane season 2024: How long it lasts and what to expect

The AWE instrument is mounted on the International Space Station and detects these waves by measuring airglow — a faint light given off by gasses in the mesosphere, the third layer of Earth's atmosphere. The mesosphere ranges from 31 to 53 miles (50 to 85 kilometers) above Earth's surface. Most weather occurs in the first layer of Earth's atmosphere, the troposphere, though cloud tops can rise into the second layer, the stratosphere, in very strong storms. (These are called "overshooting cloud tops.")

AWE started observing in November 2023, and the Helene gravity-wave images are among the first AWE images that NASA has released publicly. One of the project's goals is to help scientists understand how weather on Earth's surface can affect space weather, the disturbances in the upper atmosphere caused by interactions with charged cosmic particles.

Hurricane Helene was a Category 4 storm with winds up to 140 mph (225 km/h) when it made landfall near Perry, Florida. The storm subsequently moved inland, stalling over eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, where it caused massive flooding. More than 230 people were killed, according to the Associated Press.

Of all the hazards that hurricanes bring, storm surge is the greatest threat to life and property along the coast. It can sweep homes off their foundations, flood riverside communities miles inland, and break up dunes and levees that normally protect coastal areas against storms.

As a hurricane reaches the coast, it pushes a huge volume of ocean water ashore. This is what we call storm surge.

This surge appears as a gradual rise in the water level as the storm approaches. Depending on the size and track of the hurricane, storm surge flooding can last for several hours. It then recedes after the storm passes.

Water level heights during a hurricane can reach 20 feet or more above normal sea level. With powerful waves on top of it, a hurricane's storm surge can cause catastrophic damage.

Related: How strong can hurricanes get?

What determines how high storm surge gets?

Storm surge begins over the open ocean. The strong winds of a hurricane push the ocean waters around and cause water to pile up under the storm. The low air pressure of the storm also plays a small role in lifting the water level. The height and extent of this pile of water depend on the strength and size of the hurricane.

As this pile of water moves toward the coast, other factors can change its height and extent.

The depth of the sea floor is one factor.

If a coastal area has a sea floor that gently slopes away from the coastline, it's more likely to see a higher storm surge than an area with a steeper drop-off. Gentle slopes along the Louisiana and Texas coasts have contributed to some devastating storm surges. Hurricane Katrina's surge in 2005 broke levees and flooded New Orleans. Hurricane Ike's 15- to 17-foot storm surge and waves swept hundreds of homes off Texas' Bolivar Peninsula in 2008. Both were large, powerful storms that hit in vulnerable locations.

The shape of the coastline can also shape the surge. When storm surge enters a bay or river, the geography of the land can act as a funnel, sending the water even higher.

Other factors that shape storm surge

Ocean tides — caused by the gravity of the moon and sun — can also strengthen or weaken the impact of storm surge. So, it's important to know the timing of the local tides compared to the hurricane landfall.

At high tide, the water is already at an elevated height. If landfall happens at high tide, the storm surge will cause even higher water levels and bring more water further inland. The Carolinas saw those effects when Hurricane Isaias hit at close to high tide on Aug. 3, 2020. Isaias brought a storm surge of about 4 feet at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but the water level was more than 10 feet above normal.

Sea level rise is another growing concern that influences storm surge.

As water warms, it expands, and that has slowly raised sea level over the past century as global temperatures have risen. Freshwater from melting of ice sheets and glaciers also adds to sea level rise. Together, they elevate the background ocean height. When a hurricane arrives, the higher ocean means storm surge can bring water further inland, to a more dangerous and widespread effect.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

More than 2,500 people died when a powerful magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Morocco on Sept. 8. The epicenter was in the High Atlas Mountains, 44 miles (71 kilometers) south-west of Marrakesh. Moina Spooner, from The Conversation Africa, asked José A. Peláez, a professor in geophysics who has carried out research on seismic activity in Morocco, about what led to this situation.

Seismologists know that earthquakes do not kill people — buildings do. Buildings with lack of regulation and lack of structural support are potential killers in high seismic hazard areas. Building codes must therefore be mandatory, and should be updated periodically. As more is learned about earthquake geology and the impact of earthquakes on buildings, building codes should be updated regularly. This is the best way to protect ourselves against these catastrophic phenomena. Territorial planners and rulers must know this and take it into account.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Earth may have been pummeled by large space rocks more often than previously estimated, controversial new research suggests, raising the risk that a species-ending impact could come sooner than we think. 

The study, presented at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas last week, focused on the largest-known impact craters from the past million years. Using new high-resolution imaging, the authors argue that these craters were originally far bigger than they look now. If they're right, asteroids or comets larger than 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) have hit Earth up to a dozen times in the last million years alone. That's a far higher rate than the previous estimates of once every 600,000 to 700,000 years. 

"It would be in the range of serious crap happening," James Garvin, the study's lead author and chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told Science.

However, other scientists remain unconvinced that the landscape features Garvin and his team reported are actually part of the old craters. 

"I'm skeptical," Bill Bottke, a planetary dynamicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, told Science. 

Unlike on Mars or the moon, Earth's impact craters disappear relatively quickly due to erosion caused by water and wind. Scientists estimate the risk of space impacts based on the history of impacts on the moon and by monitoring near-Earth asteroids. 

But Garvin and his colleagues used new high-resolution satellite data to look at the remnants of craters on Earth. This data consisted of lidar (light detection and ranging), which uses laser pulses to precisely measure distances, and stereo imaging, which involves a satellite taking two images of the same place from slightly different angles; a comparison of these images then enables a 3D reconstruction of the scene. 

Using this method, the researchers found at least four impact craters with what they argue are far larger outer rims than previously measured. For instance, the Pantasma crater in Nicaragua was previously estimated to have a diameter of 8.7 miles (14 km), but Garvin and his colleagues detected an outer-outer rim with a 21.9-mile (35.2 km) diameter. The lake-filled Bosumtwi crater in Ghana was estimated at about 6.5 miles (10.5 km) in diameter, but the new study revealed a ring-like ridge with a diameter of 16.7 miles (26.8 km). And the 8.7-mile-wide Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan may have actually been 18.9 miles (30.4 km) in diameter, according to the new research. 

The researchers also examined the Iturralde Crater in Bolivia. This remote circular feature may or may not be an impact crater. Regardless, the new study revealed a ring-like feature 18.9 miles (30.4 km) wide, significantly larger than the 5-mile (8 kilometers) diameter of the main feature.

These impacts would have released the equivalent of 400,000 to 730,000 megatons of TNT — enough to blow part of Earth's atmosphere into space and fling fragments of impact glass across the globe, Garvin and his team said. And if at least four of these impacts occurred on land, which covers only one-third of the Earth's surface, twice as many space rocks may have fallen in the oceans. The researchers are also still analyzing an additional four young craters on continents. 

What isn't clear is whether the ring-like features the researchers detected are actually parts of old crater rims. Brandon Johnson, a planetary scientist at Purdue University, told Science the ridges might be rings of debris ejected from the impact. However, he said, the possibility raises an urgent need for more research. 

"We've got to go there, check out the geology, and get more detail," Johnson told Science. 

As the world's tectonic plates crash, grind and dive into one another, they release their pent-up energy in giant earthquakes that can rock the ground, trigger volcanic eruptions, move mountains and unleash tsunamis.

And since scientists figured out how to measure earthquake magnitude in the early 1900s, some truly massive quakes have shaken our planet. These are the monstrous "megathrust" earthquakes, the most powerful quakes in the world. A huge fraction of these earthquakes occurred in a handful of subduction zones along the seismically restless "Ring of Fire" in the Pacific, where tectonic plates dive beneath one another.

From the devastating Sumatran quake and tsunami of 2004 to a monstrous temblor in Siberia that, thankfully, killed no one, here are the 20 largest earthquakes ever recorded, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

21. Sanriku-Oki, Japan; 1933; magnitude 8.4

A magnitude 8.4 quake struck near the Sanriku region of Japan on March 2, 1933, according to the USGS. The quake occurred about 180 miles (290 kilometers) offshore of Honshu, Japan.

Most of the deaths resulted from the tsunami the quake generated, which swept away 3,000 homes and destroyed 2,000 others and generated nearly 100-foot (29 meters) waves in Honshu, Japan.

Several decades later, a magnitude 9.0 temblor would rock the same general region, causing the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011.

This area is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a nearly 25,000-mile-long (40,000 km) horseshoe-shaped belt that is known for both earthquakes and volcanic activity. The ring fringes the boundaries of the Pacific Plate wherever it smashes into its neighboring plates; in the region around Tōhoku, the Pacific Plate is colliding with the North American Plate.

20. Arequipa, Peru; 2001; magnitude 8.4

A magnitude 8.4 earthquake struck 4 miles (6 km) from the coastal town of Atico, Peru, on June 23, 2001. At least 74 people were killed; more than a third of them were swept away by the resulting tsunami. More than 2,600 people were injured, and over 50,000 homes were damaged by the strong ground shaking.

The quake occurred at the boundary of the Nazca and South American plates, where the Nazca Plate is moving northeast at about 3 inches (78 millimeters) per year, smashing into and diving beneath the South American Plate, according to the USGS. Ground shaking as a result of the seismic activity was felt as far away as La Paz, Bolivia.

19. South of Sumatra, 2007, magnitude 8.4

On April 12, 2007, a magnitude 8.4 earthquake struck approximately 76 miles (122 km) offshore of Bengkulu, Indonesia, on the island of Sumatra. The giant quake occurred due to thrust faulting on the boundary between the Sunda and Australian plates.

Around 25 people died, and more than 161 were injured. More than 20,000 buildings were damaged in the cities of Bengkulu and Sumatera Barat, according to the USGS.

The quake marked the fourth magnitude 7.9 or greater temblor to strike the general region that decade; the area was still actively remodeling itself after the monster quake that struck just after Christmas Day in 2004 (see #3).

18. Near Kamchatka Peninsula, 1923, magnitude 8.4

Relatively little is known about the magnitude 8.4 quake that struck off the east coast of Kamchatka, Russia, on Feb. 3, 1923. The sparsely populated area of the Russian Far East sits near the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, where the Pacific Plate is diving beneath the Okhotsk Plate, a teensy plate that was once thought to be part of the North American Plate.

No reported injuries or deaths occurred, but the quake triggered a modest tsunami, according to the USGS.

17. Kuril Islands, Russia; 1963; magnitude 8.5

Relatively little is known about the quakes that struck the remote Kuril Islands on Oct. 13, 1963. This volcanic archipelago stretches between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and Hokkaido, Japan.

No deaths, damage or injuries were reported as a result of this temblor, but it triggered a tsunami that reached the northern Pacific Ocean.

16. Atacama, Chile; 1922; magnitude 8.5

On Nov. 11, 1922, a massive magnitude 8.5 quake struck the Atacama Desert on the border of Argentina and Chile. Even though the epicenter of the earthquake was beneath land, the shaking was so strong that it triggered a tsunami that killed hundreds of people, according to news reports at the time.

15. Banda Sea, Indonesia; 1938; magnitude 8.5

On Feb. 1, 1938, a magnitude 8.5 quake rocked the seafloor about 88 miles (141 km) northwest of Tual, Indonesia. Despite the strength of this temblor, the damage was fairly minor.

Residents of the Banda and Kai islands felt the tremors, while in the city of Tual, glassware broke and a pendulum stopped.

14. Unimak Island, Alaska; 1946; magnitude 8.6

A magnitude 8.6 quake struck Unimak Island on April 1, 1946. Despite its large size, the quake did not destroy any buildings. However, it triggered a 115-foot-high (35 m) tsunami that swept away a lighthouse, along with its five occupants, according to the USGS.

When the tsunami reached Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii, it swept away 159 people and caused $26 million in property damage.

Unimak Island is one of the Aleutian Islands, which sit on the restive Ring of Fire, just like many of the other regions struck by large quakes on this list.

13. Andreanof Islands, Alaska; 1957; magnitude 8.6

The quake that struck off of the Andreanof Islands, part of the Aleutian Islands, on March 9, 1957, registered a magnitude 8.6. The quake occurred about 53 miles (86 km) southeast of Adak, Alaska, a tiny village of a few hundred people and the state's southernmost town.

No one was killed, but the quake destroyed two bridges, created a meters-long crack in one road in Adak and damaged houses.

The quake also generated a 49-foot-high (15 m) tsunami that slammed into the nearby Scotch Cap lighthouse, as well as a 26-foot-high (8 m) tsunami that washed away oil lines in Sand Bay. The tsunami then traveled to Hawaii, where it destroyed two villages, and to San Diego, where it also damaged some property.

12. Northern Sumatra, Indonesia; 2005; magnitude 8.6

The area around Sumatra is a seismically active one, with the Indonesian island sitting astride the volcanically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

That seismically unsettled region, where the Australian Plate and Sunda Plate meet, unleashed a massive amount of energy on March 28, 2005, when a magnitude 8.6 quake struck 48 miles (78 km) west of Singkil, at a depth of 18 miles (30 km). More than 1,300 people were killed, another 340 were injured and hundreds of buildings were destroyed, mostly on the island of Nias. The quake was felt as far away as India and Sri Lanka.

The earthquake occurred because the Australian Plate is moving to the northeast at a rate of 2 inches (50 millimeters) per year and is diving into the mantle at the Sunda Trench. According to the USGS, the massive quake was unleashed in the aftermath of the massive Indian Ocean earthquake of 2004 as the faults in the region continued to adjust to that seismic shift.

11. Off the west coast of northern Sumatra, 2012, magnitude 8.6

On April 11, 2012, a magnitude 8.6 temblor struck off the coast of northern Sumatra. Because it struck a few hundred miles off the coast, it was felt as strong shaking in only a few population centers, such as Banda Aceh and Meulaboh, Indonesia. It caused only light structural damage in those metropolitan regions, according to the USGS. Light shaking could be felt as far away as Mumbai, India, and Broome, Australia.

Two people were killed directly by the quake, eight died of heart attacks and 12 were injured.

10. Assam-Tibet, 1950, magnitude 8.6

At least 1,500 people died across eastern Tibet and Assam, India, when this temblor shook the region on Aug. 15, 1950. Ground cracks, large landslides and sand volcanoes struck the area. The quake was felt in China's Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, and as far away as Kolkata, India.

The quake caused large landslides that blocked rivers. When the rivers finally burst through the walls of debris, waves inundated several villages and killed hundreds of people.

This quake is commonly called the Assam-Tibet earthquake or the Assam earthquake, even though the epicenter was in Tibet. The quake struck at the intersection of the most vigorous collision of continental plates on the planet, where the Indian Plate smashes into the Eurasian Plate and dives beneath it. The slow-motion crash helped create the massive Himalayas.

9. Rat Islands, Alaska; 1965; magnitude 8.7

Alaska had been a state for only six years when this huge earthquake triggered a tsunami over 30 feet (10 m) high on Feb. 4, 1965. Despite its size, the quake caused little damage due to its remote location at the tip of the Aleutian Islands. The tsunami was reported in Hawaii and spread as far as Japan.

The temblor was the result of the Pacific Plate diving beneath the North American Plate at the Alaska-Aleutian megathrust, which has been the location of many megathrust earthquakes.

The quake cracked wood buildings and split an asphalt runway. Hairline cracks also formed in the runways at the U.S. Coast Guard's Loran Station.

8. Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia; 2025; magnitude 8.8

On July 29, 2025, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck approximately 40 miles (60 km) from Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, at a depth of 12.8 miles (20.7 km). The earthquake generated multiple tsunamis, with warnings issued in regions across the Pacific, including North America, South America, Japan, Russia and Pacific island nations.

The earthquake occurred when the Pacific plate rubbed against the North American plate. According to the USGS, the likely cause was a slip over a large fault area. It was the largest earthquake since 2011's magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake in Japan.

7. Off the coast of Ecuador, 1906, magnitude 8.8

On Jan. 31, 1906, a catastrophic magnitude 8.8 earthquake hit off the coast of Ecuador and Colombia and generated a strong tsunami that killed 500 to 1,500 people. The tsunami spread along the coast of Central America, and even lapped at the shorelines in San Francisco and Japan.

The earthquake occurred along the boundary between the Nazca Plate and the South American Plate. Because it hit more than 100 years ago, reports are spotty. But according to the USGS, witnesses reported a huge rush of water in Honolulu Bay. All the steam and sailboats in the bay were turned around, and then a sudden flood tide roared inland.

6. Offshore Maule, Chile; 2010; magnitude 8.8

On Feb. 27, 2010, an earthquake and tsunami hit central Chile. At least 500 people were killed and 800,000 were displaced by the natural disaster. More than 1.8 million people were affected, and the total economic loss was estimated at $30 billion.

Like many other quakes on this list, this temblor took place along the seismically active boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates, which can release bone-shatteringly strong shaking.

The quake hit just over a month after the disastrous magnitude 7.0 quake in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, which killed more than 200,000 people.

5. Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia; 1952; magnitude 9.0

The world's first recorded magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the east coast of Kamchatka on Nov. 4, 1952. The quake generated a 43-foot (13 m) tsunami locally. The tsunami rocked Crescent City, California.

No one died, but in Hawaii, property damage was estimated at up to $1 million ($11.12 million in today's dollars). The waves tossed boats onto the beach, caused houses to collide, destroyed piers, scoured beaches and moved road pavement.

4. Tōhoku, Japan; 2011; magnitude 9.1

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.1 quake triggered a tsunami that left more than 15,700 people dead, more than 4,600 missing, over 5,300 injured and more than 130,900 displaced, according to the USGS. More than 332,000 buildings, 2,100 roads, 56 bridges and 26 railways were damaged as a result of the quake. The quake also damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, leading to one of the biggest nuclear disasters in history. This earthquake was the largest ever recorded in Japan, and cost an estimated $309 billion in damage.

For weeks afterward, strong aftershocks above magnitude 6.0, and even 7.0, continued to rock the region, and the quake sent tsunami waves as far as Hawaii, California and the Galapagos Islands. Even in distant Antarctica, the quakes cracked large slabs of ice from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf, according to the USGS.

The quake was caused by thrust faulting near the Japan Trench, the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates.

3. Sumatra-Andaman Islands, 2004, magnitude 9.1

This quake was the third-largest earthquake in history and the largest since the 1964 earthquake in Prince William Sound, Alaska (see #2). In total, nearly 300,000 people were killed or presumed dead, and about 1.2 million people were displaced by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 10 countries in Southeast Asia and East Africa.

Extremely strong shaking was felt in Banda Aceh, but the deadliest aspect of this quake was the resulting tsunami, which caused more deaths than any other in recorded history up to that point. The tsunami was recorded nearly worldwide on tide gauges in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The massive quake struck one day after Christmas along the interface of the Indian and Burma tectonic plates and was caused by the release of stress that developed as the Indian Plate dived beneath the Burma microplate. The massive fault zone, which was offshore, was as long as California, according to the USGS.

2. Prince William Sound, Alaska; 1964; magnitude 9.2

This great earthquake and ensuing tsunami took 128 lives and caused about $311 million in property loss. The earthquake damage was heavy in many towns, including Anchorage, which was about 75 miles (120 km) northwest of the epicenter. The quake, which struck on March 27, 1964, ruptured along a seismically active fault between the North American and Pacific plates. The shaking lasted about 3 minutes.

Landslides in Anchorage caused heavy damage. Huge slides occurred in the downtown business section, and water mains and gas, sewer, telephone and electrical systems were disrupted throughout the area.

1. Valdivia, Chile; 1960; magnitude 9.5

Approximately 1,655 people died in the largest earthquake ever recorded, which struck Valdivia, Chile, on May 22, 1960. Thousands more were injured, and millions were left homeless. Southern Chile suffered $550 million in damage.

The quake triggered a tsunami that killed 61 people in Hawaii, 138 in Japan and 32 in the Philippines.

The earthquake struck where the Nazca Plate dives underneath the South American Plate, on the Peru-Chile Trench.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on 2012.

As humankind races against the clock to save planet Earth from global warming before it's too late (spoiler: we're already in a bad position), it's sometimes good to revisit the best disaster movies that show us just how special our world is — revealing why we should do everything in our power to preserve it and not forget that nature is in charge. We've put together a list (in no specific order) of the best disaster movies to watch right now.

What can we accept as a disaster movie? Well, they have to tell stories about natural catastrophes, unfortunate disasters or humankind toying with forces they don't fully understand. However, many of the movies which could fit the bill take place in outer space and deal with threats that could affect more than just planet Earth (2007's Sunshine is a good example), so we've decided to leave out those and have instead focused on disaster movies in the classical sense.

Some of these movies aren't regarded as "good" by Hollywood standards, but we're more interested in the disasters they portray (and how scientifically accurate those portrayals are). This list features both well-known classics and overlooked disaster flicks with cool premises, while also looking at some of the real life events that inspired them. If you’re ready for this bumpy ride, read on below.

If you love science-y movies, check out our other movie content like our guide to the best shark movies, as well as all of the Jurassic Park movies, ranked worst to best. 

1. Dante's Peak

• Release date: Feb. 7, 1997
• Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, Charles Hallahan, Elizabeth Hoffman

Volcanoes are scary and entirely out of our control, and Hollywood studios made sure to bank on the potential hot spectacle that comes with them with Dante's Peak and Volcano, both released in 1997. Neither resonated with critics nor audiences back then, but both are worth revisiting now.

We've chosen to go with Dante's Peak because it always felt like the more unique movie, taking more time to build up towards the traditional volcano stuff and dealing with many of the effects of a stratovolcano on the surrounding areas. Plus, you can't top how traumatizing the "grandma burning in an acid river" scene is.

2. The Towering Inferno

• Release date: Dec. 19, 1974
• Cast: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway

No natural in this disaster, just a classic story about greed and ignorance igniting a massive tragedy. Following the massive success of The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Warner Bros. and Fox joined forces to make The Towering Inferno out of two different novels about burning buildings.

This is arguably the quintessential disaster movie from the 70s, and Paul Newman's presence certainly elevated it. Almost 50 years later, it's also a great example of how much a budget of $14 million could get you back then. The movie went on to make $203 million worldwide at the box office and garnered a largely positive response from critics and audiences alike.

In reality, fire-related deaths in the U.S. have plummeted 42% since 1980, a 2021 report by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) found. However, after a low death count in 2012 (2,855 people), numbers are creeping back up, with 3,800 deaths in 2021. Most of these deaths were from home fires, so take care not to have an inferno of your own. 

3. The Perfect Storm

• Release date: June 30, 2000
• Cast: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, Diane Lane

As Hollywood entered the 2000s with many ideas for disaster movies absolutely exhausted, a handful of more off-beat projects started to pop up at rival studios. One worth remembering is The Perfect Storm, based on the 1997 creative non-fiction novel by Sebastian Junger about a fishing vessel which was lost at sea during the Perfect Storm of 1991.

While there's no Earth-threatening event in this one, nor a human-made disaster, The Perfect Storm remains a scary and humbling tale of humans versus the worst of nature. It's a slow-burn, character-driven blockbuster that might be too soapy at times, but the cast is stellar, and the sea has seldom looked this scary in a movie.

4. Armageddon

• Release date: July 1, 1998
• Cast: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton

Like it or not, Armageddon remains one of the most enduring disaster movies ever and an undeniable 90s classic. And if you suddenly had to name three Michael Bay movies, you'd probably go with this one alongside Bad Boys and The Rock. A ragtag group of oil drillers without proper training are tasked with blowing up a massive asteroid? Super fun stuff.

The movie doesn’t make sense on a basic level (it'd be easier to train astronauts to drill than the other way around), and the same goes for its science, but it's a remarkable spectacle that never slows down, with an all-around fun cast – including one of the most charismatic Bruce Willis performances ever — and plenty of neat set pieces. And, of course, the cherry on top is Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" totally selling a central drama that maybe wasn’t that good.

NASA actually has tinkered with an asteroid, albeit in a totally different situation. To see Earthlings really could redirect an asteroid, NASA sent the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft to smash into the asteroid Dimorphos, which was speeding along about 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth in 2022. 

DART redirected the space rock's orbit more than NASA thought it would, so maybe Armageddon isn't so far-fetched, after all. 

5. Deep Impact

• Release date: May 8, 1998
• Cast: Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman

If 1997 was about volcanoes, then 1998 was the year of space rocks potentially blowing up Earth. Deep Impact arrived in cinemas roughly two months before Armageddon and presented a brainier take on the matter. The critical reception wasn't much better though, with critics slamming hard the overabundance of "cheap melodrama" and its slow-paced nature.

We definitely agree that Deep Impact isn't the most exciting blockbuster around, but in hindsight, that's what made it so special and deserving of a spot on our list. Its brooding and thoughtful tone is a rare occurrence for this type of movie, and that devastating but hopeful ending — massive tsunami included — makes up for the duller chunks of the script.

6. Deepwater Horizon

• Release date: Sept. 30, 2016
• Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez

Many recent disaster movies have chosen to take the biographical route and stick closer to the human drama amidst all the unstoppable destruction. 2012's The Impossible, which recounted the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, is a great example of this modern trend. Somehow, Deepwater Horizon didn't get the same recognition and flopped.

Abandoning his signature action filmmaking style (but retaining the same spark for tension and quick pace), director Peter Berg crafted a breezy disaster movie that feels relatable — greedy men push too hard and workers pay the consequences — and hits like a sledgehammer once the crude oil hits the fan.

7. The Core

• Release date: March 28, 2003
• Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Bruce Greenwood

The Core belongs to Armageddon's school of "whatever, we're here to have fun" disaster movies (even the poster was done in the same style), only it arrived five years later and isn’t nearly as good. In fact, it might be the biggest "guilty pleasure" movie on this list of the best disaster movies.

Instead of blowing up an asteroid that threatens Earth, the protagonists are tasked with rocking Earth's core with a series of nuclear explosions because it has stopped rotating and bad stuff is happening on the surface. How do they get there? Inside a train-like vessel that withstands and converts extreme heat into electricity. Yes, seriously.

8. Twister

• Release date: May 10, 1996
• Cast: Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Tornadoes are also scary, and tornado-centric disaster movies became a thing because of Twister, which ended up being the second-highest-grossing movie of 1996 with a box office tally of $495 million worldwide.

Though the movie does get crazy towards the end, it generally navigates with ease the line between "actually grounded and believable" and far-fetched madness. It's scary but also beautiful, the characters are fun to follow, and Michael Crichton's touch can be felt throughout the script. A sequel tentatively titled Twisters is being fast-tracked at Universal, by the way.

Since Twister debuted, tornado science has grown by leaps and bounds. For instance, tornados don't form from by reaching down from the sky to Earth. Rather, new research suggests that tornadoes don't come down from the clouds, but from the ground up.

9. Don't Look Up

• Release date: Dec. 24, 2021
• Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep

Adam McKay's Don't Look Up took big comedic swings and went all satirical on the subject of the current climate crisis and how the world is reacting to it. But the movie is about an approaching comet which will cause a planet-wide extinction event to get the point across in spectacular fashion.

Don't Look Up is both an easy and a hard watch; it's funny and relatively fast-paced, jumping from one absurd situation to the next, but it’s also a damning look at the inaction of those with the power and resources necessary to save the planet. Even if you don’t completely vibe with it, we think it's a must-watch that has sparked more open discussion about the most pressing issue of our time.

10. Titanic

• Release date: Dec. 19, 1997
• Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Batest

History has told us that disaster can arrive when we least expect it and comes in many shapes, and James Cameron's Titanic reminded us of what happens when we underestimate our world's harsher environments. Everyone knows about the story of the colossal ship striking an iceberg and taking more than 1,500 lives with it as it sank in ice-cold waters.

Titanic is grand, epic, and terrifying in ways critics and audiences couldn't have predicted back in '97, but we’re fairly sure that it worked so well for so many people because of its purely human element across two different timelines. Disaster movies don't get any better than this.

The discovery of the Titanic could probably be a movie on its own: According to now-declassified documents, the expedition to find the Titanic was actually a cover for a secret U.S. military project to recover two nearby sunken nuclear submarines, an exhibit at The National Geographic Museum said, as reported by CNN in 2018. The 1985 mission was so successful, the team had 12 days left, which they used to search for the Titanic.

Amazingly, they found the famous vessel at 12,000 feet (3,660 meters) below water in the North Atlantic Ocean. At least that mission had a happy ending, unlike most disaster movies.

Astronauts watched from orbit as powerful Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida on Wednesday (Sept. 28).

Expedition 68 astronaut Bob Hines of NASA captured footage of the weakening, yet still forceful, hurricane from the International Space Station (ISS). 

"This storm is HUGE! That’s the Mississippi River and New Orleans on the left. It covers the entire Florida peninsula! We could see through the eye just as it was making landfall. Praying for the safety of everyone dealing with #HurricaneIan," Hines tweeted Wednesday.

Hurricane Ian weakened to a tropical storm as it crossed Florida on Thursday (Sept. 29). But it still brought strong winds and heavy winds to the Space Coast, forcing the delay of several launches. For example, earlier this week, NASA pulled its Artemis 1 moon rocket off Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to shelter at the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building. NASA had been targeting a Sept. 27 launch for the mission. 

KSC is closed for normal operations while a small "rideout crew" remains to help keep the center safe through the storm.

Related: 'Extremely dangerous' Hurricane Ian makes landfall in Florida (video)

NASA and SpaceX also postponed the company's Crew-5 astronaut mission to Oct. 5, at least two days past its original scheduled launch opportunity on Oct. 3. SpaceX and United Launch Alliance also chose to push other planned Space Coast launches from Friday (Sept. 30) into next week at the earliest.

Ian was classified as a Category 4 hurricane when it hit southwest Florida on Wednesday (Sept. 28), but it later weakened to a tropical storm. The ISS forms part of a network of observations tracking the storm in real time from orbit, although forecasts rely upon a set of satellites managed by NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), among other entities.

NOAA's advisory at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on Thursday (Sept. 29) includes numerous warnings of life-threatening flooding, storm surges, and winds, stretching across Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas.

"The center of Ian is expected to move off the east-central coast of Florida soon and then approach the coast of South Carolina on Friday. The center will move farther inland across the Carolinas Friday night and Saturday," NOAA officials said in the forecast.

"Maximum sustained winds remain near 65 mph (100 km/h) with higher gusts," the agency added, but warned "reintensification" may occur as the hurricane approaches the coast of South Carolina Friday. "Weakening is expected Friday night and Saturday after Ian moves inland," NOAA officials said. 

Daytona Beach International Airport, just an hour north of KSC, recently reported sustained winds of 60 mph (97 km/h) and a gust to 70 mph (113 km/h), NOAA said.

Originally published on Space.com.

Hurricane Ian struck western Cuba Tuesday (Sept. 27) as a Category 3 storm and lost very little steam as it moved over the island and into the Gulf of Mexico, where the hurricane then ramped up to a Category 4 storm. The hurricane then continued to intensify as it barreled toward the west coast of Florida, nearly reaching Category 5 strength — the most powerful category for hurricanes — before making landfall near the barrier island of Cayo Costa.

Hurricanes typically lose strength as they move over land, so why didn't Ian rapidly weaken upon hitting Cuba? Several factors, including climate change, may have helped the storm gain and retain its power.

For starters, Ian passed through the extremely warm waters of the northwestern Caribbean Sea on its way to Cuba. There, the sea surface temperature is about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer than it has been in years past, in large part due to climate change, the Associated Press reported. 

The temperate water fueled Hurricane Ian's rapid growth, as did the region's low wind shear, meaning its lack of variation in wind speed or direction between the ocean's surface and the lower atmosphere, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported Monday (Sept. 26) evening. High wind shear can disrupt a growing hurricane's spiral structure and potentially tear the storm apart. Instead, the warm water and low wind shear allowed Ian to grow stronger and become better defined before reaching Cuba's shore.

Related: Hurricane season 2022: How long it lasts and what to expect 

The then-Category 3 hurricane reached the island around 4:30 a.m. ET Tuesday with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph (201 km/h). At that time, the NHC reported that "Ian is expected to spend only a few hours over western Cuba, and little overall change in strength is likely during that time," since spending minimal time over land would help the storm retain its moisture and high wind speeds. 

As predicted, the storm's center moved off Cuba's shore and entered the southeastern Gulf of Mexico by about 10 a.m. ET; there, the combination of warm water and low wind shear fueled the storm's intensification into a Category 4 hurricane.       

Since the storm's formation, Ian has gone through several periods of "rapid intensification," meaning the hurricane's maximum sustained winds increased by at least 35 mph (56 km/h) in a 24-hour period. Research suggests that the proportion of North Atlantic hurricanes that undergo rapid intensification has been on the rise since the 1980s and that this increase may be linked to climate change, according to a 2019 report in the journal Nature Communications. That said, natural climate variations may account for some of the increase, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

Another study, published in 2020 in the journal Nature, suggested that rising ocean temperatures may now allow hurricanes to move farther inland than they did 50 or 60 years ago. Scientists theorize that modern-day hurricanes pick up and hang on to moisture more effectively because of the oceans' unusual warmth and that this extra moisture slows the storms' decay over land. Now, hurricanes weaken by only about 50% within the first day of landfall, compared with 75% in the 1970s, the study authors reported.

However, it's difficult for experts to confirm if these broad trends factor into how Hurricane Ian formed and tore through the Atlantic this week. "It's really hard to say that climate change has an impact on any one storm in terms of its formation or its individual intensity," Kristen Corbosiero, a hurricane scientist at the University at Albany, told the Associated Press. 

After entering the Gulf, Ian did encounter moderate wind shear and some patches of dry air before reaching the Florida coast, but due to its great size, the storm system was expected to be "fairly resilient" against these potential speed bumps, the NHC stated. The storm's magnitude and speed may even grant it enough juice to cross the entire Florida Peninsula. 

"Ian is likely to remain more intact as it crosses the Florida peninsula (due to both its stronger initial wind speed and its faster forecast forward speed), and this now increases the threat of hurricane-force winds on the east coast of Florida," the NHC warned at 11 a.m. ET Wednesday (Sept. 28). "This necessitates the issuance of a Hurricane Warning on the east coast of central Florida." 

Originally published on Live Science. 

Powerful winds, drenching rain and towering storm surges make hurricanes not only some of the planet’s most violent storms, but also the "costliest natural disasters in the United States," researchers reported in 2019 in the journal PNAS. Ranking the most damaging hurricanes, however, depends on the measure used: usually, financial cost or lives lost. 

By economic accounting, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina usually tops the list (though models adjusting for economic growth place a 1926 Miami storm first). Meanwhile, the deadliest hurricane struck the Caribbean in 1780, causing more than 22,000 deaths, Eric Jay Dolin, author of "A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes" (2020, Liveright), told Live Science. (By definition, a “hurricane” is a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic or Eastern Pacific oceans, while other parts of the world call these storms typhoons or cyclones — some of which have been deadlier.)

Most expensive

Katrina was "the most expensive hurricane of all time," causing about $125 billion in damage when it devastated New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas, Jay Dolin said. 

That cost exceeded $186 billion in 2022 dollars, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a tally that dwarfs the $54 billion in expected yearly losses from all hurricanes, according to a 2019 U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimate. Katrina’s losses swallowed 1% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), or the total value of goods produced and services provided by a country in one year, according to the PNAS study. 

Related: Hurricane season 2022: How long it lasts and what to expect

Katrina’s devastation came primarily from storm surge — a temporary rise in ocean level that can flood coastal areas. During that storm, surges of 10 to 28 feet (3 to 9 meters) overwhelmed regions along the Gulf Coast, breaching levees in New Orleans. 

The next most costly hurricane was 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, which caused $149 billion of damage (in 2022 dollars), mostly due to "rainfall that produced widespread flooding across southeast Texas, including Houston," John Nielsen-Gammon, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, told Live Science.

Those two storms top the list for financial damage both worldwide and in the U.S., which is no coincidence, Nielsen-Gammon added. "The most damaging hurricanes in terms of monetary damage are most likely to occur where you have lots of expensive infrastructure," he said. "That’s why two United States hurricanes top the list."

Storms that affect U.S. territories can, therefore, also tally costly damage. In 2017, Hurricane Maria caused $107 billion in damages (in 2022 dollars) in Puerto Rico, placing it third on NOAA’s list of costliest U.S. storms. Hurricane Sandy, which inundated New York City’s subway tunnels and other areas in 2012, comes next on the list ($82 billion), followed by 2021’s Hurricane Ida, which flooded Louisiana and spawned tornadoes farther north ($79 billion).

Coming in sixth on NOAA's list, 2017’s Hurricane Irma battered various Caribbean Islands, including Puerto Rico, causing a total of $59.5 billion in property and infrastructure damage. (Rankings that include non-U.S. losses may reshuffle the order, placing Irma ahead of Sandy, for example, as in the World Meteorological Organization list.)

Other wealthy countries also report high economic costs from tropical cyclones, Hugh E. Willoughby, an Earth and environment professor at Florida International University in Miami, told Live Science. For example, 2019’s Typhoon Hagibis saddled Japan with roughly $15 billion of damage (2019 U.S. dollars), according to a study published May 2022 in the journal Climatic Change.

A deadly toll

The Great Hurricane of 1780 tops the list of most damaging hurricanes as measured by lives lost. It killed more than 22,000 people, with the highest death tolls on the islands of Barbados, Martinique and Sint Eustatius, Dolin said. Galveston’s 1910 storm, the deadliest hurricane in the U.S., killed 6,000 to 12,000 people in the then-popular vacation spot, Dolin said. 

In the U.S., the number of lives lost to hurricanes has dramatically dropped over the years, thanks to improvements in warning systems and mitigation strategies, such as sea walls that protect against deadly storm surges. Katrina, tragically, bucked that trend, killing more than 1,800 people, which made it the deadliest modern U.S. hurricane, Dolin said. 

However, populations are likely to be more vulnerable to powerful storms in developing countries, where warning and storm defense systems may have not improved as much. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch killed 9,000 to 11,000 people in Honduras and Nicaragua, Nielsen-Gammon said. Tropical cyclones by other names in the rest of the world have caused even more loss of life. A 1970 Bangladesh cyclone had the highest death toll ever: an astronomical 300,000 to 500,000 people in the low-lying, densely populated country died, Nielsen-Gammon said. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Officials in Japan have ordered 9 million people to evacuate as the powerful super typhoon Nanmadol pummels the island nation with winds gusting up to 145 mph (234 km/h) and bears down on Tokyo, home to nearly 14 million inhabitants. 

Dozens of people were injured and two people have died since the storm made landfall on Sunday morning (Sept. 18) on Kyushu, Japan's southernmost large island, and then on Monday (Sept. 19), Nanmadol slammed into Honshu, the largest of Japan's islands, BBC News reported. 

As the country braces for extensive flooding and landslides, an estimated 350,000 homes have already lost power and tens of thousands of people are being housed in emergency shelters, according to the BBC. Nanmadol is the 14th typhoon of the season and it's one of the most powerful storms to strike Japan in decades, drenching the western part of the country with record rainfall, according to Reuters.

"We need to remain highly vigilant for heavy rains, gales, high waves and storm surges," a representative of the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said at a news conference, and the JMA predicted that nearly 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain will drench central Japan's Tokai region over the next 24 hours, Reuters reported. 

Other areas are expected to be soaked with as much as 16 inches (40 cm) of rain during a 24-hour period, according to the BBC.

Related: Hurricane season 2022: How long it lasts and what to expect

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) tweeted on Sept. 18 that Nanmadol was "one of the strongest typhoons ever seen," warning of torrential rainfall, coastal floods and winds powerful enough to knock down houses. Officials issued flooding advisories for Tokyo and the adjacent coastal Kanagawa prefecture, warning that heavy rains could also lead to landslides, Bloomberg reported. 

On Friday (Sept. 16), Nanmadol's winds reached a peak intensity of 155 mph (250 km/h), prompting the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) to classify Nanmadol as a "super typhoon" — a tropical storm with sustained winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) or greater, comparable with the strength of a Category 4 hurricane, according to Al Jazeera. 

Based on the storm's trajectory and central pressure similarity to 1945's Makurazaki Typhoon, which struck Japan on Sept. 17 of that year, experts predict that Nanmadol could generate a storm surge of more than 6.6 feet (2 meters) in Kagoshima Bay, according to Yale Climate Connections.

Forecasters predict that Nanmadol will reach Tokyo on Tuesday (Sept. 20), and then continue eastward over the island of Honshu before heading out to sea on Wednesday (Sept. 21), Al Jazeera reported.

Originally published on Live Science.

Hurricane Fiona struck the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic on Monday (Sept. 19) after the Category 1 storm had caused widespread flooding, landslides and a territory-wide blackout in Puerto Rico the day before.

Fiona strengthened from a tropical storm to a hurricane on Sunday morning (Sept. 18), and the National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned that the approaching cyclone would likely bring "torrential rains and mudslides" to both Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. 

The storm slammed into the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico at about 3:20 p.m. local time on Sunday, bringing with it maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 km/h). The NHC predicted that the storm would dump some 12 to 18 inches (30 to 45 centimeters) of rain onto the island, with select areas in eastern and southern Puerto Rico getting up to 30 inches (76 cm). 

Hundreds of people were evacuated or rescued from impacted areas as the floodwaters swiftly rose, and the destructive floods triggered large landslides and destroyed a bridge in the central mountain town of Utuado, according to The Associated Press. Fiona also plunged Puerto Rico into an island-wide black out, according to the website PowerOutage.us, which tracks power interruptions.

Related: Hurricane season 2022: How long it lasts and what to expect 

"The electric system has experienced several transmission line outages which have contributed to an island-wide power outage," Luma, the energy company that operates and manages Puerto Rico's electric power transmission and distribution system, wrote on its website. 

By Monday morning, Luma had restored power to about 100,000 customers, The New York Times reported. But "given the size and scope of the outage, as well as ongoing impacts of Hurricane Fiona, full power restoration could take several days," the Luma website reads. 

Fiona's outer bands are expected to continue dropping heavy rain onto Puerto Rico into Monday afternoon, even as the storm moves west, according to The New York Times. The hurricane made landfall in the Dominican Republic early Monday morning, around 3:30 a.m. local time, with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 km/h), according to NHC. 

"Life-threatening flash and urban flooding is likely for eastern portions of the Dominican Republic," NHC warned. "Storm surge will raise water levels by as much as 3 to 5 feet [0.9 to 1.5 meters] above normal tide levels along the immediate coast in areas of onshore winds in the Dominican Republic."

Fiona is expected to pass over the eastern Dominican Republic and emerge into the southwestern Atlantic by Monday afternoon, the NHC predicts. By Tuesday (Sept. 20), its center will pass near or to the east of the Turks and Caicos Islands; by Wednesday (Sept. 21), the storm will likely strengthen into a "major hurricane," meaning a Category 3 or higher.

Originally published on Live Science. 

Water churns in an angry brown torrent, trees collapse as the banks underneath them vanish in the spray, and roads crumble, asphalt carried downriver as if it were driftwood.

A newly released video captures the destruction from the historic June 13 flood in Yellowstone National Park, as the raging torrent surged across the park. What once were placid mountain waterways are transformed into roaring cascades; sloping riverbanks become sheer cliffs, their sediment carried away by the rushing water. 

The video, which was shared online by the National Park Service on July 18, also shows post-flood damage. The Canyon and North Entrance Road, which once hugged the Gardner River, now terminates abruptly in a ragged zig-zag, the river curving into the canyon walls that once supported the roadway. The spot where a patrol cabin once stood is inundated. Footbridges are washed out. Another video that was previously captured by a witness inside the park showed a park service staff housing building washing away. 

The damage is the result of what the U.S. Geological Survey termed a "1 in 500-year event." This means that, according to historical river gauge data on the Yellowstone River, there is a 0.2% chance of a flood that extreme each year. (Just because it's a "1 in 500-year" flood doesn't mean that a similar flood can't happen in the next year, or the next — and changing climate can affect these probabilities so that similar extreme weather events become more common.) 

At the time of the flood, the region around northern Yellowstone received a summer's worth of precipitation in just three days, according to CNN. This rain fell on mountains that hadn't yet completely thawed, so winter snowmelt combined with the precipitation to create the record-breaking flood. According to the National Weather Service Billings, between 0.8 inches to over 5 inches (2 to 12.7 centimeters) of rain fell, combining with between 2 to 5 inches (5 to 12.7 cm) of snowmelt in the Beartooth and Absaroka mountains of Montana and Wyoming. 

The park closed in the days immediately after the deluge. Eighty-eight people had to be rescued by helicopter after being cut off from the rest of the park by washed-out roads, according to Fox Weather.

Despite the massive damage, the south and north loops of the park reopened to the public within three weeks. Now, tourist attractions such as Old Faithful are accessible by car from the west, south, and east entrances of the park. The north and northeast entrances remain closed to vehicles, though portions are open to foot and bicycle traffic, according to the National Park Service. The NPS has not released a timeline for when repairs will be completed. 

Originally published on Live Science.

A powerful earthquake rattled eastern Afghanistan in the early hours of Wednesday morning (June 22), killing at least 1,000 people and wounding hundreds more, although casualty numbers are expected to rise. State-level disaster management officials reported at least 600 injured, while local officials put the count closer to 1,500, according to Reuters.

The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre initially estimated the quake's magnitude to be 6.1, but the organization has since reported a slightly lower magnitude of 5.9. This latter estimate matches the one reported by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).  

The earthquake's epicenter was about 29.1 miles (46.8 kilometers) southwest of the city of Khōst, which sits near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, according to the USGS. Earthquakes in this region occur due to the India plate shifting northward and colliding with the adjacent Eurasia plate; the India plate moves northward at a rate of about 1.6 inches (40 millimeters) per year.

Southwest of the Himalayas, the two plates slide against each other at a slant. Based on the pattern of seismic waves from Wednesday's quake, the event mostly involved "strike-slip faulting," in which vertical fractures appear at locations where the tectonic plates have rubbed against each other horizontally, the USGS reported. The quake occurred at a relatively shallow depth of 6.2 miles (10 km).

Related: Scientists find evidence for biggest earthquake in human history 

So far, most confirmed deaths from the quake have been reported in Paktika province, south of Khost province, of which Khōst is the capital city, CNN reported. 

"The timing of the earthquake [in the] dark of night … and the shallow depth of 10 kilometers of its epicenter led to higher casualties," Najibullah Sadid, an Afghan water resources management expert, told CNN. Photos released from Paktika province showed the crumbled remains of houses piled up around a few surviving walls, with broken roof beams strewn about the area, CNN reported.

"The death toll is likely to rise as some of the villages are in remote areas in the mountains and it will take some time to collect details," interior ministry official Salahuddin Ayubi told Reuters.  

Originally published on Live Science.

Humanity's faulty perception of risk has set us on a "spiral of self-destruction," a new United Nations report claims. The report's authors also suggest our future will involve an onslaught of daily disasters by 2030.

The UN's Global Assessment Report, published April 26, highlights some of the doom in store for humanity due to broken perceptions of risk stemming from a trio of thought mistakes: optimism, underestimation and invincibility. 

"By consciously neglecting investment in disaster prevention efforts, while also failing to act with sufficient urgency on related issues like climate change, a broken 'risk perception' can catalyze and compound disasters, causing them to become larger and more impactful than they would have been, had there been sufficient efforts on prevention and risk reduction," Jeanette Elsworth, spokesperson at the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDDR), told Live Science in an email,

These disasters include earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes; climate- and weather-related disasters; as well as outbreaks of biological hazards, including crop pests and epidemics, Elsworth said.

Related: 10 signs that Earth's climate is off the rails

Over the past two decades, 350 to 500 medium- to large-scale disasters have occurred each year, the report's authors noted. They predicted that this number will reach 560 disasters a year (1.5 a day) by the year 2030. 

"The world needs to do more to incorporate disaster risk in how we live, build and invest, which is setting humanity on a spiral of self-destruction," Amina J. Mohammed, the UN's deputy secretary-general, said in a statement.

The authors highlight the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of myopic thinking and lack of understanding of disaster risks. "Myopic thinking meant that, despite warnings and data that a pandemic was overdue, preparedness was inadequate and governance systems across the world struggled to pivot to a new reality," they wrote. The severity of the pandemic was also exacerbated by populations across the globe being exposed to other health risks. "Exposure to underlying risk factors, such as high levels of air pollution, unsafe housing or limited access to health services, were found to significantly affect fatality rates," they wrote.

The authors also highlighted the growing risk of extreme weather events, which are becoming more common due to human-made climate change. Policymakers, they said, should work to climate-proof development and investments. For instance, Costa Rica implemented a carbon tax in 1997 to help reverse deforestation, which works to reduce disaster risks and benefit the economy, the UN report authors said in the statement. 

The authors found that not everyone is impacted by disasters equally. Eighteen out of the 20 countries with the highest disaster risk were middle- and lower-income countries with an average poverty rate of 34%. "By the end of this decade, climate change and disasters caused by natural hazards may push as many as 132 million people into poverty," Elsworth said.

But don't despair — the authors put together a three-action plan to help prevent this spiral of self-destruction. For one, humans need to stop undervaluing "climate change risk, costs to ecosystems and the positive social benefits of risk reduction," the authors wrote. The second action involves designing systems "to factor in how human minds make decisions about risk," they wrote. And lastly, governments and financial systems must work across disciplines to help people affected by disasters. Local leadership is a must during disasters, they wrote. "Rifts can emerge between the national and local levels during major crises, as was the case in many jurisdictions during the COVID-19 crisis. Autonomy for local-level action is essential."

The time for action, the authors say, is now.

Originally published in Live Science.

Every year, some of the deadliest natural disasters — earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, wildfires and droughts — kill nearly 60,000 people, according to Global Change Data Lab. 

Violent natural disasters have been a fact of human life since the beginning of humankind, but the death counts of the most ancient of these disasters are lost to history. The ancient Mediterranean island of Thera (now Santorini, Greece), for example, experienced a catastrophic volcanic eruption that eradicated the entire Minoan civilization around 1600 B.C., according to a 2020 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. But exactly how many lives were lost? We'll never know.

However, thanks to historical records and journals, historians can at least estimate the number of fatalities linked to disasters that occurred in the common era. According to such records, the following natural disasters are some of the deadliest of all time.

The A.D. 1138 Aleppo earthquake

On Oct. 11, 1138, the ground under the Syrian city of Aleppo began to shake. The city sits on the confluence of the Arabian and African plates, making it prone to temblors, but this one was particularly violent. The magnitude of the quake is lost to time, but contemporary chroniclers reported that the city's citadel collapsed and houses crumbled across Aleppo. The resulting death toll is estimated at around 230,000, but that figure comes from the 15th century, and the historian who reported it may have conflated the Aleppo quake with one that occurred in what is now the modern-day Eurasian country of Georgia, according to a 2004 paper in the journal Annals of Geophysics. Still, this supposed death toll marks this event as one of the most deadly natural disasters of all time. 

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

Another deadly natural disaster was a catastrophic magnitude 9.1 earthquake that struck undersea off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, on Dec. 26, 2004. The quake created a massive tsunami that killed approximately 230,000, and displaced nearly 2 million people in 14 South Asian and East African countries. Traveling as fast as 500 mph (804 km/h), the tsunami reached land in as little as 15 to 20 minutes after the quake hit, giving residents little time to flee to higher ground. 

In some places, especially hardest-hit Indonesia, the tsunami wave reached over 100 feet (30 meters) high, according to World Vision, a humanitarian aid organization. 

Damages from the earthquake and tsunami are estimated at $10 billion dollars. This event is considered the third largest earthquake in the world since 1900, and its tsunami has killed more people than any other tsunami in recorded history, according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.

The 1976 Tangshan earthquake

At 3:42 a.m. on July 28, 1976, the Chinese city of Tangshan was razed to the ground by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Tangshan, an industrial city with a population of about 1 million at the time of the disaster, suffered staggering casualties of over 240,000. While this was the official death toll, some experts suggest this number is grossly underestimated and that the loss of life was likely closer to 700,000. Reportedly, 85% of Tangshan's buildings collapsed, and trembles were felt in Beijing, China, more than 100 miles (180 km) away. It took several years before the city of Tangshan was rebuilt to its prior glory.

The A.D. 115 Antioch earthquake

The Hellenistic Greek city of Antioch, which served as a regional capital to both the Roman and Byzantine empires, sits in modern-day Turkey atop a triple tectonic junction between the African plate, the Arabian plate and the Anatolian sub-plate. On Dec. 13, A.D. 115, the tectonic system beneath the city produced an estimated magnitude 7.5 earthquake that reached an "extreme" intensity on the Mercalli intensity scale.

The earthquake resulted in approximately 260,000 deaths and destroyed Antioch, as well as five nearby cities. It also triggered a local tsunami that severely damaged Beirut, the capital of modern-day Lebanon, and the harbor of an ancient port city called Caesarea Maritima. The Roman emperor Trajan was caught in the earthquake while wintering in Antioch and became trapped under the rubble of his home, but he managed to escape with only minor injuries. 

The A.D. 526 Antioch earthquake

As with all disasters occurring millenia ago, a precise death toll for the A.D. 526 Antioch earthquake is hard to come by. Contemporary chronicler John Malalas wrote at the time that about 250,000 people died when the temblor hit the Byzantine Empire city (now Turkey and Syria) in May, 526. Malalas attributed the disaster to the wrath of God and reported that fires destroyed everything in Antioch that the earthquake did not.

According to a 2007 paper in The Medieval History Journal, the death toll was higher than it would have been at other times of the year because the city was full of tourists celebrating Ascension Day — the Christian feast that commemorates Jesus' ascension into heaven. 

The 1737 Calcutta cyclone

The 1737 Calcutta cyclone, also known as the Hooghly River cyclone, made landfall in the Ganges Delta just south of the city of Calcutta (modern-day Kolkata), in India's West Bengal state, early in the morning of Oct. 11, 1737 — although some accounts say the storm occurred on Sept. 30. The cyclone is the earliest super-cyclone on record in the North Indian Ocean, meaning it had wind speeds of at least 140 mph (225 km/h) that were sustained for 3 minutes.

The cyclone caused a storm surge up to 40 feet (13 meters) high in the Ganges and traced a 200-mile-long (320 kilometers) path of destruction. It left few buildings standing in Calcutta and sank roughly 20,000 boats in the Bay of Bengal. The storm caused 300,000 deaths according to some accounts — but researchers point out there is a discrepancy between this casualty count and the urban population of Calcutta at the time, which was less than 20,000. 

The 1920 Haiyuan earthquake

"The Haiyuan earthquake was the largest quake recorded in China in the 20th century with the highest magnitude and intensity," Deng Qidong, a geologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said during a seminar in 2010. 

Related: How are earthquakes measured?

The earthquake, which struck north central China's Haiyuan County on Dec. 16, 1920, also rocked the neighboring Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces. It was reportedly a 7.8 on the Richter scale, however, China today claims it was of magnitude 8.5. There are also discrepancies in the number of lives lost. The USGS reported total casualties of 200,000, but according to a 2010 study by Chinese seismologists, the death toll could have been as high as 273,400. The region's high deposits of loess soils (porous, silty sediment that's very unstable) triggered massive landslides which were responsible for over 30,000 of these deaths, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Landslides. 

The 1839 Coringa cyclone

The Coringa cyclone made landfall at the port city of Coringa on India's Bay of Bengal on Nov. 25, 1839, whipping up a storm surge of 40 feet (12 m), according to NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory Hurricane Research Division. The hurricane's wind speeds and category are not known, as is the case for many storms that took place before the 20th century. About 20,000 ships and vessels were destroyed, along with the lives of an estimated 300,000 people.

The 1881 Haiphong typhoon

Another disaster with a similar death toll as the Coring cyclone is the 1881 typhoon that hit the port city of Haiphong in northeastern Vietnam on Oct. 8. This storm is also believed to have killed an estimated 300,000 people. 

The 2010 Haiti earthquake

The catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti just northwest of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010, ranks as one of the three deadliest quakes of all time.

Haiti's standing as one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and its limited history of large earthquakes left it extremely vulnerable to damages and loss of life. As many as 3 million people were affected by the quake. Death toll estimates were all over the place; initially, the government of Haiti estimated fatalities stood at 230,000 people, but in January 2011, officials revised that figure to 316,000. A 2010 study published in the journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival put the number at around 160,000 deaths, while the USGS claimed even lower numbers — around 100,000. These disparities reflect the difficulty of counting deaths even in the modern era, not to mention the political wrangling that goes on over "official" numbers.

The 1970 Bhola cyclone

This tropical cyclone hit what is now Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) on Nov. 12-13, 1970. According to NOAA's Hurricane Research Division, the storm's strongest wind speeds measured 130 mph (205 km/h), making it the equivalent of a Category 4 major hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale. Ahead of its landfall, a 35-foot (10.6 m) storm surge washed over the low-lying islands bordering the Bay of Bengal, causing widespread flooding. 

The storm surge, combined with a lack of evacuation, resulted in a massive death toll estimated at 300,000 to 500,000 people. A 1971 report from the National Hurricane Center and the Pakistan Meteorological Department acknowledged the challenge of accurately estimating the death toll, especially due to the influx of seasonal workers who were in the area for the rice harvest. As of the writing of this article, the Bhola cyclone is considered the deadliest tropical cyclone on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. And it caused an estimated $86 billion in damages.

The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake

The deadliest earthquake in history hit China's Shaanxi province on Jan. 23, 1556. Known as the "Jiajing Great Earthquake" after the emperor whose reign it occurred in, the temblor reduced a 621-square-mile (1,000 square kilometers) swath of the country to rubble, according to the Science Museums of China. An estimated 830,000 people died as their yaodong — cave homes carved into the region's loess plateaus — collapsed. The exact magnitude of the quake is lost to history, but modern-day geophysicists estimate it at around magnitude 8.

The 1887 Yellow River flood

The Yellow River (Huang He) in China was precariously situated far above most of the land around it in the late 1880s, thanks to a series of dikes built to contain the river as it flowed through the farmland of central China. Over time, these dikes had silted up, gradually lifting the river in elevation. When heavy rains swelled the river in September 1887, it spilled over these dikes into the surrounding low-lying land, inundating 5,000 square miles (12,949 square km), according to "Encyclopedia of Disasters: Environmental Catastrophes and Human Tragedies" (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008). As a result of this flood, an estimated 900,000 to 2 million people lost their lives.

The 1931 Yangtze River floods

Excessive rainfall over central China in July and August of 1931 triggered the most deadly natural disaster in world history — the Central China floods of 1931. The Yangtze River overtopped its banks as spring snowmelt mingled with the over 24 inches (600 millimeters) of rain that fell during the month of July alone. (The Yellow River and other large waterways also reached high levels.) According to "The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood" (Cambridge University Press, 2018), the flood inundated almost 70,000 square miles (180,000 square km) and turned the Yangtze into what looked like a giant lake or ocean. Contemporary government numbers put the number of dead at around 2 million, but other agencies, including NOAA, say it may have been as many as 3.7 million people.

Additional resources

For more on natural disasters check out DK's Eyewitness Books "Natural Disasters: Confront the Awesome Power of Nature from Earthquakes and Tsunamis to Hurricanes" and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention page "Natural Disasters and Severe Weather". 

Bibliography

Nicholas N. Ambraseys, “The 12th century seismic paroxysm in the Middle East: a historical perspective”, Annal of Geophysics, Volume 47, June 2004. 

Walter Kutschera, “On the enigma of dating the Minoan eruption of Santorini”, Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, Volume 117, April 2020, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2004243117

U.S. Geological Survey, “Earthquakes with 1,000 or More Deaths 1900-2014”, February 2015.

Mischa Meier, “Natural Disasters in the Chronographia ofJohn Malalas: Reflections on their Function—An Initial Sketch”, The Medieval History Journal, Volume 10, 2007

NOAA, OAR, Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, "175th Anniversary of the Coringa cyclone", November 2014. 

Athena Kolbe, et al, "Mortality, crime and access to basic needs before and after the Haiti earthquake: a random survey of Port-au-Prince households", Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Volume 26, December 2010, https://doi.org/10.1080/13623699.2010.535279

Angus Gynn, "Encyclopedia of Disasters: Environmental Catastrophes and Human Tragedies", Greenwood Publishing Group, December 2007. 

Chris Courtney, "The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood", University of Cambridge Press, February 2018, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108278362. 

Did you know that our planet is rocketing around the sun at 67,000 mph? Or that it may once have been purple? Here are 50 facts about Earth.

1. We're the third rock from the sun

Our home, Earth, is the third planet from the sun, the fifth largest planet in our solar system, with a radius of 3,959 miles, and the only world known to support an atmosphere with free oxygen, oceans of liquid water on the surface and life. Earth is one of the four terrestrial planets, according to NASA: Like Mercury, Venus and Mars, it is rocky at the surface.

2. Earth is squashed

Earth is not a perfect sphere, but rather a geoid, which means it bulges at the equator. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as Earth spins, gravity points toward the center of our planet (assuming for explanation's sake that Earth is a perfect sphere), and a centrifugal force pushes outward. But since this gravity-opposing force acts perpendicular to the axis of Earth, and Earth's axis is tilted, centrifugal force at the equator is not exactly opposed to gravity.

3. The planet has a waistline

Gravity pushes extra masses of water and earth into a bulge, or "spare tire" around our planet. At the equator, the circumference of the globe is 24,901 miles (40,075 kilometers), according to Space.com. Bonus fact: At the equator, you would weigh less than if standing at one of the poles.

4. Earth is on the move

You may feel like you're standing still, but you're constantly moving — fast. Depending on where you are on the globe, you could be spinning with the planet at just over 1,000 miles per hour, according to Space.com.

People on the equator move the fastest, while someone standing on the North or South pole would be perfectly still. (Imagine a basketball spinning on your finger. A random point on the ball's equator has farther to go in a single spin as a point near your finger. Thus, the point on the equator is moving faster.)

5. The planet moves around the sun

The Earth isn't just spinning: Earth orbits the sun every 365.25 days, traveling at an average speed of 18.5 miles per second. Thats 67,000 miles (107,826 km) per hour, according to the American Physical Society.

6. Earth is billions of years old

Researchers calculate the age of the Earth by dating both the oldest rocks on the planet and meteorites that have been discovered on Earth (meteorites and Earth formed at the same time, when the solar system was forming). Their findings? Scientists estimate that Earth is around 4.54 billion years old, according to the National Center for Science Education.

7. The planet is recycled

The ground you're walking on is recycled. Earth's rock cycle transforms igneous rocks to sedimentary rocks to metamorphic rocks and back again.

The cycle isn’t a perfect circle, but the basics work like this: Magma from deep in the Earth emerges and hardens into rock (that's the igneous part). Tectonic processes uplift that rock to the surface, where erosion shaves bits off. These tiny fragments get deposited and buried, and the pressure from above compacts them into sedimentary rocks such as sandstone. If sedimentary rocks get buried even deeper, they "cook" into metamorphic rocks under lots of pressure and heat, according to Dorling Kindersley.

Along the way, of course, sedimentary rocks can be re-eroded or metamorphic rocks re-uplifted. But if metamorphic rocks get caught in a subduction zone where one piece of crust is pushing under another, they may find themselves transformed back into magma.

8. Our moon quakes

Earth's moon looks rather dead and inactive. But in fact, moonquakes, or "earthquakes" on the moon, keep things just a bit shaken up. Quakes on the moon are less common and less intense than those that shake Earth. The total seismic energy released by the moon is about 80 times less than that released by Earth, according to the Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology.

According to the Journal of Geophysical Research, moonquakes seem to be related to tidal stresses associated with the varying distance between the Earth and moon. Moonquakes also tend to occur at great depths, about midway between the lunar surface and its center.

9. Chile had the largest earthquake

As of March 2016, the largest earthquake to shake the United States was a magnitude-9.2 temblor that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska, on Good Friday, March 28, 1964.

The world's largest earthquake was a magnitude 9.5 in Bio-Bio, Chile on May 22, 1960, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

10. The hottest spot is in Libya

The fiery award for Earth’s hottest spot goes to El Azizia, Libya, where temperature records from weather stations reveal it hit 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 degrees Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922, according to NASA Earth Observatory. There have likely been hotter locations beyond the network of weather stations.

11. The coldest place is in Antarctica

It may come as no surprise that the coldest place on Earth can be found in Antarctica, but the chill factor is somewhat unbelievable. Winter temperatures there can drop below minus 100 degrees F (minus 73 degrees C).

The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth came from Russia's Vostok Station, where records show the air plunged to a bone-chilling minus 128.6 degrees F (minus 89.2 degrees C) on July 21,1983, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

12. Antarctica is an extreme continent

The southern continent is a place of extremes. According to the American Museum of Natural History, the Antarctic ice cap contains some 70 percent of Earth's fresh water and about 90 percent of its ice, even though it is only the fifth largest continent.

Did you know Antarctica is actually considered a desert? Inner regions get just 2 inches (50 millimeters) of precipitation a year (typically as snow, of course).

13. There are giant stalagmites

Spelunkers ahoy! The largest confirmed stalagmite in the world can be found in Cuba in the Cuevo San Martin Infierno, according to the journal Acta Carsologica. This behemoth rises 220 feet (67.2 meters) tall. (Shown here, a photo of a stalagmite in a northwest Yucatan peninsula cave.)

14. There's uneven gravity

Because our globe isn't a perfect sphere, its mass is distributed unevenly. And uneven mass means slightly uneven gravity.

One mysterious gravitational anomaly is in the Hudson Bay of Canada . This area has lower gravity than other regions, and a 2007 study finds that now-melted glaciers are to blame.

The ice that once cloaked the area during the last ice age has long since melted, but the Earth hasn't entirely snapped back from the burden. Since gravity over an area is proportional to the mass atop that region, and the glacier's imprint pushed aside some of the Earth's mass, gravity is a bit less strong in the ice sheet's imprint.

The slight deformation of the crust explains 25 percent to 45 percent of the unusually low gravity; the rest may be explained by a downward drag caused the motion of magma in Earth's mantle (the layer just beneath the crust), researchers reported in the journal Science.

15. The magnetic pole creeps

Earth has a strong magnetic field, similar to a magnet bar, due to the molten iron and nickel in its core, or that's what geophysicists are pretty certain is the cause. This flow of liquid creates electric currents, which, in turn, generate the magnetic field.

Since the early 19th century, Earth's magnetic north pole has been creeping northward by more than 600 miles (1,100 kilometers), according to NASA scientists.

The rate of movement has increased, with the pole migrating northward at about 40 miles (64 km) per year currently, compared with the 10 miles (16 km) per year estimated in the 20th century.

16. The pole flip-flops

In fact, over the past 20 million years, our planet has settled into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, according to the journal Nature. As of 2012, however, it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal.

These reversals aren't split-second flips, and instead occur over hundreds or thousands of years. During this lengthy stint, the magnetic poles start to wander away from the region around the spin poles (the axis around which our planet spins), and eventually end up switched around, according to Cornell University astronomers.

17. There's a tie for tallest mountain

The title for tallest mountain goes to either Mount Everest or Mauna Kea. The summit of Mount Everest is higher above sea level than the summit of any other mountain, extending some 29,029 feet (8,848 meters) high, according to the Indian Journal of History of Science. However, when measured from its true base to summit, Mauna Kea takes the prize, measuring a length of about 56,000 feet (17,170 m), according to the USGS.

Here are some of Mauna Kea's detailed measurements, according to the Hawaii Center for Volcanology: The highest point is 13,680 ft (4,170 m) above sea level; the flanks of Mauna Loa continue another 16,400 ft (5,000 m) below sea level to the seafloor; and the volcano's central portion has depressed the seafloor another 26,000 ft (8,000 m) in the shape of an inverted cone, reflecting the profile of the volcano above it.

18. Earth once had two moons?

Earth may once have had two moons, according to Space.com. A teensy second moon — spanning about 750 miles (1,200 km) wide — may have orbited Earth before it catastrophically slammed into the other one. This titanic clash may explain why the two sides of the surviving lunar satellite are so different from each other, said scientists in the Aug. 4, 2011, issue of the journal Nature.

19. We may still have a second moon?

Some scientists claim Earth still has two moons. According to researchers reporting in the Dec. 20, 2011, issue of the planetary science journal ICARUS, a space rock at least 3.3-feet (1-meter) wide orbits Earth at any given time. They're not always the same rock, but rather an ever-changing cast of "temporary moons," say the scientists.

Their theoretical model posits that our planet's gravity captures asteroids as they pass near us on their way around the sun; when one of these space rocks gets drawn in, it typically makes three irregularly shaped swings around Earth, staying with us for about nine months before hurtling on its way.

20. Rocks can walk

Rocks can walk on Earth, at least they do at the pancake-flat lakebed called Racetrack Playa in Death Valley. There, a perfect storm can move rocks sometimes weighing tens or hundreds of pounds. Most likely, ice-encrusted rocks get inundated by meltwater from the hills above the playa, according to NASA researchers. When everything's nice and slick, a stiff breeze kicks up and moves the rock.

21. People have climbed Everest without oxygen

On May 8, 1978, climbers Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler became the first to summit Everest without the aid of oxygen, according to the journal Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology. Messner described his feelings upon reaching the top like this: "I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits."

22. Mid-ocean ridge is the longest mountain chain

To find the world's longest mountain range you'd have to look down, way down. It is called the mid-ocean ridge, and the underwater chain of volcanoes spans some 40,389 miles (65,000 km), according to NOAA. It rises an average of 18,000 feet (5.5 kilometers) above the bottom of the sea.

As lava erupts from the seafloor it creates more crust, adding to the mountain chain, which stretches around the globe.

23. Coral reefs are the largest living structures

Coral reefs support the most species per unit area of any of the planet's ecosystems, rivaling rain forests. And while they are made up of tiny coral polyps, together coral reefs are the largest living structures on Earth — a community of connected organisms — with some visible even from space, according to NOAA.

24. The Mariana Trench is the deepest spot

How low can you go? According to NOAA, the deepest point on the ocean floor is 36,200 feet (11,033 meters) below sea level in the Mariana Trench. The lowest point on Earth not covered by ocean is 8,382 feet (2,555) meters below sea level, but good luck walking there: That spot is in the Bentley Subglacial Trench in Antarctica, buried under lots and lots of ice.

25. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on land

The lowest point on land, however, is relatively accessible. It's the Dead Sea between Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The surface of this super-salty lake is 1,400 feet (427 m) below sea level.

26. Lakes can explode

In Cameroon and on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo there are three deadly lakes: Nyos, Monoun and Kivu. All three are crater lakes that sit above volcanic earth. Magma below the surface releases carbon dioxide into the lakes, resulting in a deep, carbon dioxide-rich layer right above the lakebed. That carbon dioxide can be released in an explosion, asphyxiating any passersby, according to Nature.

27. We're losing fresh water

As the climate changes, glaciers are retreating and contributing to rising sea levels. It turns out that one particular glacier range is contributing a whopping 10 percent of all the meltwater in the world. That honor belongs to the Canadian Arctic, which lost a volume equivalent to 75 percent of Lake Erie between 2004 and 2009.

28. Glaciers are melting fast

Humans leave our mark on the planet in all sorts of weird ways. For example, nuclear tests in the 1950s threw a dusting of radioactivity into the atmosphere. According to the American Geophysical Union, those radioactive particles eventually fell as rain and snow, and some of that precipitation got trapped in glaciers, where it forms a little "you are here" layer for scientists trying to date the age of glacial ice.

Some glaciers are melting so fast, however, that this half-century of history is gone.

29. Earth used to be purple

It used to be purple … well, life on early Earth may have been just as purple as it is green today, suspects Shil DasSarma, a microbial geneticist at the University of Maryland. Ancient microbes, he said, might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the sun's rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue, he suggests.

DasSarma thinks chlorophyll appeared after another light-sensitive molecule called retinal was already present on early Earth. Retinal, today found in the plum-colored membrane of a photosynthetic microbe called halobacteria, absorbs green light and reflects back red and violet light, the combination of which appears purple. The idea may explain why even though the sun transmits most of its energy in the green part of the visible spectrum, chlorophyll absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths.

30. The planet is electric

Thunder and lightning reveal our planet's fiercer side. A single stroke of lightning can heat the air to around 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 degrees Celsius), according to the book Energy by Don Herweck, causing the air to expand rapidly. That ballooning air creates a shock wave and ultimately a boom, better known as thunder.

Bonus fact: Did you know there are about 6,000 lightning flashes around the Earth every minute?

31. Earth is covered in seas

The oceans cover some 70 percent of Earth's surface, according to NOAA, yet humans have only explored or mapped about 20 percent, meaning most of the planet's vast seas have never been seen.

Some 300 million years ago, there was just one continent, a massive supercontinent called Pangaea. This means there was just one giant sea, called Panthalassa.

32. The planet is filled with riches

And these vast seas are rich, holding more than 20 million tons of gold, according to Forbes. But don't grab your mining hat just yet, the metal is so dilute that each liter of seawater contains, on average, about 13 billionths of a gram of gold. Undissolved gold is also tucked away in rocks on the seafloor, and though there's no efficient way of getting at that precious metal, according to NOAA, if we could extract all of it, each person on Earth could have 9 pounds of the shiny stuff.

33. Earth is covered with cosmic dust

Every day our planet is sprinkled with fairy dust … or dust from the heavens. On a daily basis, about 100 tons of interplanetary material (mostly in the form of dust) drifts down to the Earth's surface, according to Astronomy magazine. The tiniest particles are released by comets as their ices vaporize near the sun.

34. We trek around a star

The Earth is approximately 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from the sun, according to Space.com. At this distance, it takes about 8 minutes and 19 seconds for sunlight to reach our planet.

35. Something once collided with the moon

Many researchers think some large object crashed into Earth long ago, and the resulting debris coalesced to form our moon. It is unclear though if that colliding object was a planet, asteroid or comet, with some scientists thinking a Mars-size hypothetical world named Theia was the instigator.

36. There was once a supercontinent

The Earth's continents are thought to have collided to become supercontinents and broken apart again several times in Earth's 4.5 billion year history. The most recent supercontinent was Pangaea, which began to break apart about 200 million years ago; the landmasses that comprised Pangaea eventually wandered into the current configuration of continents.

37. Shifting rocks created mountains

While the shifting slabs of rocks called tectonic plates are unseen to us, some of their effects are monumental. Take the Himalayas, which stretch 1,800 miles (2,900 km) along the border between India and Tibet, according to NASA. This immense mountain range began to form between 40 million and 50 million years ago, when India and Eurasia, driven by plate movement, collided. The tectonic crash led to the jagged Himalayan peaks, according to USGS.

38. Kilauea is not the most active volcano

Kilauea is historically regarded as the most active volcano. But, while Hawaii's Kilauea volcano does pop its top rather frequently, it's not Earth's most active erupter. One that is more active iso the Stromboli Volcano, off the west coast of southern Italy, which has been erupting nearly continuously for over 2,000 years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its spectacular incandescent explosions have earned it the moniker "Lighthouse of the Mediterranean."

39. There was a super-colossal eruption

The largest volcanic eruption recorded by humans occurred in April 1815, the peak of the explosion of Mount Tambora, according to NOAA. The eruption ranked 7 (or "super-colossal") on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), which goes from 1 to 8 and is somewhat akin to the magnitude scale for earthquakes.

The explosion is said to have been so loud it was heard on Sumatra Island, more than 1,200 miles (1,930 km) away, Live Science previously reported. The death toll from the eruption was estimated at 71,000 people, and clouds of heavy ash descended on many far-away islands.

40. Our coastlines are crowded

Coastlines cover about 20 percent of U.S. land area (not including Alaska), and are home to almost 40 percent of the U.S. population, according to NOAA.

41. The Pacific Ocean is the biggest basin

The Pacific Ocean is by far Earth's largest ocean basin, covering an area of about 63 million square miles (163 million square kilometers) and containing more than half of the free water on Earth, according to NOAA. It's so big that all of the world's continents could fit into the Pacific basin.

42. Trees breathe in oxygen

When we think about big life, whales and elephants come to mind. But try on this tree for size: The General Sherman giant sequoia is the largest known stem tree by volume on the planet. The trunk of the tree contains slightly more than 52,500 cubic feet (1,486.6 cubic meters) of material.

43. A huge fungus is the largest living thing

If you want to pinpoint the biggest organism on the planet, though, your best bet might be a really huge fungus. In 1992, scientists reporting in Nature revealed to the world a Armillaria, or honey mushroom, fungal organism that spans 2,200 acres in Oregon. There’s a slight chance that the offshoots of this mega-fungus aren't clones, but are simply closely related, but we’re in awe either way.

44. This bat is the world's smallest mammal

On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of teeny-tiny organisms on Earth, all the way down to single-cell life. But let's focus on something a little more cuddly: the Kitti's hog-nosed bat, also known as the bumblebee bat.

This vulnerable species found in southeast Asia is only about 1 inch (29-33 millimeters) long and weighs only 0.071 ounces (2 grams), putting it in the running with Etruscan shrews– which are lighter but longer– for the world's smallest mammal, according to the Guinness World Records.

45. Tokyo is the most populated city

Don't like crowds? Stay away from Tokyo. This city in Japan is the most densely populated in the world. According to the 2021 World Population Review, , 37,435,191 people live there.

46. Greenland has the most open space

Lovers of solitude might try Greenland on for size. This nation boasts the least population density of any on Earth. As of 2016, 55,847 people lived in 836,330 square miles (2,180,000 square kilometers), according to ScienceNordic. Most of the settlements in Greenland are clustered on the coast, however, so this low population density is somewhat misleading.

47. The Atacama is the driest place on Earth

The driest non-polar desert on Earth is the Atacama Desert of Chile and Peru, according to the journal Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. In the center of this desert, there are places where rain has never been recorded.

48. Roald Amundsen was first to reach the South Pole

Speaking of deserts, the first person to successfully traverse the desert of Antarctica to reach the South Pole was Norwegian Roald Amundsen, according to Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG). He and four other men used sleds pulled by dogs to make it to the Pole. Amundsen would later attribute his success to careful planning.

49. There are other Earth-like planets

There are almost surely more planets like ours. Space scientists have found evidence of Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars, including an alien planet called Kepler 22-b circling in the habitable zone of a star much like ours.

However, Earth is the only planet in the known universe that is confirmed to host life, so whether any of these planets will harbor life is an open question.

50. The skies dazzle with dancing lights

Auroras occur when charged particles from the sun are funneled toward Earth by the planet's magnetic field and collide with the upper atmosphere near the poles, according to RMG. They are more active when the sun's activity peaks during its 11-year solar weather cycle, according to Space.com.

The southern lights, also called aurora australis, are seen less often than aurora borealis, the northern lights, because few people brave Antarctica's dark, freezing winters.

Additional resources

For ten facts about the Earth in space, visit the NASA Science website. Additionally, you can hear about what rivers can tell us about Earth’s history in this TED Talk from geoscientist Liz Hajek.

Bibliography

"On the barometer as an indicator of the earth's rotation and the sun's distance". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science (2009). 

"Lunar Rocks".  Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology, Third Edition (2003). 

"Constraints on deep moonquake focal mechanisms through analyses of tidal stress". Journal of Geophysical Research E: Planets (2009). 

"Regular stalagmites: The theory behind their shape". Acta Carsologica (2008). 

"The role of the Earth's mantle in controlling the frequency of geomagnetic reversals". Nature (1999). 

"Trigonometrical Survey of India and Naming of Peak XV as Mt. Everest" Indian Journal of History of Science, 50.4 (2015). 

"How important is V̇O2max when climbing Mt. Everest (8,849 m)?". Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology (2022). 

"Energy". Herweck, D (2009). 

"The fungus Armillaria bulbosa is among the largest and oldest living organisms". Nature (1992). 

"Introducing the Atacama Desert". Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (2018). 

An extremely powerful solar storm pummeled our planet 9,200 years ago, leaving permanent scars on the ice buried deep below Greenland and Antarctica.

A new study of those ancient ice samples has found that this previously unknown storm is one of the strongest outbursts of solar weather ever detected and would have crippled modern communications systems if it had hit Earth today.

But perhaps most surprising, the massive storm appears to have hit during a solar minimum, the point during the sun's 11-year cycle when solar outbursts are typically much less common, according to the study, published Jan. 11 in the journal Nature Communications. Because of this unexpected discovery, the study researchers are concerned that devastating solar storms could hit when we least expect them — and that Earth might not be prepared when the next big one arrives.

"These enormous storms are currently not sufficiently included in risk assessments," study co-author Raimund Muscheler, a geology researcher at Lund University in Sweden, said in a statement. "It is of the utmost importance to analyze what these events could mean for today's technology and how we can protect ourselves."

Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe

When stars attack

Solar storms occur when magnetic field lines on the sun's corona (the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere) become tangled up and then violently snap back into place. This sudden magnetic reconnection can release huge gouts of plasma and magnetic field known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which surf across space on the sun's ever-gusting solar wind.

If a powerful CME passes over Earth, it can compress the planet's magnetic shield, causing what's known as a geomagnetic storm.

Mild geomagnetic storms can damage satellites and interrupt radio transmissions; severe storms, like the "Halloween storms" of 2003, can cause widespread power outages across the world and permanently damage electrical infrastructure, such as power transformers. Some researchers fear that a sufficiently large solar storm could also ravage the world's undersea internet cables, resulting in an "internet apocalypse" that leaves huge chunks of the world population disconnected for months.

CME outbursts typically peak every 11 years or so, when the sun enters the part of its natural activity cycle known as the solar maximum — the time when magnetic activity in the corona is in high gear.

Today, satellites can monitor solar outbursts directly. But finding evidence of ancient storms requires some atomic detective work. The authors of the new study looked for evidence of special particles known as cosmogenic radionuclides — essentially, radioactive isotopes (versions of elements) created when charged solar particles collide with elements in Earth's atmosphere.

These radioactive particles can appear in natural records, like tree rings and ice cores. In the study, the authors looked at the latter, analyzing several cores drilled in Antarctica and Greenland. Cores from both locations showed a remarkable spike in the radionuclides beryllium-10 and chlorine-36 around 9,200 years ago, indicating that a powerful solar storm swept across Earth at that time.

Further analysis of the cores showed that the storm was particularly powerful — perhaps on a par with the most powerful solar storm ever detected, which occurred during a solar maximum between the years 775 B.C. and 774 B.C.

The newly discovered storm's occurrence during a solar minimum, when magnetic activity on the sun should be low, left the study authors puzzled and alarmed.

"This [storm] further pushes the magnitude of a potential worst-case scenario for [solar storm] events," the researchers wrote in the study.

According to the study authors, it is now essential for researchers to detect more ancient, extreme storms in the ice-core and tree-ring records, to determine if there is some sort of pattern beyond the sun's 11-year cycle that dictates when the most extreme storms will occur.  

Originally published on Live Science.

Natural disasters are devastating events that have the potential to cause huge amounts of damage and loss of life. Globally, around 60,000 people die each year as a result of disasters such as droughts, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis, and a further 150 million people are impacted by these events, Live Science previously reported. 

Over the past decade, global natural disasters have accounted for 0.1% of total deaths, according to data from the University of Oxford. While the number of deaths from natural disasters has declined over the past century, these events continue to cause significant amounts of loss and damage.

Here are 13 of some of the largest, deadly and costly natural disasters throughout modern history.

1900 Great Galveston Storm

On Sept. 8, 1900, a storm swept through Galveston, an island off the coast of Texas. At the time, Galveston was one of Texas's biggest port cities, but a hurricane with 140 mph (225 km/h) winds swept it off the map. It's estimated that 3,600 houses and 600 businesses were reduced to rubble across 1,900 acres (770 hectares), according to the Texas Historical Foundation. 

Although it remains unclear exactly how many people perished during the hurricane, the final death toll was estimated to be between 6,000 and 8,000 people — one-sixth of the island's population, according to the foundation. 

Related: Bombogenesis: What's a 'Bomb Cyclone'?

2008 Sichuan earthquake

In 2008, a deadly 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit several regions of south-central China. It caused multiple landslides and building collapses that killed almost 70,000 people across Sichuan province, according to the Asian Disaster Reduction Center. 

According to research published in the journal Landslides Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, the landslides created at least 828 makeshift dams across rivers and streams in the region, which caused widespread flooding. The situation was exacerbated by heavy rainfall before military personnel removed these accidental dams, according to NASA. 

2019 and 2020 Australia wildfire

Between 2019 and 2020, Australia experienced some of the deadliest wildfires in recent history. The official death toll for the wildfires was 33, according to the Parliament of Australia. A further 445 people died from conditions related to smoke inhalation from the wildfires, and 4,000 people were admitted to hospital, according to the BBC. 

Between September 2019 and March 2020, 46 million acres (19 million hectares) of forests in southeast Australia were burnt, according to the Center of Disaster Philanthropy. Generally, the majority of wildfires are believed to have been ignited by lightning, according to the Parliament of Australia; however, according to research conducted by the University of Oxford, the risk of intense fire weather during the bushfire season in southeastern Australia has increased by 30% since 1900 as a result of climate change. 

2017 Hurricane Maria

On Sept. 20, 2017, Puerto Rico was hit by the deadliest U.S.-based natural disaster in the last 100 years, according to NBC News. Hurricane Maria had the highest average rainfall of all 129 storms that have hit Puerto Rico in the past 60 years, according to the American Geophysical Union. 

The hurricane dropped around 41 inches (104 centimeters) of rain onto the island, which caused devastating floods. Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that the total death toll caused by Hurricane Maria was more than 4,600. Hurricane Maria was also the third most costly tropical cyclone in the U.S., causing around $98 billion worth of damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

1815 Mount Tambora eruption

When the Mount Tambora volcano in Indonesia blew its top on April 10, 1815, it was the climax of the largest eruption in recorded history. It's estimated that 36 cubic miles (150 cubic km) of exploded rock blasted into the atmosphere and could be seen from as far as 808 miles (1,300 km) away, according to NASA. 

The explosion expelled so much volcanic ash into Earth's atmosphere that it reduced  the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface. As a result, the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere at the time, fell by 1 degree Fahrenheit (approx 0.56 degrees Celsius), according to NOAA, and 1816 became known as "the year without a summer." Records indicate that the eruption caused 11,000 immediate deaths from pyroclastic flows (fast-moving solid lava, hot gas and ash), and a further 100,00 people died from food shortages over the preceding decade caused by the reduction in sunlight, according to NOAA. 

Related: Mount Vesuvius & Pompeii: Facts & history

1986 Lake Nyos eruption

In 1986, lethal clouds of carbon dioxide (CO2) bubbled up from the depths of Lake Nyos in northwest Cameroon and  caused the deaths of almost 1,800 people and 3,000 livestock, according to the American Geophysical Union. Lake Nyos is sat on top of a magma chamber, which leaks CO2 into the water above. In 1986, a sudden eruption of 1.6 million tons (approx 1.5 million metric tonnes) of CO2 gas burst from the lake, in an event known as a limnic eruption. 

The gas cloud rolled down the surrounding hillsides and smothered neighboring villages, according to the University of Wisconsin. Eight hundred and forty-five people survived the event but were taken to hospital, 19% of whom were treated for lesions and bullae (blister-like protrusions on the skin) caused by the CO2, according to the British Medical Journal. 

1970 Huascarán avalanche

On May 31, 1970, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake caused one of Peru's deadliest landslides, according to the BBC. The quake emanated around 22 miles (35 km) from Mount Huascarán, Peru's highest mountain. The force of the earthquake caused massive landslides that buried surrounding towns, in particular Yungay and Ranrahirca. 

It's estimated that cascading mountain ice and rocks sped down Huascarán at around 100 mph (160 km/h), including a 772-ton (700 metric tonnes) boulder that crashed into Ranrahirca, according to the BBC. A total of 70,000 people lost their lives, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

2005 Kashmir earthquake

On Oct. 8 ,2005, Kashmir in Pakistan was hit by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake, according to the Earth Observatory of Singapore. Landslides caused by the earthquake buried several towns and villages, including Balakot and Muzaffarabad. 

Around 90% of all buildings in Balakot were demolished by the quake, according to the BBC. In total, it's estimated that 3 million homes were destroyed throughout Kashmir; more than 75,000 people were killed and a further 100,000 were injured, according to NASA. It's believed that the sudden and rapid release of seismic stress between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates was the cause of the earthquake. 

2010 Haiti earthquake

On Jan. 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck near the town of Léogâne, Haiti, just 16 miles (25 kilometers) from Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital. 

Port-au-Prince was devastated, and at least 220,000 people died, according to the United Nations. (Some estimates put the death toll at up to 316,000). Another 300,000 people were injured, and 1.5 million were left homeless. The quake happened in a region where the Caribbean plate rubs against the North American plate, making it prone to large temblors. The situation was made worse because the quake hit a populated area. Soon after, a cholera epidemic swept through Haiti — at the time the worst cholera epidemic in history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was worsened by a lack of sanitation in the devastated region and killed around 10,000 people, with around 820,000 cases, according to the CDC.

1839 Coringa cyclone

An 1839 cyclone changed Coringa in southern India forever. In the early 1800s, this city on the coast of Andhra Pradesh was a bustling port, according to the University of Rhode Island (URI) Graduate School of Oceanography's Hurricanes and Society website. But on Nov. 25, 1839, an enormous tropical cyclone, or typhoon, hit Coringa, causing a 40-foot-high (12 meters) storm surge. Much of the city was wiped off the map, and approximately 300,000 people drowned. Coringa was never rebuilt to its former size. 

The destruction at Coringa gave rise to the term that now describes both hurricanes and typhoons: cyclone. According to the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, a British East India Company official named Henry Piddington coined the term after seeing the damage to the once-busy port.

1931 China floods

Between June and August 1931, rivers in Central China began to swell, fed by an unusually rainy season. Along the Yangzi, Huai and Yellow rivers, as well as the artificial Grand Canal linking the Yangzi and Yellow, flooding began to inundate riverside cities and villages. At one point, an area larger than England was underwater. 

Over 100,000 people are thought to have drowned. Estimates of the final death toll vary widely, especially because tens of thousands died in the months after the flooding, when cholera swept through camps of refugees. Malaria, smallpox and typhus also killed many people, according to a 1932 League of Nations report. Up to 4 million people may have died in total, Chris Courtney, an environmental and social historian, wrote in "The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood" (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

The deadliest tsunami in recorded history hit on Dec. 26, 2004, triggered by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The impacts were widespread and horrific: Waves up to 98 feet (30 ms) high hit Aceh, Indonesia, within minutes of the quake, according to the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience, and tsunami waves echoed around the Indian Ocean for hours after the quake. The United Nations estimates that 227,000 people died. 

The immediate economic impact was estimated at $9.9 billion, according to the UN, but the tsunami also had long-lasting impacts, such as saltwater contamination of agricultural land. The devastation inspired the creation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System, which now spreads tsunami warnings throughout the region within minutes of a large undersea earthquake occurring.

2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake

In the predawn hours of Feb. 6, 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck south-central Turkey near the town of Gaziantep. It was the strongest quake to hit Turkey since 1939, and the damage was devastating. More than 50,000 people are confirmed to have died in Turkey and Syria, according to Al Jazeera. More than 1.9 million people were displaced in the month after the quake, which was followed by a series of strong aftershocks. According to Al Jazeera, more than 173,000 buildings collapsed or were damaged in Turkey alone.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the quake and its aftershocks occurred on a long strike-slip fault at a shallow depth. Shallow quakes produce more intense shaking. Many buildings in the region were made of cement, which easily crumbles during earthquakes. According to the Associated Press, lax enforcement of building codes also contributed to the widespread damage.

Additional resources

• Natural Hazards: Earth's Processes as Hazards, Disasters, and Catastrophes
• Google Earth: Current hurricane and tropical storms 
• Natural Hazards and Disasters: From Avalanches and Climate Change to Water Spouts and Wildfires [2 volumes]

The Earth is rumbling beneath Yellowstone National Park again, with swarms of more than 1,000 earthquakes recorded in the region in July 2021, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report. This is the most seismic activity the park has seen in a single month since June 2017, when a swarm of more than 1,100 rattled the area, the report said.

Fortunately, these earthquakes were minor ones, with only four temblors measuring in the magnitude-3 range (strong enough to be felt, but unlikely to cause any damage) — and none of the quakes signal that the supervolcano underneath the park is likely to blow, park seismologists said.

"While above average, this level of seismicity is not unprecedented, and it does not reflect magmatic activity," according to the USGS report. "If magmatic activity were the cause of the quakes, we would expect to see other indicators, like changes in deformation style or thermal/gas emissions, but no such variations were detected."

Related: Rainbow Basin: Photos of Yellowstone's colorful grand prismatic hot spring

Throughout July 2021, the University of Utah Seismograph Stations, which are responsible for monitoring and analyzing quakes in the Yellowstone park region, recorded a total of 1,008 earthquakes in the area. These quakes came in a series of seven swarms, with the most energetic event occurring on July 16. According to the USGS, at least 764 quakes rattled the ground deep below Yellowstone Lake that day, including a magnitude-3.6 earthquake — the single largest of the month.

The month's remaining six swarms were all smaller, including between 12 and 40 earthquakes apiece, all measuring below magnitude 3, the report said.

These quakes are nothing to worry about, the USGS added, noting that the earth-shaking is likely the result of motion on preexisting faults below the park. Fault movements can be stimulated by melting snow, which increases the amount of groundwater seeping under the park and increases pressure levels underground, the researchers said.

Yellowstone is one of the most seismically active regions in the U.S.; the area is typically hit by anywhere from 700 to 3,000 earthquakes a year, most of which are imperceptible to visitors, according to the National Park Service. The biggest quake on record in Yellowstone was the magnitude-7.3 Hebgen Lake quake, in 1959.

Why so shaky? The park sits atop a network of fault lines associated with an enormous volcano buried deep beneath the ground (this volcano last erupted about 70,000 years ago, according to the USGS). Earthquakes occur as the region's fault lines stretch apart, and as magma, water and gas move beneath the surface. These features also feed the park's reliable geysers and steamy hot springs.

The Yellowstone volcano has erupted several times in the past, with gargantuan eruptions occurring every 725,000 years or so. If this schedule is accurate, the park is due for another big eruption in about 100,000 years. Such an eruption would devastate the entire United States, clogging rivers with ash across the continent and causing widespread drought and famine, Live Science previously reported.

Originally published on Live Science.

Nearly 14,000 scientists have signed a new climate emergency paper, warning that "untold suffering" awaits the human race if we don't start tackling global warming head-on, effective immediately.

The new paper, published July 28 in the journal BioScience and led by researchers from Oregon State University, is an update of a 2019 paper that declared a global "climate emergency" and evaluated Earth's vital signs based on 31 variables — including greenhouse gas emissions, surface temperature changes, glacial ice mass loss, Amazon rainforest loss, plus various social factors like global gross domestic product (GDP) and fossil fuel subsidies.

Unsurprisingly, the authors of the new paper find that Earth's vitals have only deteriorated over the last two years, with 18 of the report's 31 categories showing new all-time record highs or lows, the authors wrote. Greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, while glacial ice thickness is at its lowest point in 71 years of record keeping, the report found. The world is richer than it's ever been (measured by global GDP), while the sky is more polluted than ever (measured by carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide concentrations in the atmosphere).

Related: 10 Signs Earth’s climate is off the rails

"The updated planetary vital signs we present reflect the consequences of unrelent­ing business as usual," the authors wrote in the study. "A major lesson from COVID-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and con­sumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required, and they must rise above politics."

While the report includes some positive trends — like record increases in the use of solar and wind energy, and institutions divesting money from the fossil fuel industry — it paints a generally bleak picture of the future, accentuated by ongoing surges in climate-related disasters like floods, hurricanes, wildfires and heat waves, the authors wrote. The planet may also be about to pass (or has already passed) critical natural tipping points — such as the Amazon rainforest becoming a carbon source rather than a carbon sink — from which it will be hard to recover, the team added.

This all boils down to one conclusion: The future habitability of our planet depends on immediate, large-scale action, the authors wrote.

To accomplish this task, the team suggests a three-pronged near-term policy approach: 1) Implement a "significant" global carbon price to reduce emissions; 2) phase out and eventually ban fossil fuels; and 3) restore and protect key carbon-rich ecosystems, like forests and wetlands, to preserve the planet's largest carbon sinks and protect biodiversity.

"Implementing these three policies soon will help ensure the long-term sustainability of human civiliza­tion and give future generations the opportunity to thrive," the authors wrote. "The speed of change is essential, and new climate policies should be part of COVID-19 recovery plans."

The researchers plan to release another planetary "check-in" in the coming years. Hopefully, that future report will show more signs of positive change as more nations take the severity of climate change seriously. Or, perhaps it will reflect the collapse of society. Time — and political action — will tell.

Originally published on Live Science.

In the middle of the night on Thursday (June 10), the ground near the Southern Australian tourist town of Robe suddenly gave way. Locals awoke to find an enormous sinkhole, roughly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter, had opened along the picturesque Limestone Coast — and citizens are now being urged to stay away for fear that the hole could collapse even further, Australian news outlet ABC.net reported. 

"There's no warning when these things give way," James Holyman, a chief executive for the District Council of Robe, told ABC. "It's a fair way down and the Southern Ocean is fairly churned with big [waves]."

Australia's 200,000-year-old Limestone Coast faces considerable erosion from the constant saltwater waves lapping at its edges, but there may be other forces at play there, too, Patrick Hesp, a coastal studies expert at Flinders University in Adelaide, told ABC. Recent heavy rains and ocean swells likely contributed to the sinkhole's appearance, Hesp said.

The hole is also located close to a natural underwater geyser known as a blowhole, Newsweek reported. Blowholes form as waves erode cliffside caves, sloshing their way deeper into the cliff and eventually vertically toward the surface. Occasionally, water sprays from the top of these holes, usually during high tides.

Holyman said that, while the blowhole hasn't blown for several years, the constant wave action in the area has been gradually undercutting the cliffs, making collapses like this one more likely. An investigation of the hole revealed that the site is still unstable, and likely to collapse further, Holyman said.

Originally published on Live Science.

If you think of the deadliest day in the United States' history, your mind is probably drawn to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the calamity that followed Japan's strike on Pearl Harbor or perhaps a battle from the Civil War. Or maybe you think of more recent days during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The answer to the question of what was the deadliest day, it turns out, isn't straightforward. But when you take the death rate into account, it's likely none of the events mentioned above.

To put contemporary U.S. deaths in perspective, before COVID-19 began circulating in late 2019, approximately 7,700 people died every day in the U.S. for a multitude of different reasons, including things like car accidents and heart disease, said J. David Hacker, a demographic historian at the University of Minnesota.

Related: What's the deadliest day of the week?

The deadliest day in America's history is hard to pinpoint because, for one thing, America's population has grown considerably, from a mere 4 million in 1790 to in excess of 332 million today, Hacker said. So, comparing the absolute number of deaths from yesteryear with today is like comparing apples with oranges.

"Of course there are more overall deaths in a typical day today than there were in 1790, despite the fact that the death rate — deaths divided by the population — was undoubtedly much higher in 1790," Hacker told Live Science. But even if we decide that the death rate is the fairer way to make comparisons across the centuries, finding an answer to the "deadliest day' question is still more complicated than you might think.

"The deadliest day comparisons I've seen rely on different measures," Hacker said. If we're looking at a single attack or event, do we discount the people who also died on that day, but from other causes? Or do we include them? There's not much of a consensus among historians, and, on top of that, death records nationwide from 1776 to now are lacking, Hacker said.

That said, we can make a few educated guesses. "If it's just the total number of deaths in one day from a specific event on a specific day, I think nothing comes close to the Galveston Hurricane on Sept. 8, 1900," Hacker said. The hurricane, which struck Texas as a Category 4 hurricane with winds from 130 to 156 mph (209 to 251 km/h), is also known as "The Great Storm of 1900," and is often described as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Between 8,000 and 12,000 people were killed during the hurricane, NOAA said in a 2011 report. Back in 1900, roughly 3,500 people died each day, on average, said Hacker, so the storm was an especially lethal event. 

Meanwhile, the Civil War, waged from 1861-1865, was an especially bloody time. It's estimated that 750,000 soldiers perished from injury and disease, according to a 2011 study in the journal Civil War History. And so, it's not too surprising that another event worthy of mention is the 1862 Battle of Antietam, which thwarted the Confederate invasion of Maryland and saw an estimated 3,650 soldiers killed from both sides. 

Related: Why does it say 'In God We Trust' on our money?

But here again we come across data problems — not all who fought in the battle and died did so on the day of the battle itself. "Men wounded in the one-day battle may have suffered for weeks or months before finally dying, and are likely not part of the estimate," Hacker said. "Counting Civil War deaths is not an exact science." 

Hacker roughly estimates that about 2,500 other people died in the U.S. due to other (non-war-related) causes on the same day as the Battle of Antietam. That means the battle dead more than doubled the death rate of that day, making it a pretty deadly day by anyone's reckoning. The tally was higher for the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 — where more than 7,000 soldiers were killed — but that happened over the course of three days, he said. 

Putting violence aside, the Spanish flu was another particularly lethal period. "About 6,000 people died each day during October 1918 from influenza, on average." Hacker said. If we had better data from that time, it might have been possible to say that the Spanish flu was responsible for the deadliest day in U.S. history because some days likely eclipsed that 6,000 figure. "If we knew the one-day peak number of deaths from influenza, alas we don't, and added that to the daily total from other causes," Hacker said, "then perhaps the deadliest day in U.S. history from all causes or events was in October 1918." However, we don't have the records to back that up, so it’s still possible that the Galveston Hurricane was a bigger killer; in the end it comes down to a judgement call more than an indisputable fact.

What about COVID-19? During the worst days of the pandemic in February 2021, approximately 3,300 people were dying each day from the novel coronavirus, which exceeds the close to 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked planes, which crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and in a field in Pennsylvania. 

If we add that COVID-19 figure to the approximate 7,700 other deaths that happen, on average, every day, we can say that close to 11,000 people in America were dying per day during the worst days of February 2021. While not detracting from the very real tragedy of COVID-19, the population in 1918 was one-third of what it is today, and so for that reason Hacker ranks the Spanish flu above COVID-19, even though in absolute numbers, the COVID-19 pandemic may have killed more people on its deadliest day. 

"For my money, the deadliest day in U.S. history was probably one of those days in October 1918," when you take the death rate into account, he said.

Originally published on Live Science.

Japan's government announced on Tuesday (April 13) that it will dump more than a million tons of contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, beginning in two years.

Roughly 1.25 million tons (1.13 million metric tons) of water have accumulated around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan since 2011, after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami devastated the region. The twin disasters killed nearly 20,000 people, according to NPR, and caused meltdowns in three of the plant's six reactors, triggering the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

To keep the remaining reactor cores from melting, officials with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) have been pumping nearly 200 tons (180 metric tons) of cooling water through the site every day, according to The New York Times. That contaminated wastewater is stored in more than 1,000 enormous tanks on site and automatically filtered to remove most of the radioactive material, except for tritium — a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that is considered hazardous to human health in large amounts, according to the nonprofit Health Physics Society.

Now, 10 years after the disaster, TEPCO is running out of room to store the wastewater. The disposal plan, which was approved in a government cabinet meeting on Tuesday, will see the wastewater gradually discharged into the Pacific Ocean, most likely over the course of several decades.

Nuclear plants around the world routinely discharge water containing small amounts of tritium into the sea, according to the Times, and a spokesperson from the U.S. State Department called the plan "in accordance with globally accepted nuclear safety standards." However, the plan has been widely opposed by citizens of both Japan and neighboring countries.

One large concern is that TEPCO's claims about the water's safety may be wrong. A study published in the journal Science in August 2020 found traces of several other radioactive isotopes in the Fukushima wastewater, many of which take much longer to decay than tritium.

Some of that radioactive material may have already made its way into local wildlife; In February, Japanese media reported that shipments of rockfish were halted after a sample caught near Fukushima was found to contain unsafe levels of radioactive cesium.

Local fishers are especially worried that dumping Fukushima's wastewater into the sea could negatively impact their industry, which has already suffered significantly because of the nuclear disaster. According to NPR, fish catches in the area are at just 17.5% of pre-disaster levels, and fishers fear that their jobs will become "impossible" should the government go ahead with the planned wastewater disposal.

Within hours of the plan's announcement, protesters gathered outside the government offices in Tokyo and Fukushima. Government spokespeople from China and South Korea similarly condemned the decision.

Originally published on Live Science.

At least 18 people are dead and as many as 200 are missing after a piece of a Himalayan glacier broke off Sunday (Feb. 7), triggering an avalanche and flash flood that smashed through a nearby hydroelectric dam. A second dam, located further downstream, was also damaged by the flood, according to the BBC.

Video recorded by bystanders shows the raging floodwaters surging through a rocky valley in Uttarakhand – an Indian state in the Himalayas bordering China and Nepal – before ripping through the dam with a battering ram of rocks, mud, ice and debris.

Many of the missing are believed to be employees who were working at the two dams, according to news reports. More than a dozen workers were rescued from a flooded tunnel on Sunday, but as many as 40 others may still be trapped in a second tunnel, the BBC reported.

The avalanche began around 10:45 a.m. local time (12:15 a.m. EST) Sunday, when part of the Nanda Devi glacier broke off of a high peak and plummeted into the river below. The glacier sits atop a mountain of the same name; soaring more than 25,600 feet (7,800 meters) high, Nanda Devi is the second-tallest mountain in India. (At a dizzying 28,160 feet, or 8,580 m, Kangchenjunga, which sits on the border with Nepal, is the tallest mountain in India and the third tallest in the world.)

Indian authorities are still investigating the cause of the avalanche. However, the Himalayan glaciers of Uttarakhand are known to be extremely fragile, and climate change has significantly accelerated their melt rate. A 2019 study in the journal Science Advances calculated that the average rate of ice loss in the Himalayas doubled between 1975 and 2016, while the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment report predicted that one-third of the region's glaciers could be gone by the end of the century, even if the world's most ambitious climate targets are met.

Environmentalists have long cautioned against major infrastructure projects in the fragile region, according to NPR. Uttarakhand experienced an even greater tragedy in 2013, when record monsoon rainfall triggered floods that killed roughly 6,000 people. The catastrophe, which has been called the "Himalayan tsunami," wiped countless villages, bridges and roads off the map.

Originally published on Live Science.

Humanity is barreling toward a "ghastly future" of mass extinctions, health crises and constant climate-induced disruptions to society — one that can only be prevented if world leaders start taking environmental threats seriously, scientists warn in a new paper published Jan. 13 in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science.

In the paper, a team of 17 researchers based in the United States, Mexico and Australia describes three major crises facing life on Earth: climate disruption, biodiversity decline and human overconsumption and overpopulation. Citing more than 150 studies, the team argues that these three crises — which are poised only to escalate in the coming decades — put Earth in a more precarious position than most people realize, and could even jeopardize the human race.

The point of the new paper isn't to scold average citizens or warn that all is lost, the authors wrote — but rather, to plainly describe the threats facing our planet so that people (and hopefully political leaders) start taking them seriously and planning mitigating actions, before it's too late.

Related: US could reach 'net-zero' carbon by 2050. Here’s how.

"Ours is not a call to surrender," the authors wrote in their paper. "We aim to provide leaders with a realistic 'cold shower' of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future."

What will that future look like? For starters, the team writes, nature will be a lot lonelier. Since the start of agriculture 11,000 years ago, Earth has lost an estimated 50% of its terrestrial plants and roughly 20% of its animal biodiversity, the authors said, citing two studies, one from 2018 and the other from 2019. If current trends continue, as many as 1 million of Earth's 7 million to 10 million plant and animal species could face extinction in the near future, according to the new paper.

Such an enormous loss of biodiversity would also disrupt every major ecosystem on the planet, the team wrote, with fewer insects to pollinate plants, fewer plants to filter the air, water and soil, and fewer forests to protect human settlements from floods and other natural disasters, the team wrote.

Meanwhile, those same phenomena that cause natural disasters are all predicted to become stronger and more frequent due to global climate change. These disasters, coupled with climate-induced droughts and sea-level rise, could mean 1 billion people would become climate refugees by the year 2050, forcing mass migrations that further endanger human lives and disrupt society.

Overpopulation will not make anything easier.

"By 2050, the world population will likely grow to ~9.9 billion, with growth projected by many to continue until well into the next century," the study authors wrote.

This booming growth will exacerbate societal problems like food insecurity, housing insecurity, joblessness, overcrowding and inequality. Larger populations also increase the chances of pandemics, the team wrote; as humans encroach ever farther into wild spaces, the risk of uncovering deadly new zoonotic diseases — like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 — becomes ever greater, according to a study published in September 2020 in the journal World Development.

While we can see and feel the effects of global warming on a daily basis — like record-setting heat across the world and increasingly active hurricane seasons, for instance — the worst effects of these other crises could take decades to become apparent, the team wrote. That delay between cause and effect may be responsible for what the authors call an "utterly inadequate" effort to address these encroaching environmental threats.

"If most of the world's population truly understood and appreciated the magnitude of the crises we summarize here, and the inevitability of worsening conditions, one could logically expect positive changes in politics and policies to match the gravity of the existential threats," the team wrote. "But the opposite is unfolding."

Indeed, just last week a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change revealed that humans have already blown past the global warming targets set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, and we are currently on track to inhabit a world that is 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 degrees Celsius) warmer than average global temperatures in the pre-industrial era — slightly more than halfway to the United Nation's "worst-case scenario." Nations have similarly failed to meet basic biodiversity targets set by the U.N. in 2010, the authors note.

The dark future described in this paper is not guaranteed, the authors wrote, so long as world leaders and policymakers start immediately taking the problems before us seriously. Once leaders accept "the gravity of the situation," then the large-scale changes needed to conserve our planet can begin. Those changes must be sweeping, including "the abolition of perpetual economic growth … [and] a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use," the authors wrote. 

But the first step is education.

"It is therefore incumbent on experts in any discipline that deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to … avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and 'tell it like it is,'" the team concluded. "Anything else is misleading at best … potentially lethal for the human enterprise at worst."

Originally published on Live Science.

In an already-dramatic year, our planet did not hold back from stirring the pot. 2020 brought a record Atlantic hurricane season, numerous life-threatening wildfires and several earthquakes severe enough to remind humanity of the strength of plate tectonics. Some of these disasters were part of the geological cycle; others were helped by human-caused climate change. Read on for a reminder of the ways Earth displayed its wrath in 2020.

The 2020 Caribbean earthquake

One of the largest earthquakes of the year, a 7.7 magnitude temblor, hit the Caribbean on Jan. 28, 2020. The quake hit 76 miles (122 kilometers) north-northwest of Lucea, Jamaica, and south of Cuba. No one died, but the shaking was felt as far away as Miami and parts of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, according to USA Today.

The region where the quake struck is at the plate boundary between the North American Plate and the Caribbean Plate. The period between late 2019 and early 2020 was an active time at the plate boundary, with Puerto Rico experiencing an earthquake series more severe than anything seen since 1918, Live Science previously reported.

The Taal volcanic eruption

On Jan. 12, the Taal volcano on the Philippine island of Luzon belched to life in a big way, sending clouds of ash skyward. The eruption soon intensified, creating steam-and-ash plumes up to 9 miles (14 km) tall. It was the first time the volcano had erupted in 40 years. As clouds of ash drifted more than 100 miles (62 km) northward, residents living near the volcano had to evacuate. The Manila Bulletin reported that the eruption led to 39 deaths, most of which were the result of heart attacks or other medical events within evacuation centers, according to government officials. 

Related: The deadliest earthquakes in history

The Elazığ earthquake

January's seismological unrest continued in Turkey on Jan. 24, when a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck Elazığ province. Though this quake was smaller than the one that hit north of Jamaica, it was much more damaging: A reported 41 people died and more than 1,000 were injured. Many of the deaths were caused by collapsing buildings, which trapped dozens in the rubble as rescue crews struggled to reach them, CNN reported. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake's epicenter was relatively shallow, at only 6.2 miles (10 km). Shallow earthquakes cause greater shaking at the surface, increasing the intensity and damage from a quake. 

Australia megafires

At the beginning of 2020, the world watched in horror as wildfires swept through Australia, merging into megafires in Victoria and New South Wales. According to Eos, the 2019-2020 fire season in Australia burned more than 29.7 million acres (12 million hectares) and killed at least 33 people and more than a billion animals. Research published in the journal Earth's Future in November 2020 rounded up the climatic dominoes that led to this fiery cataclysm: long term drought, surface soil moisture, wind speed, relative humidity, heat waves, and the moisture content of the dead and living fuel for the fires. Land cover with native Eucalyptus and grazing land were particularly vulnerable. 

Oaxaca earthquake

On June 23, a strong earthquake jolted Oaxaca, Mexico, causing buildings to sway as far away as Mexico City. The 7.4 magnitude quake was centered 5.6 miles (9 km) southeast of Santa María Xadani, on the Oaxacan coast, according to the USGS. Ten people died in buildings that collapsed as a result of the quake. 

The quake took place in the subduction zone where the Cocos Plate is descending under the North American Plate. The movement of these two plates creates what are called reverse faults, which occur where Earth's crust is being compressed. It was one of these faults that slipped, causing the Oaxaca quake. This subduction zone also makes the southern Mexican coast seismically active in general. According to the USGS, the region has seen at least four quakes of magnitude 8 or above in the past century.

A jolt in Alaska

The most powerful earthquake of 2020 was a 7.8 magnitude temblor that struck off the coast of Alaska on July 22. The quake occurred on a thrust fault where one chunk of seafloor slid over another; this region off of Alaska is another subduction zone, where the Pacific Plate is sliding under the North American Plate. 

Fortunately, the Alaska Peninsula is sparsely populated, and no one died in the quake. Though there was a tsunami warning issued, no wave materialized — a relief to evacuated locals.

August Complex Fire, California

Just as Australia experienced a dramatic fire season, North America saw its share of flames once summer rolled around in the Northern Hemisphere. California was particularly affected, with more than 4.1 million acres (1.65 million hectares) burned, 10,488 structures destroyed and 33 deaths, according to CalFire. Among the fires that tore through the landscape was the largest in California's recorded history, the August Complex Fire. This fire consumed more than 1 million acres (400,000 hectares) in Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Tehama, Glenn, Lake and Colusa counties. It took three months to fully contain the fire, which started with lightning strikes on Aug. 16 and 17. 

Cameron Peak Fire, Colorado

As California was reeling from the August Complex Fire and other blazes around the state, a wildfire in Colorado was also setting new records. The Cameron Peak Fire, which began Aug. 13, scorched 208,913 acres (84,544 hectares), making it the largest wildfire in Colorado history as well as the first wildfire in the state to burn more than 200,000 acres (80,000 hectares). The fire unseated the previous record, set only a month before, when the Pine Gulch Fire, near Grand Junction, blazed over 139,007 acres (56,254 hectares). The Pine Gulch Fire was subsequently knocked into third place by the East Troublesome Fire, which sprung up on Oct. 14. That means the top three fires in Colorado history all occurred in 2020. Their explosive potential was driven by drought, heat and ample fuel: The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) has killed massive swathes of pine forest in the state, in part due to warmer temperatures driven by climate change. 

A fatal quake in Turkey

At 2:51 p.m. local time on Oct. 30, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey, killing 117 people and injuring more than 1,000. Two additional people died in Greece. 

The epicenter of the quake was in the Aegean Sea, and it triggered a small tsunami that flooded streets in Izmir's Seferihisar district. At least one person drowned. Most of the deaths, however, were due to collapsing buildings in the Turkish town.

Turkey is situated in a seismically complex region, with interactions between Africa, the Eurasian Plate and the Anatolian microplate. There have been 29 magnitude 6 or greater quakes in the area in the past 100 years, according to the USGS.

Hurricane Eta

The record-shattering 2020 hurricane season saw a whopping 30 named storms, 13 of which became hurricanes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The season ran through all of the names prepared for this year, from Arthur to Wilfred, and rushed right through the Greek alphabet all the way to Iota. Of all these storms, the most deadly was Hurricane Eta, a Category 4 storm whose sustained winds peaked at 150 mph (240 km/h). Approximately 150 people in Central America lost their lives, many after being buried in mudslides in Guatemala. The storm also caused an estimated $7.2 billion worth of damage. 

Eta was one of four Category 4 storms in 2020. The others were Hurricane Laura, Hurricane Teddy and Hurricane Delta.

Hurricane Iota

The 2020 hurricane season brought one storm that reached Category 5 strength: Hurricane Iota, whose sustained winds hit 160 mph (260 km/h). Iota formed on Nov. 13, making it the most recent hurricane to strengthen to a Category 5 storm. (Category 5 hurricanes have sustained winds over 157 mph, or 252 km/h.) The storm affected the Caribbean and Central America, parts of which were still reeling from Eta just weeks before. At least 45 people died, with dozens more reported missing in the wake of the storm, according to the Herald Mail.

Stromboli's wrath

The Italian volcano Stromboli is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth; it's been erupting continuously for around 2,000 years, according to Oregon State University. Most of the activity is minor — gaseous explosions and burbles of lava that spout above the volcano's rim. Occasionally, though, Stromboli lets off a bigger rumble. This happened in November, when a large explosion sent a column of ash into the air and an avalanche of pyroclastic flow — hot ash and gas — sweeping down the volcano's slopes. 

Related: The 11 biggest volcanic eruptions in history

Explosive Etna

Ending 2020 with a bang, Italy's Mount Etna exploded a stream of glowing lava into the sky on Dec. 14, disrupting air travel temporarily and creating an impressive show of geological power. According to Volcano Discovery, ejections of ash continued into the next day, sending a plume 13,000 feet (4,000 m) skyward. 

Historians and ancient chroniclers have noted Etna's unrest going back to at least 1500 B.C., according to the Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program, though the volcano's eruptive history stretches back well before that. The volcano has likely been active for some 500,000 years. Most of Etna's eruptive activity doesn't threaten the population centers around it, but there have been major exceptions. In 1928, for example, the town of Mascali was completely destroyed by lava flows. Earthquakes associated with the volcano's activity also sometimes threaten the region. For example, in December 2018, a magnitude 4.8 quake shook the city of Catania, injuring about 30 people.

Originally published on Live Science.

If you live or like to vacation along the world's coastlines, chances are good you've been affected by a tropical storm or hurricane.

Hurricanes, which are more broadly called "tropical cyclones" because they originate over Earth's tropical oceans, are some of nature's largest and fiercest storms. They get their name from Hurican, the Carib god of evil, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

Worldly windstorms

Tropical cyclones form in most of the world's tropical oceans, but always at least 300 miles (480 kilometers) north or south of the equator. Any closer to the equator than this, and the inertial force that causes storms to spin to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere, called the coriolis force, won't cause the storm system to spin. 

When they form in the Atlantic or Eastern Pacific Oceans, tropical cyclones are called hurricanes. In the western North Pacific, the same type of storms are called typhoons. And in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, they are called cyclones. 

The Atlantic hurricane season lasts from June through November. The Eastern Pacific hurricane season runs from mid-May through November. Typhoons in the North Pacific occur year-round but peak in late August. And in the South Pacific, the cyclone season begins in October and ends in May.

In the Atlantic, hurricanes typically follow one of three paths, according to NOAA's National Hurricane Center:

• Originating off the West Coast of Africa near the Cape Verde Islands and traveling west toward the Caribbean and the East Coast of the United States.
• Originating in the western Caribbean, and moving into the U.S. Gulf Coast, or along the U.S. East Coast.
• Originating in the Gulf of Mexico and crashing into the Gulf Coast states, anywhere between Texas and Florida.

How hurricanes form

As with any weather event, certain atmospheric ingredients must be in place for a hurricane to cook up over the open ocean. According to NOAA's National Weather Service, these include:

• Warm ocean waters of at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius) extending from the sea surface to a depth of 150 feet (46 meters) underwater.
• A moist and unstable atmosphere. In other words, an atmosphere with high humidity at upper levels and one in which air has a tendency to rise. 
• A pre-existing disturbance near surface levels, such as a complex of thunderstorms, which meteorologists call tropical easterly waves. 
• Sufficient distance (at least 300 miles, or 480 km) from the equator.
• Little to no wind shear, meaning wind speed and direction varies little between the surface and the troposphere, the lowest level of Earth's atmosphere, which stretches tens of thousands of feet above the surface.

When a storm forms under these minimum criteria, it is deemed a tropical cyclone, or more specifically, a tropical disturbance. At this initial stage, the disturbance is essentially a cluster of marine clouds and thunderstorms, but if ocean temperatures remain sufficiently balmy, the disturbance will continue to strengthen. And as the system becomes slightly more organized it may start to circulate. When the storm system's winds begin to circulate around a well-defined center, but its maximum sustained wind speeds have not exceeded 38 mph (61 km/h), the storm becomes categorized as a "tropical depression." It's at this stage that the storm earns a name.

Related: Storm targets: Where the hurricanes hit (infographic)

Once maximum sustained winds reach between 39 and 73 mph (63 to 117 km/h), the cyclone is classified as a "tropical storm." And when a storm's sustained winds reach 74 mph (119 km/h) or greater, the cyclone is classified as a hurricane — or typhoon if it's in the North Pacific, and cyclone if in the South Pacific.

How hurricanes are categorized

Hurricanes are categorized according to the speed of their maximum sustained winds. The scale used for this purpose, called the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, was developed in 1971 by civil engineer Herbert Saffir and by meteorologist and then-director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center, Bob Simpson. The Saffir-Simpson scale rates a hurricane's severity from 1 (very dangerous) to 5 (catastrophic), based on the following wind speeds: 

• Category 1: Winds of 74-95 mph (119-153 km/h)
• Category 2: Winds of 96-110 mph (154-177 km/h)
• Category 3: Winds of 111-129 mph (178-208 km/h)
• Category 4: Winds of 130-156 mph (209-251 km/h)
• Category 5: Winds exceeding 157 mph (252 km/h)

Hurricanes that reach Category 3 or higher are considered "major hurricanes" because of their potential to cause significant damage and loss of life. Similarly, typhoons with winds exceeding 150 mph (241 km/h) earn the title of "super typhoon."

Although winds are the most common way to measure how intense a tropical cyclone is, central barometric pressure, which is the air pressure exerted by Earth's atmosphere on the storm's geographical center, is another way meteorologists measure a storm's intensity. In general, the lower a storm's central pressure, the stronger the storm. While lower pressure and higher winds tend to go hand-in-hand, one isn't necessarily indicative of the other. For example, as of 2019, Hurricane Wilma (2005), a Category 5 hurricane, held the record for the lowest central pressure (882 millibars) of any Atlantic hurricane, but Hurricane Allen (1980), also a Category 5 hurricane, ranks as the Atlantic hurricane with the strongest winds (its sustained winds reached 190 mph, or 306 km/h). 

Beware of these features and hazards

The main physical features of a hurricane are its rainbands, eye and eyewall. These features take shape as surface air from all directions spirals in toward the center of the storm in a counter-clockwise pattern (or clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere). 

Because this converging air has nowhere else to go it rises, creating a column of forceful rising air at the storm's center known as the eyewall. Rising air encourages clouds and thunderstorms to develop, which is why the eyewall is surrounded by a ring of towering thunderstorms that inflict some of the cylone's most severe punishment. Curved bands of clouds and thunderstorms trail away from the eyewall in a spiral fashion. These rainbands, which typically extend outward 50 to 300 miles (80 to 483 km) from the cyclone's center, can produce heavy bursts of rain and wind, as well as tornadoes.

Related: Hurricane preparation: What to do

The eyewall's strong rotation of air creates an empty vortex at its center. This empty area is the eye of the storm, and spans a distance about 20 to 40 miles (32 to 64 km) in diameter on average, according to NOAA. Inside the eye, air from the top of the cyclone sinks back down toward the surface to fill the void of the air that was pulled into the storm. Sinking air inhibits cloud formation, which is why the eye has calm winds and clear skies. A tropical cyclone is said to have made landfall when its eye hits the shoreline.

Violent winds are not the only hazard of hurricanes or cyclones. Storm surges — walls of seawater that are pushed toward shore by the sheer force of a storm's winds — can increase water levels by 15 feet (4.5 m) or more above the predicted astronomical tide. In 2017, the National Weather Service began issuing storm surge watches and warnings to alert areas along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the unique risk for life-threatening inundation from approaching tropical cyclones. 

Flooding caused by storm surges and by heavy rainfall is a major hazard of hurricanes. According to a 2014 study published in The Bulletin of the American Meteorology Society, storm surge flooding has been the leading cause of hurricane-related fatalities for the past 50 years. 

Related: The costliest hurricanes in history

Who picks hurricane names?

Hurricane names are determined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, that serves as the international authority on weather, climate and hydrology. The WMO maintains six lists of alphabetical names that are recycled and reused every six years for the Atlantic and eastern Pacific Ocean basins. It also composes separate lists for the globe's five other cyclone zones, including the western Pacific, northern Indian, southwestern Indian, southeastern Indian, and Australian Ocean basins. 

According to the National Hurricane Center, the current practice of assigning male and female names to hurricanes wasn't put into place until 1979. Before this, only female names were used. And for hundreds of years before that, storms often took the name of the holiday or saint's day on which they occurred. 

Names are preferred to numbers because they're easier to remember. The one exception to this no-numbering rule is tropical depressions; because they aren't named, they take the title of whatever number cyclone they are within a particular season-year, that is, "Tropical Depression Three," or "Tropical Depression Fifteen," etc.

If a storm is ever so deadly or destructive that the future use of its name would be insensitive, that name is retired and a replacement name is chosen. For example, the names Katrina and Sandy have been removed from the list of Atlantic cyclone names because of the astounding amount of destruction and death that resulted from Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012). More recently, Matthew (2016), Maria (2017), Florence (2018), and Michael (2018) were retired. 

During extremely busy Atlantic hurricane seasons, all the names on the names list may be used up. When this happens, subsequent storms receive a name from the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Gamma and so on). This has only ever happened twice, according to NOAA: in 2005 and again in 2020. 

Hurricanes and climate change

Hurricanes feed off of heat energy, so as Earth's global temperatures continue to rise, hurricanes are bound to be affected. So far, it's not evident that hurricanes are necessarily forming more often because of rising temperatures, although scientists do predict that hurricane activity and intensity will likely increase in future years. 

There is, however, a clear link between global warming and an increase in the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Climate change also appears to be causing hurricanes to intensify more rapidly than ever before, and to produce far more rain, according to Yale Climate Connections. These trends are likely a result of higher ocean temperatures and higher water vapor content in the atmosphere as the air heats up, according to NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. 

Warmer-than-average ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea are already contributing to the active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA reported. Similar conditions have been producing busier-than-normal hurricane seasons since 1995. Scientists predict the annual trend of more frequent extreme storms and record-breaking hurricane seasons to continue as long as climate change persists. 

Additional resources:

• Track active tropical cyclones at NOAA's National Hurricane Center.
• Discover which cyclone names are on this year's list at the World Meteorological Organization.
• Learn how to prepare for a hurricane at Ready.gov.

California is having a record-breaking year of flames, as dozens of wildfires have set the state ablaze.

Wildfires have burned more than 2.2 million acres (8,903 square kilometers) across California this year, killing at least eight people and destroying more than 3,300 structures, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). That's an area more than twice the size of Rhode Island. 

"This is crazy. We haven't even got into the October and November fire season and we've broken the all-time record," Cal Fire Capt. Richard Cordova told CNN. "It concerns us because we need to get these firefighters off these lines and get them breaks from battling these wildfires."

There are more than 14,000 firefighters working across the state to contain around 25 major fires. Most of the state is under a red flag warning today (Sept. 7) and into tomorrow (Sept. 8), meaning that conditions including strong, gusty winds and low humidity are ideal for wildfire strengthening and spread, according to Cal Fire. 

Related: Raging western wildfires in photos

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of wildfires in the state and across the globe, according to California Environmental Protection's Agency's Air Resources Board. The area that's burned by wildfires in California has been increasing in size each year since 1950, as temperatures climb, according to the Board. And more than a century of fire suppression practices have left many forests with plants prone to "exceedingly hot fires," according to Cal Fire

The Creek Fire that began burning on Friday (Aug. 4) evening, is 0% contained and has spread across 135,523 acres (548 square km) in the Big Creek drainage area between Shaver Lake, Big Creek and Huntington Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. The California Army National Guard had to evacuate more than 200 people who were trapped by the fast-moving fire at the Wagner Mammoth Pool campground, according to the government's Incident Information System. 

Yesterday, the Fresno Fire public information office wrote on Twitter that a military helicopter was trying to rescue people trapped by the fire near Lake Edison in the Sierra National Forest, but was unsuccessful due to heavy smoke conditions. But at least 13 people were rescued from the Sierra National Forest overnight, the Army National Guard Col. David Hall said on NBC's "Today" show.

A "pyrotechnic device," that generated smoke during a gender reveal party sparked the El Dorado Fire, which has burned 10,574 acres (42.79 square km) of land in Southern California's San Bernardino County and is currently 16% contained, according to a statement from Cal Fire. Lightning strikes caused most of the other fires, according to NPR. 

Some of the worst air quality in the world is currently plaguing the Golden State, with some regions recording "very unhealthy" and "hazardous" levels of smoky particulate matter in the air, according to the U.S. Air Quality Index. 

The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service announced in a statement yesterday (Sep. 7), that it has temporarily closed eight national forests, including the Sierra and Sequoia National Forests due to the "threat of unprecedented and dangerous fire conditions" amid extreme heat, significant wind events, dry conditions and limited firefighting resources as teams tackle fires across the country.

California faced an immense heatwave on Labor Day weekend. Los Angeles County recorded its highest temperature ever at 121 degrees Fahrenheit (49.4 degrees Celsius) on Sunday (Sep. 6), according to a tweet from the National Weather Service Los Angeles.

"The wildfire situation throughout California is dangerous and must be taken seriously. Existing fires are displaying extreme fire behavior, new fire starts are likely, weather conditions are worsening, and we simply do not have enough resources to fully fight and contain every fire," Randy Moore, the Regional Forester for the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region, said in the Forest Service statement.

Originally published on Live Science.

Hurricane Laura barrelled ashore in southwestern Louisiana in the dark hours of the morning (Aug. 27) as a category 4 storm. Right before landfall, it became the strongest Gulf hurricane since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 

Laura, now weakened to a tropical storm, is headed northeast, but the storm surge it left behind may not recede for days.

Today's sunrise revealed flooding and wind damage across the region. The Associated Press reported this morning that stranded people in the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana, a city in the storm's path, were calling for help but hadn't received aid yet, as first responders in the region were also trapped indoors.

 At least four people in the state died as a result of the hurricane, including a 14-year-old girl who was killed when a tree fell on her family's house in Leesville, Louisiana, according to NOLA.com. The storm previously killed 20 people in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic, according to The Weather Channel. It also caused major flooding in Puerto Rico, where two teenagers narrowly escaped drowning after spending hours trapped on a rock amid floodwaters, according to El Nuevo Dia.

Over 850,000 are without power in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, according to PowerOutage.us.

The total extent of the storm's damage to the Louisiana and southeastern Texas coasts is still unclear as rain and high winds continue to trail through the region. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasts stated that an "unsurvivable" storm surge could penetrate up to 40 miles (64 kilometers) inland and not recede for days. 

Laura did not move toward Houston as originally projected. Instead, the storm tracked northeast across Louisiana and is now poised to enter Arkansas. Meanwhile, a "life threatening storm surge" at the coastal border of Texas and Louisiana continued as of 8 a.m. ET, according to the NHC.

At its overnight landfall, Laura was a category 4 storm with 150 mph (240 kph) winds. That makes it the most intense storm ever to hit Louisiana in at least 170 years. At its most powerful, just before landfall, Laura had strengthened into a category 5 storm, recording the strongest winds in the Gulf of Mexico since Katrina's pre-landfall peak.

During landfall, National Weather Service flood gauges recorded storm surges over 10 feet (3 meters) in the worst-hit areas. Wind gusts reached up to 132 mph (212 kph) in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the largest population center in the storm's path.

Related: Hurricane season: How long it lasts and what to expect

Reporters and residents shared footage overnight of intense winds lifting heavy debris into the air and ripping material off of buildings.

Flash flooding will be a major ongoing threat along rivers and streams in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, according to the NHC.

Heavy rainfall, flash flooding and urban floods will threaten parts of southern Ohio, Tennessee and the mid-Atlantic states Friday and Saturday as the storm moves northeast, according to the NHC.

Multiple studies have shown that powerful hurricanes like Laura are becoming more common in this era of dramatic climate change, Live Science previously reported.

Severe storms such as this one, along with the major wildfires that have forced evacuations in four western states this month, make controlling the spread of the coronavirus epidemic even more difficult, Live Science previously reported.

Laura set the record for the earliest 13th tropical cyclone in a year; typically, the 13th storm doesn't form until at least September. With three more months of hurricane season left, meteorologists expect that 2020 will continue to be busy with whirling storms. 

Originally published on Live Science.

A camera points down a seemingly benign trail in Pima County, Arizona. But just moments into the video, something dark appears in the distance, before blanketing the dry dirt. Eventually, it resolves into a coal-black river of sticks and sludge, flowing almost as quickly as clear water.

The video, posted to Twitter by Pima County officials, shows a July 15 debris flow following a wildfire at Cañada del Oro Wash — a drainage channel and mountain biking trail in the county. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), fires can change the way rainwater flows over land. Under normal circumstances, most dirt is capable of sucking up a lot of water, which keeps flash floods from happening every time it rains. But after a wildfire, the land is no longer able to absorb as much water. And even minor rains can trigger flash floods filled with debris.

"Fast-moving, highly destructive debris flows triggered by intense rainfall are one of the most dangerous post-fire hazards," according to USGS's California Water Science Center. "It takes much less rainfall to trigger debris flows from burned basins than from unburned areas. In Southern California, as little as 7 millimeters (0.3 inches) of rainfall in 30 minutes has triggered debris flows."

In 2018, mudslides and debris flows after the Thomas Fire killed 13 people in two California towns after a winter storm, according to Santa Barbara Family Life. 

According to KGUN 9, a local news station, this recent debris flow seems to have originated with the Bighorn Fire, which has burned about 120,000 acres (485 square kilometers) in the area.

No casualties or major damage have been reported from this event, despite the dramatic footage. But the risk of heavy, debris-filled floods of this kind remains for years after a fire, according to the USGS. The largest such events usually happen in the first storm season after a major fire.

To avoid major post-fire debris disasters, the USGS examines burned regions for potential risks and sets up flood gauges to provide emergency alerts if floodwaters rush past.

As the climate changes, wildfires have become more common all over the world, bringing with them all sorts of risks, according to NASA. Research published in June by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests wildfires burn four times more land each year in the United States than they did 40 years ago.

Originally published on Live Science.

A volcano in a densely populated part of the Philippines has started to belch clouds of ash and streams of molten rock — and scientists are worried it could soon erupt even more violently, putting almost a million people at risk.

Another "imminent hazardous eruption" could happen "within hours or days," according to the Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), which is monitoring the volcano on the island of Luzon, reported The Manila Times.

The Taal volcano, located about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of the Philippines capital, Manila, began erupting on Sunday (Jan. 12), when it launched a column of ash and smoke up to 9 miles (14 km) high. The dark, towering column from the volcano was also filled with flashes of lightning and thunder.

Related: The 10 Most Hazardous Countries for Volcanoes (Photos)

Before dawn today (Jan. 13), the volcano started spewing a "fountain" of molten lava from vents in its central crater, according to the Times. "The volcano is sort of a volcano within a volcano," explained volcanologist Greg Valentine from the State University at Buffalo in New York. "It's on an island in a lake that is partly filling a larger caldera [an older crater that has partly collapsed]." (Live Science previously reported that this island-volcano lost its designation as the world's largest island-in-a-lake-on-an-island-in-a-lake-on-an-island.)

An exclusion zone with an 8.5-mile (14 km) radius is being enforced around the erupting volcano, and Phivolcs has requested the evacuation of a danger zone with a 10.5-mile (17 km) radius, an area that is home to more than 900,000 people, the BBC reported.

The area has also been shaken by dozens of intense earthquakes in the last few days, and volcanologists have warned of the dangers of a "volcanic tsunami" in the lake — a huge wave triggered by either earthquakes or falling debris.

The Taal volcano is relatively small by the standards of volcanoes, but Valentine told Live Science that Taal is one of the most active volcanoes in the Philippines. In the 1960s, eruptions at the Taal volcano revolutionized the scientific understanding of a certain type of explosive volcanic eruption, called a pyroclastic surge, he said.

"These are flows of ash and gas that, instead of going to high up in the atmosphere, they flow along the ground — sort of like superintense dust storms," Valentine said. "They just strip everything in their path, so they are quite devastating."

Pyroclastic surges and the dangers of volcanic ash raining down throughout the region are a greater danger than lava from the volcano, he said.

If the eruptions become larger, they could even affect Manila indirectly, as volcanic ash could fall on electrical distribution networks or disrupt air travel, Valentine said. The ash could also lead to respiratory issues among Manila residents. 

More than 50 active volcanoes are found on the islands of the Philippines, a consequence of the islands' location on the edges of the tectonic plates of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

"There's a section of ocean crust that is going underneath the Philippines islands, and that causes melting of rock down deep," Valentine said. "Ultimately, that results in volcanoes on the surface."

• Photos: Hawaii's New Underwater Volcano
• In Photos: Aftermath of Iceland Volcano Floods
• The 10 Biggest Earthquakes in History

Originally published on Live Science.

A destructive tornado touched down in the northeastern part of Dallas on Sunday night (Oct. 20), knocking out power for more than 150,000 residents and causing significant property damage. Though the tornado cut through a densely populated area, no storm-related deaths have been reported, according to the city's official website. 

"We should consider ourselves pretty fortunate that we didn’t lose any lives, no fatalities, and no serious injuries," said Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson told The Washington Post. "Property damage, we’re not concerned about that... we’ve dealt with [that] before."

Related: Tornadoes Don't Form Like Meteorologists Thought They Did

The tornado was part of a series of severe storms reported from Texas to the Illinois-Missouri border yesterday, battering the region with hail, lightning, heavy rain and 70 mph (113 km/h) winds. The National Weather Service has yet to determine the intensity of the tornado that hit Dallas, but radar scans revealed powerful wind lifting debris more than 20,000 feet (6 kilometers) in the air, The Washington Post reported. (The height at which debris circulates is often indicative of a storm's strength.)

Sunday's violent maelstrom likely formed after a supercell thunderstorm — a violent storm with a deep, rotating updraft that can easily intensify into a tornado — collided with several smaller rainstorms north of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on Sunday night (Oct. 20), according to the Post. 

By 9 p.m. local time, radar scans of the storm revealed an ominous "debris ball" made of obliterated homes, businesses and other property, swirling about 2 miles high (3.2 km). Within the next 10 minutes, the debris reached a height of nearly 3 miles (4.8 km). The National Weather Service in Fort Worth labeled the storm "life threatening" and capable of "complete destruction."

The tornado did most of its damage in Dallas' Preston Hollows neighborhood — an affluent community that includes the home of former president George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush. (They were both unharmed by the storm, a spokesperson said). Numerous homes, schools and businesses were destroyed by the storm, however, and the roads were littered with trees and downed power lines. Dozens of roads remain closed, and roughly 100 traffic lights are still without power, the city's website said. 

Tornadoes form when winds of different temperatures and humidity meet. In the United States, this generally happens when warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico meets cool, dry air moving southward from Canada. Warm air likes to rise, but can sometimes get trapped under a block of cold air when two storm fronts meet. Unable to move upward, the warm air starts to rotate instead, sometimes pulling the cool air below it and intensifying into a spinning wind funnel that stretches from the ground to the sky.

While this storm was remarkably strong, tornadoes are not an uncommon occurrence in the overall region. Dallas County has been hit with about 100 twisters in the last 140 years, the National Weather Service reports, including 19 in the last decade.

• Photos: The Tornado Damage Scale In Images
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• Image Gallery: Moore, Okla., Tornado Damage - May 20

Originally published on Live Science.

A series of major earthquakes shook Southern California in July and placed strain on a nearby fault that has been quiet for about 500 years, according to a new study. 

And that once-quiescent fault could trigger a magnitude 7.8 temblor, the authors noted.

The Garlock fault traces the northern boundary of the Mojave Desert and extends about 186 miles (300 kilometers) across Southern California. The July quakes, collectively known as the Ridgecrest earthquake sequence, rattled the earth when ruptures occurred along several small faults in the region and stopped just a few miles from Garlock. The nearby disruption triggered movement along the fault, scientists reported Oct. 17 in the journal Science. Since July, the fault has slipped about 0.8 inches (2 centimeters) at the surface. 

The Ridgecrest sequence not only set the Garlock fault in motion, it has also shaken up our idea of how major earthquakes typically occur, the authors said. 

"It ended up being one of the best-documented earthquake sequences in history and sheds light on how these types of events occur," study co-author Zachary Ross, an assistant professor of geophysics at Caltech, said in a statement. "It's going to force people to think hard about how we quantify seismic hazard and whether our approach to defining faults needs to change."

Related: The 10 Biggest Earthquakes in History

The most powerful shaking during the Ridgecrest sequence took place about 124 miles (200 km) north of Los Angeles, according to the statement. The event began July 4 with a magnitude 6.4 foreshock; the even-larger mainshock came about 34 hours later at a magnitude of 7.1. More than 100,000 aftershocks shook the region in the following weeks, according to the NASA Earth Observatory. 

According to the new study, the initial rupture that set off the first quake triggered a chain reaction of slips and shocks through a criss-crossing system of nearby faults. "We actually see that the magnitude-6.4 quake simultaneously broke faults at right angles to each other, which is surprising because standard models of rock friction view this as unlikely," Ross said. Twenty faults caught in the domino effect hadn't been discovered before the event, the authors reported. 

The finding overturns commonly held assumptions about how major earthquakes occur, Ross said. Previously, scientists thought major earthquakes, measuring above a 7.0, were likely caused by the rupture of a single long fault and that their maximum magnitude is limited by the length of said fault. The Ridgecrest sequence exemplifies an alternate scenario: small faults can "link up" in an intricate network and set off powerful quakes, said Ross. 

"Over the last century, the largest earthquakes in California have probably looked more like Ridgecrest than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which was along a single fault," Ross said. "It becomes an almost intractable problem to construct every possible scenario of these faults failing together — especially when you consider that the faults that ruptured during the Ridgecrest Sequence were unmapped in the first place."

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Originally published on Live Science.

In case you've forgotten, Earth's sun is totally epic: It's home to towering fountains of plasma, "lava lamp blobs" of mystery matter 500 times larger than Earth, and a writhing magnetic field that twists, turns, snaps and lashes out into space every 11 years or so, seriously screwing with Earth's power grid.

While trying to better understand that 11-year stellar-tantrum cycle, characterized by a sudden increase in sunspot activity near the sun's equator, scientists discovered a new form of solar epicness you should probably be aware of. When one solar cycle ends and the next begins, the researchers wrote, the sun may experience cataclysmic magnetic field collisions — known as "terminator events" — resulting in gargantuan tsunamis of plasma that can charge across the sun's surface for weeks at a time.

According to the authors of two new studies (published February 4 in the journal Scientific Reports and July 9 in the journal Solar Physics), these solar tsunamis could be a missing link in the solar cycle, kick-starting the production of sunspots — gigantic spots on the sun that tend to form near strong magnetic field lines and are cooler than other parts of the sun’s surface — near the sun's middle latitudes — just a few weeks after they start to disappear near its equator.

"We have observed the sunspot cycle for hundreds of years, but it's been a mystery what mechanism could transport a signal from the equator, where the cycle ends, to the sun's mid-latitudes, where the next cycle begins, in such a relatively short amount of time," Mausumi Dikpati, a senior scientist at the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, and a co-author of both new studies, said in a statement.

Solar tsunamis, Dikpati and colleagues argue, may be the answer.

For the first study, researchers looked at 140 years' worth of solar observations taken from Earth and satellites. The scientists focused on the movement of coronal bright points — small loops of plasma that form over magnetic hotspots in the sun's atmosphere; these points shine with extreme ultraviolet light before disappearing, usually within a single day. Unlike sunspots, which appear only during periods of high solar activity (known as solar maximums), bright points can occur during less-active periods (called solar minimums), providing a more comprehensive view of solar activity across cycles, the researchers wrote.

Tracking these bright points revealed an interesting pattern: They first appeared around 55 degrees latitude (about 20 degrees higher than sunspots tend to appear), then migrated toward the equator by a few degrees latitude every year. Once the points reached about 35 degrees latitude, they began overlapping with sunspots. The points and spots continued moving toward the equator in tandem for several years; when they got there, they all vanished in a "terminator" event. A few weeks after a termination, bright points always started popping up like clockwork in the sun's mid-latitudes again.

Some physical feature of these terminator events seemed to be triggering the start of the next cycle in higher latitudes — but, what? Here's where the tsunamis come in.

In the second paper (co-authored by two of the researchers who worked on the first), researchers explained how terminator events could end in the collision of two huge magnetic field lines near the sun's equator, resulting in dual tsunamis of plasma.

According to the study, magnetic field lines like these — called "toroidal magnetic field lines," because they stretch around the diameter of the sun in a donut (or toroid) shape — may be responsible for the emergence of bright points and sunspots as they move across the sun's surface. It's possible the field lines also serve as magnetic "dams," the researchers wrote, trapping plasma behind them as they advance toward the sun's equator.

When two opposing field lines (one generated by the sun's north pole and the other by the south pole) meet at the equator, their opposing charges cancel each other out, resulting in what the researchers call "mutual annihilation." The field lines snap, releasing the plasma trapped behind them in two massive tidal waves that rush forward, bounce off each other, and surge backward toward the poles in twin tsunamis, traveling 1,000 feet (300 meters) per second.

Within a week or two, these waves reach the mid-latitudes of either hemisphere, where they reach another set of magnetic field lines that are already drumming up bright points for the next solar cycle. When the tidal wave hits this new set of lines, it buoys those magnetic field lines up toward the surface, causing a surge in sunspot creation to accompany the bright points.

This, the researchers wrote, could explain the strangely consistent gap between the termination of one cycle and the start of the next. Computer simulations showed that solar tsunamis like this are theoretically possible — however, for now, they remain just a really cool idea. Luckily, astronomers may soon have a chance to find real evidence of these solar tsunamis; judging from current bright point activity near the equator, the researchers wrote, the sun is due for its next tsunami by 2020.

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Originally published on Live Science.

New Orleans is bracing for a tropical storm that is expected to hit tonight or tomorrow, bringing with it chances of severe flooding.

Tropical Storm Barry is slowly moving west-northwestward toward the southeastern coast of Louisiana, according to an advisory from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The storm's center is expected to hit the southeastern coast of Louisiana, including New Orleans, tonight or Saturday (July 13) and then continue on to the lower Mississippi Valley on Sunday.

It will bring "dangerous storm surge, heavy rains, and wind conditions," across the north-central Gulf Coast, according to NOAA. (A storm surge means that there is a danger of life-threatening floods from rising water moving inland from the coastline, NOAA officials wrote.) [Aftermath of a Storm: Images from Hurricane Katrina]

They expect the storm will bring "dangerous, life-threatening flooding," with 10 to 20 inches (25 to 50 centimeters) of water accumulation in southeast Louisiana and southwest Mississippi. Louisiana is currently under a federal declaration of emergency.

Currently, maximum winds remain around 50 mph (85 km/hr). But there is a chance that Tropical Storm Barry will intensify and turn into a hurricane — once winds hit 74 mph (119 km/h) — tonight or early Saturday when its center strikes the Louisiana coast, according to NOAA.

Some of New Orleans sits below sea level, as if at the bottom of a bowl, and is thus prone to flooding. Fourteen years earlier, Hurricane Katrina brought flooding that devastated the area. In the years following, an extensive hurricane protection system of levees and pumps was put in place, but it isn't yet complete, according to the AP.

The pumping system is working; it's just unclear if it can pump out water faster than Barry will dump it onto the low-lying area, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell told the AP. What's more, the Mississippi River is already at a high level from heavy rain and snowmelt; the additional water from the storm could lead to dangerous flooding, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told the AP.

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• A History of Destruction: 8 Great Hurricanes

Originally published on Live Science.

A mud island that burst from the waters off the coast of Pakistan during a deadly earthquake in 2013 has disappeared beneath the waves.

The 6-year-old island was the product of a "mud volcano," as Live Science reported at the time. Buried mud, subject to the intense pressures of the Arabian tectonic plate grinding against the Eurasian plate, liquefied and launched toward the surface. It moved so fast that it carried rocks and boulders on top of it. Those rocks ended up on the surface of the newly formed island, which was 65 feet high, 295 feet wide and 130 feet long (20 by 90 by 40 meters). The island was named Zalzala Koh (which means "Earthquake mountain" in Urdu), according to NASA. Now, satellite images show, it's pretty much gone.

"Islands produced by mud volcanoes in this region have a history of coming and going," NASA officials said in a statement. [5 Colossal Cones: Biggest Volcanoes on Earth]

The 7.7-magnitude earthquake that produced the island was cataclysmic, killing more than 320 people and displacing thousands. That same energy produced Zalzala Koh, but the quick-moving sediment didn't form an island built to last.

NASA images in intervening years have shown trails of eroded material in the water around the island as it's slowly shrunk over time, until the April 27 shot showed it entirely disappeared.

Still, Zalzala Koh isn't completely gone. Material still swirls in the water where it once stood, suggesting some portion of it still juts up from below the surface. And the same fissures that created it might produce more mud volcano islands in the future, according to NASA.

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Originally published on Live Science.

There's an 8% chance that Southern California could be rocked by another magnitude 6.0 or above earthquake this week, according to seismologists.

The region trembled under the effects of two large quakes last week, one a magnitude 6.4 on July 4 and one a magnitude 7.1 on July 5, both epicentered near Ridgecrest, California. That second temblor demoted the magnitude 6.4 to a mere foreshock. But chances are, the 7.1 magnitude quake is as bad as it's going to get: The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates a 1% or less chance of a magnitude 7.0 or above quake in the Southern California desert in the coming week or month.

"Most of the earthquakes that are going to happen as we move through time are going to get smaller and less frequent," said Wendy Bohon, a geologist at the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (a university research consortium) in Washington, D.C. [Could Massive SoCal Earthquakes Trigger the 'Big One' on the San Andreas Fault?]

Forecasting aftershocks

No one can predict earthquakes, but scientists can give rough probabilities of aftershocks. The USGS calculates the likelihood of magnitude 3 and above aftershocks for any quake of magnitude 5 or above in the United States and its territories.

The process is not dissimilar to predicting the weather, Bohon told Live Science. Seismologists use observations from past earthquakes and their aftershocks, taking into account the magnitude, or energy released in the quake, and local geophysical patterns. The Eastern California Shear Zone, the region where the recent Ridgecrest quakes hit, is particularly notorious for active aftershocks, Bohon said. More than 3,000 quakes have been recorded since July 4 near the Ridgecrest quake's epicenter, according to the Southern California Earthquake Data Center, but the vast majority have been in the unnoticeable-to-weak magnitude 1 or magnitude 2 range.

Seismologists' predictions are governed by certain scientific laws, like Omori's law, which states that the frequency of aftershocks decreases with time. Then there's the Gutenberg-Richter law, which defines the relationship between larger and smaller quakes. This is the law that states that for every magnitude difference in a quake, there's a tenfold change in frequency. For example, for every 4.0 magnitude quake, there will be 10 magnitude 3.0 quakes and 100 magnitude 2.0 quakes. Both of these laws give scientists a rough pattern to follow when forecasting the aftereffects of an earthquake of any given magnitude.

SoCal quake stats

Southern California's quakes are a result of the movement of the Pacific tectonic plate and the North American tectonic plate against each other; much of this stress occurs on the San Andreas Fault, but about 25% occurs in the Eastern California Shear Zone, Bohon said. This zone is where some of the largest quakes in California's history have occurred, she added. The July 5 magnitude 7.1 quake was the largest in the state since 1999, when the Hector Mine earthquake shook the Mojave Desert area. That quake, also a magnitude 7.1, was epicentered in the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base.

As of July 7, the USGS forecasts a 99% chance of magnitude 3 and above earthquakes near the epicenter of the July 5 quake. There is a 56% chance of magnitude 5 and above quakes, and an 8% chance of another quake of magnitude 6 or above. For a quake of magnitude 7 or higher, the probability drops to less than 1% and only rises to 2% over the time frame of a full year.

• The 10 Biggest Earthquakes in History
• Image Gallery: This Millennium's Destructive Earthquakes
• Photo Journal: The Gorgeous San Andreas Fault

Originally published on Live Science.

"TURN AROUND DON'T DROWN!"

That was the all-caps message the D.C./Baltimore National Weather Service (NWS) issued today (July 8) as surging water engulfed roads and stranded drivers — requiring multiple water rescues. The severe flooding prompted the office to issue a somewhat unusual "flash flood emergency" declaration in Washington D.C. and its Virginia suburbs. That's one step up from the somewhat more common "flash flood warning."

Locals posted images and videos to social media of intense flooding across the region. [In Images: Extreme Weather Around the World]