News by Subject Atmospheric Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) has sped up the process of detecting flooded buildings immediately after a large-scale flood, allowing emergency personnel to direct their efforts efficiently. Now, a research group from Tohoku University has created a machine learning (ML) model that uses news media photos to identify flooded buildings accurately within 24 hours of the disaster.

The April snow falling on fruit blossoms in Europe these days may be directly connected to the loss of the sea ice in the Barents Sea in the Arctic.  That was definitely the case in 2018 when the sudden cold spell known as "Beast from the East" descended on the mid-latitudes of the continent,  a new study in Nature Geoscience shows.

A new method was developed for high-resolution detection of landslides based on seismic data. This method was applied to detect landslides that occurred during the transit of Typhoon Talas across western Japan in 2011. Multiple landslides were detected and located, including one in Shizuoka Prefecture, 400 km east of the typhoon's track. The results show that large and small landslides may follow the same scaling relationships. This method may help develop landslide emergency alert technology.

For the first time, researchers have been able to obtain data from underneath Thwaites Glacier, also known as the "Doomsday Glacier". They find that the supply of warm water to the glacier is larger than previously thought, triggering concerns of faster melting and accelerating ice flow.

Piping plovers, charismatic shorebirds that nest and feed on many Atlantic Coast beaches, rely on different kinds of coastal habitats in different regions along the Atlantic Coast, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In the vast Colorado River basin, climate change is driving extreme, interconnected events among earth-system elements such as weather and water.

Extreme storm flooding in Houston washed human waste onto coral reefs more than 100 miles offshore. Rice University marine biologists found fecal bacteria on sponges in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary following 2016's Tax Day flood and 2017's Hurricane Harvey.

Dry periods between rainstorms have become longer and more erratic across the West during the past 50 years, based on a study published by the Agricultural Research Service and the University of Arizona. Total yearly rainfall has decreased by about four inches over the last five decades, with rain falling in fewer and sometimes larger storms, along with longer dry intervals between. The longest dry period in each year increased from 20 to 32 days.