weather hazards

Interactive map of coastal and marine geoscience features in the United States

The Marine Cadastre National Viewer is a joint product of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The viewer contains an enormous amount of information relevant to marine and coastal issues in interactive map form. Over 275 different map layers are available on a wide range of topics. The geoscience-related layers include:

NOAA experts give monthly update on U.S. and global climate conditions

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Satellite image of Hurricane Isabel. Image Credit: Jacques Descloitres, NASA

June 16, 2016 -The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) held their Monthly Climate Briefing telecast on June 16, 2016. The presentations summarized NOAA’s May U.S. and global climate analyses, monthly and seasonal forecasts, and the outlook for La Niña development. The speakers were Deke Arndt and Brad Pugh, both of NOAA.

Interactive map of historical hurricane tracks

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Historical Hurricane Tracks tool shows the tracks and characteristics of over 6,000 tropical cyclones around the world dating back to 1842.
 
In addition to the hurricane tracks, users can explore the category, wind speed, and minimum pressure of each hurricane at different points in its track.
 
A flexible search feature allows users to search by name, date, region, or specific location.
 

EARTH: Crippling Heat Stress Projected by Midcentury in Densely Populated Regions

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This issue, EARTH Magazine explores the world's top weather-related killer: exposure to extreme heat. Humans' response to extreme heat leads to heat stress, an illness related to the body's inability to cool itself. Humidity plays a crucial role, because as humidity increases, the ability of sweat to evaporate and cool the body decreases.

Visualization of a predictive model for weather hazards

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) has created a visualization of their high-resolution global ocean-atmosphere-land-ice FLOR model. The FLOR model uses ocean, atmospheric, and other water-related data to improve understanding and prediction of the range of climate extremes. The outputs of the FLOR model have been used to understand predictability, change, and mechanisms of a range of climatic events including tropical cyclones, drought, rainfall and temperature over land, and changes in Arctic sea ice.

Interactive map of weather hazard warnings in the United States

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service Watch, Warning, and Advisory Display map shows up-to-date weather warnings and advisories for the continental U.S. The map covers a wide range of weather hazards including tornadoes, thunderstorms, hurricanes, tropical storms, flash and coastal floods, blizzards, winter storms, snow, freezing rain and ice storms, and high winds.

Users can click on individual parts of the map for more specific information down to the county level.

EARTH Magazine: The '100-year-flood' fallacy: Return periods misleading in communication of flood risk

Submitted by mmoses on

Return periods refer to the amount of time that passes on average between consecutive events of similar magnitude for a given location. But when it comes to communicating potential risk from flooding, return periods give many people a false sense of security, partly because they are often mistaken as absolutes instead of averages.

EARTH Magazine: How Much Natural Hazard Mitigation Is Enough?

Submitted by mmoses on

Hurricane Sandy struck the U.S. East Coast in October 2012, leaving about $65 billion of damage in its wake and raising the question of how to mitigate the damage from future storms. It’s a question that arises in the wake of most natural disasters: What steps can society take to protect itself from storms, floods, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic eruptions? But the question itself illustrates the complexity of preparing for natural disasters.

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