Natural hazards articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using satellite observations, the authors show that the average tropical cyclone (TC) rain rate increases significantly with translation speed. On average, the rain rate of a fast-moving TC is about 24% higher than that of a slow one.

    • Shifei Tu
    • , Johnny C. L. Chan
    •  & Yu Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanisms responsible for clustering of surface fault earthquakes are often unclear. Here the authors find that differential stress fluctuates during fault/shear-zone interactions which can produce changes in strain-rate and slip-rate changes leading to earthquake clustering.

    • Zoë K. Mildon
    • , Gerald P. Roberts
    •  & Eutizio Vittori

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Changes in climatic factors mainly drive the decline of East Asian dust activity in the past two decades. The weakening of surface winds plays a dominant role, and the increasing of vegetation cover and soil moisture also has key contribution

    • Chenglai Wu
    • , Zhaohui Lin
    •  & Ying Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Results forecast that cliff retreat rates will increase by up to an order of magnitude by 2100 according to current predictions of sea-level rise, and reveal that even historically stable rock coasts are highly sensitive to sea-level rise.

    • Jennifer R. Shadrick
    • , Dylan H. Rood
    •  & Klaus M. Wilcken

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    The colonial practices of geoscience have created long term vulnerabilities to natural hazards. In this comment the ongoing consequence are explored of colonialism as well as the actions that are needed to be taken to reduce natural hazard risk.

    • Jazmin P. Scarlett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phreatic volcanic eruptions can be unexpected and devastating. Here the authors, using seismic-based methodologies, find that pressurized fluids accumulated 5 months before the deadly phreatic eruption at Mt Ontake; a period previously considered as completely quiescent.

    • Corentin Caudron
    • , Yosuke Aoki
    •  & Toshiko Terakawa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bedrock weathering is associated with landslides, and also manifests as a change in the strength of subsurface materials. This study analyzes inventoried landslides to explore relationships between strength and landslide depth as a potential reflection of subsurface weathering at large scales.

    • Stefano Alberti
    • , Ben Leshchinsky
    •  & Michael J. Olsen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One of the main challenges in the tsunami inundation prediction is related to the real-time computational efforts done under restrictive time constraints. Here the authors show that using machine learning-based model, we can achieve comparable accuracy to the physics-based model with ~99% computational cost reduction.

    • Iyan E. Mulia
    • , Naonori Ueda
    •  & Kenji Satake

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increasing floods and droughts are raising concerns of an accelerating water cycle. A new study shows that the terrestrial water cycle in Brazil has been mostly drying or accelerating, aligned with changes in rainfall, water use, and forest cover.

    • Vinícius B. P. Chagas
    • , Pedro L. B. Chaffe
    •  & Günter Blöschl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors introduce a new perspective to study the spatiotemporal behavior of the magnitude–frequency distribution: spatially isolating seismogenic zones to provide an appropriate scale to resolve the b-value. Among those zones, the b-value behaved remarkably throughout the 2016 central Italy sequence.

    • Marcus Herrmann
    • , Ester Piegari
    •  & Warner Marzocchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Compound extreme events in two or more oceanic ecosystem stressors are increasingly considered as a major concern for marine life. Here the authors present a first global analysis on compound marine heatwave and ocean acidity extreme events, identifying hotspots, drivers, and projecting future changes.

    • Friedrich A. Burger
    • , Jens Terhaar
    •  & Thomas L. Frölicher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is a significant trend in recent decades towards an earlier start to North Atlantic hurricane seasons. Both the first named storm and first U.S. landfall of the year are occurring earlier. This shift is physically linked to warmer western North Atlantic sea surface temperatures in spring.

    • Ryan E. Truchelut
    • , Philip J. Klotzbach
    •  & Eric S. Blake

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional models propose multiple fault systems across a diffuse deformation zone absorbing plate convergence in the western Mediterranean. Here the authors show new data supporting the active development of a single plate boundary fault system, representing an underappreciated seismic and tsunami hazard.

    • Laura Gómez de la Peña
    • , César R. Ranero
    •  & Abdelkarim Yelles-Chaouche

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The study found that long-duration heatwaves are much more likely to follow power-damaging tropical cyclones in the future RCP8.5 climate, with the impact of longer-than-5-day tropical cyclone-blackout-heatwave compound hazard increasing by a factor of 23 over the 21st century.

    • Kairui Feng
    • , Min Ouyang
    •  & Ning Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new study presents a new global modeling framework to explore the links between ports, maritime transport and global supply-chains, and identifies critical links and dependencies between 1300 ports and the economies that depend on them.

    • J. Verschuur
    • , E. E. Koks
    •  & J. W. Hall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The 2020 – 2021 eruption of La Soufrière volcano transitioned from an effusive to explosive eruption style. Here the authors show that input from multiple monitoring datasets and an evolving conceptual model were key to anticipating and responding to the eruptive transition at the La Soufrière volcano, St. Vincent, in a resource-constrained setting.

    • E. P. Joseph
    • , M. Camejo-Harry
    •  & R. S. J. Sparks

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Flooding is a pervasive natural hazard, with new research demonstrating that more than one in five people around the world live in areas directly exposed to 1-in-100 year flood risk. Exposure to such flood risk is particularly concentrated amongst lower income households worldwide.

    • Thomas K. J. McDermott

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Significant regional disparities exist in the time left to prepare for unprecedented drought and how much we can buy time depending on climate scenarios. Specific regions pass this timing by the middle of 21st century even with stringent mitigation.

    • Yusuke Satoh
    • , Kei Yoshimura
    •  & Taikan Oki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Floods are most devastating for those who can least afford to be hit. Globally, 1.8 billion people face high flood risks; 89% of them live in developing countries; 170 million of them live in extreme poverty making them most vulnerable.

    • Jun Rentschler
    • , Melda Salhab
    •  & Bramka Arga Jafino

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Powerful avalanches were recorded for the first time in an underwater canyon that lies 100 s of km from land. This challenges a long-held view and indicates > 1000 similar canyons worldwide actively pump sediment and pollutants into the deep-sea.

    • M. S. Heijnen
    • , F. Mienis
    •  & M. A. Clare

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cryptic faults concern earthquake scientists, since they pose a hidden seismic potential which is hard to identify. To address this, the authors here study off-fault deformed geomorphic markers such as marine terraces using high-resolution LiDAR topography, optical dating of sediments and space geodetic observations.

    • J. Jara-Muñoz
    • , D. Melnick
    •  & M. R. Strecker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors explore the effects of disasters on adaptation actions in 549 cities, finding that the effects of disaster frequency and severity are modest and depend on action type, population size, and adaptive capacity.

    • Daniel Nohrstedt
    • , Jacob Hileman
    •  & Charles F. Parker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The integration of risk analysis and spatial CGE modeling frameworks allowed for measuring the direct and indirect consequences of extreme events via novel probabilistic risk indicators which incorporate elements of uncertainty and systemic effects

    • J. A. León
    • , M. Ordaz
    •  & I. F. Araújo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Growing emissions from Pacific Northwest wildfires have increased atmospheric carbon monoxide in August, raising questions about potential health impacts as the seasonal pattern of air quality changes for large regions of North America.

    • Rebecca R. Buchholz
    • , Mijeong Park
    •  & Sheryl Magzamen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows a direct evidence of pore pressure changes in seabed sediments associated with slow and transient slip along the North Anatolian Fault. This is a major contribution to our understanding of the role of slow-slip events in earthquake cycles.

    • Nabil Sultan
    • , Shane Murphy
    •  & Louis Géli

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Artificial intelligence can enhance our ability to manage natural disasters. However, understanding and addressing its limitations is required to realize its benefits. Here, we argue that interdisciplinary, multistakeholder, and international collaboration is needed for developing standards that facilitate its implementation.

    • Monique M. Kuglitsch
    • , Ivanka Pelivan
    •  & Elena Xoplaki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experimental forecasts show that a disturbed stratospheric polar vortex was not to blame for the deadly North American cold air outbreak in February 2021 - but it may have acted to sustain weather patterns and increase predictability in early 2021.

    • N. A. Davis
    • , J. H. Richter
    •  & E. LaJoie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Earthquake breakdown energy is commonly interpreted as a proxy for fracture energy but is observed to scale with magnitude. Here the authors show that a scale-independent stress overshoot, as seen in the 3D dynamic earthquake rupture simulations, leads to comparable scaling despite constant fault fracture energy.

    • Chun-Yu Ke
    • , Gregory C. McLaskey
    •  & David S. Kammer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The pyroclast properties and features can provide insights into the dynamics of explosive eruptions of low viscosity magma. Here, the authors show how lava droplets, or pyroclasts are subject to melt removal and melt addition during transport in a gas jet and present a method to reconstruct eruption conditions from the pyroclast textures.

    • Thomas J. Jones
    • , James K. Russell
    •  & Lea Hollendonner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The viability of earthquake early warning (EEW) in Europe is highly dependent on the magnitude of the ongoing earthquake and the ground-shaking threshold for alert issuance. The potential effectiveness of EEW is highest for Turkey, Italy, and Greece.

    • Gemma Cremen
    • , Carmine Galasso
    •  & Elisa Zuccolo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tsunamis are devastating events. They are especially difficult to predict, when generated by landslides. In this paper, the authors overcome this issue by modelling the landslide and the tsunami in a unified framework in unprecedented detail.

    • Matthias Rauter
    • , Sylvain Viroulet
    •  & Finn Løvholt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This paper shows that faults comprised of heterogeneously distributed materials, as is typical for tectonic faults in nature, are weaker and more unstable than equivalent faults where the materials are homogeneously mixed together.

    • John D. Bedford
    • , Daniel R. Faulkner
    •  & Nadia Lapusta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Building community resilience in the face of climate disasters is critical to achieving a sustainable future. Here, using the case study of community resilience during Hurricane Michael in 2018, the authors show that an overemphasis on recovery entrench ‘resilience traps’.

    • Benjamin Rachunok
    •  & Roshanak Nateghi

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