Researchers have shown for the first time that a fibre-optic cable laid on the glacier’s surface can detect hidden cracks with high precision.

About 8 percent of the ice in the crevasse field investigated comprises ice- and air-filled fractures and crevasses, with 92 percent remaining intact. 

A single fibre-optic cable provides hundreds of measurement points simultaneously and can be laidfacross crevasse fields more quickly and safely than conventional measuring equipment.

Kyoto, Japan -- Massive storms like the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, that cause over $100 billion in damage, were once considered once-in-a-lifetime events. Increasingly, however, they are becoming the norm: a direct result of climate change, which has made large storms more frequent, intense, and slower-moving, deepening their impact.

Hurricanes can damage homes through flooding and strong winds, and insurance claims target both. After the 2022 Hurricane Ian, for example, 44 percent of insurance claims were for flooding and 56 percent were for wind damage. Yet most economic research focuses on flooding because elevation data and hydrological models can predict flood extent, whereas identifying the location and severity of wind damage across a wide area has posed a particular challenge.

Unlike flooding, there is nothing like a dam or levee that can shield an entire community from wind, so the responsibility falls almost entirely on individual homeowners. To mitigate wind damage, Florida enacted the 2001 Florida Building Code -- 2001 FBC -- which required new and re-roofed homes to use stronger roof-to-wall connections, thicker roof decking, and even impact-resistant windows and doors in some areas. Many homeowners had to spend thousands of dollars to reinforce a roof or install impact-resistant features, yet whether these preventative measures proved to be worth the average cost of about $4,930 had remained unclear.

When it comes to compounding natural hazards like landslides, wildfires, flooding and extreme heat, where you live makes all the difference. New research from Portland State University underscores this disproportionate reality, finding that in Portland, the areas most vulnerable to multiple climate hazards are historically underinvested neighborhoods marked by lower median incomes, lower education levels and higher racial diversity.

What if the secret to drought-resistant crops isn't how much water plants use, but when they use it? A new study identifies a daily window that could help breeders develop tomatoes that better withstand drought without sacrificing yield.

X-band phased-array radar data assimilation sharpens high-resolution simulation of a westerly weak tornado

Ny-Ålesund/Leipzig. Salt and sugar from the sea can rise as far as the free troposphere, thereby influencing both cloud formation and the Arctic climate. This is the finding of balloon measurements carried out by a team of researchers on Spitsbergen in autumn 2021 and spring 2022. With the Arctic becoming increasingly ice-free, more and more of these cloud-forming ingredients from seawater could enter the atmosphere and affect the radiation budget. The new findings therefore contribute to a better understanding of the complex interactions that lead to above-average warming in the Arctic, the researchers write in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), an open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

The study, led by the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), also involved researchers from the University of Cologne, the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, the University of Oldenburg and the University of Bremen. It forms part of the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Transregios 172 programme, which has been investigating climate change in the Arctic since 2016 under the leadership of Leipzig University.