Highlight articles

This page features highlight articles from EGU's open access journals Geoscientific Model Development and Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. These articles of particular interest are selected by journal editors.

88 items found

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Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences

Load-resistance analysis: an alternative approach to tsunami damage assessment applied to the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-19-1807-2019
20 August 2019

It is known that fragility functions reflect localities (building design standards and topography) and flow velocity is more important, as damage might occur before flow depth reaches its maximum value. This research demonstrates that it is possible to accurately predict building damage by considering related forces with high accuracy, including resistant force, based on building design standards. This method will be useful for damage assessment in areas that have no experience of tsunamis.

Improving the understanding of flood risk in the Alsatian region by knowledge capitalization: the ORRION participative observatory

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-19-1653-2019
7 August 2019

The article presents the Alsatian regional flood risk observatory ORRION, a participative online platform on which information is shared between individuals, stakeholders, engineers, and scientists. This maximizes knowledge capitalization and contributes to building a common knowledge base for flood risk. From this information, long chronicles of floods are derived for the Rhine, and most of its main Alsatian tributaries and their main characteristics are identified and analysed.

Flood risk in a range of spatial perspectives – from global to local scales

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-19-1319-2019
5 July 2019

Considering flood risk composed of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability from global to local scales, this paper reviews and presents increasing observed flood losses and projections of flood hazard and losses. We acknowledge existence of multiple driving factors and of considerable uncertainty, in particular with regards to projections for the future. Finally, this paper analyses options for flood risk reduction from a global framework to regional and local scales.

Analysis of an extreme weather event in a hyper-arid region using WRF-Hydro coupling, station, and satellite data

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-19-1129-2019
13 June 2019

The work addresses the need for reliable precipitation forecasts in hyper-arid environments through state-of-the-art hydro-meteorological modeling. Accounting for land–atmosphere interactions in the applied model is shown to improve the accuracy of precipitation output. The chain of events controlling the soil moisture–precipitation feedback are diagnosed and verified by in situ observations and satellite data.

Summertime precipitation extremes in a EURO-CORDEX 0.11° ensemble at an hourly resolution

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-19-957-2019
2 May 2019

A state-of-the-art regional climate model ensemble for Europe is investigated for extreme precipitation intensities. The models poorly reproduce short duration events of less than a few hours. Further, there is poor connection to some known hotspots for extreme cases. The model performance is much improved at 12 h durations. Projected future increases scale with seasonal mean temperature change, within a range from a few percent to over 10 percent per degree Celsius.

Terrainbento 1.0: a Python package for multi-model analysis in long-term drainage basin evolution

Terrainbento 1.0 is a Python package for modeling the evolution of the surface of the Earth over geologic time (e.g., thousands to millions of years). Despite many decades of effort by the geomorphology community, there is no one established governing equation for the evolution of topography. Terrainbento 1.0 thus provides 28 alternative models that support hypothesis testing and multi-model analysis in landscape evolution.

Devito (v3.1.0): an embedded domain-specific language for finite differences and geophysical exploration

This paper presents Devito, a Python-based software. The aim of this software is to provide a high-level simple interface to users for the description and discretization of the mathematical definition of the physics. This research initially started as an attempt to improve research time, portability, and performance in exploration geophysics. We present the latest version of the software that is already making an impact in academics and industry.

Exposure-based risk assessment and emergency management associated with the fallout of large clasts at Mount Etna

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-19-589-2019
20 March 2019

The fallout of large clasts (> 5 cm) from the margins of eruptive plumes can damage local infrastructure and severely injure people close to the volcano. Even though this potential hazard has been observed at many volcanoes, it has often been overlooked. We present the first hazard and risk assessment of large-clast fallout from eruptive plumes and use Mt Etna (Italy) as a case study. The use of dedicated shelters in the case of an explosive event that occurs with no warning is also evaluated.

The Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM) v1.1

Mountain glaciers are one of the few remaining subsystems of the global climate system for which no globally applicable community-driven model exists. Here we present the Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM; www.oggm.org), developed to provide a modular and open-source numerical model framework for simulating past and future change of any glacier in the world.

ESM-SnowMIP: assessing snow models and quantifying snow-related climate feedbacks

This paper provides an overview of a coordinated international experiment to determine the strengths and weaknesses in how climate models treat snow. The models will be assessed at point locations using high-quality reference measurements and globally using satellite-derived datasets. How well climate models simulate snow-related processes is important because changing snow cover is an important part of the global climate system and provides an important freshwater resource for human use.

NH Natural Hazards Highlight articles