Risk & Resilience

Center for Severe Weather Research/Robin Lorenson

About Risk & Resilience

Each year, natural disasters cause thousands of deaths and result in billions in damages to infrastructure. NSF supports the basic research in science and engineering needed to understand natural hazards such as tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.

Risk & Resilience Discoveries

Part 1: World Oceans Day: 12 things to know about El Niño: Is it coming, and when?
How will it affect coastal species--and the fish on our dinner tables?

Part 2: Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years
Overgrazing leaves desert's red dunes blowing in the African wind

Part 3: Scientists confirm that Midwest floods are more frequent
Floods happening more often over past half-century

Part 4: Mission impossible? New England's snowstorm 'bomb' from inside a Doppler-on-Wheels
Trapped in gale-force winds for 24 hours, scientists got the data

Part 5: Monster hurricanes struck U.S. Northeast during prehistoric periods of ocean warming
Scientists find clues in sediment deposits on Cape Cod

Part 6: Listen to the pulse of an erupting volcano: Chile's Villarrica
Scientists use infrasound instruments to record volcano's "circulation"

Part 7: Springtime night lights: Finding the aurora
Aurorasaurus project allows aurora-viewers around the world to compare sightings

Part 8: Drought, heat likely to affect U.S. West's power grid
Scientists recommend looking at power plants' capacities in view of expected changes

Part 9: Scientists tackle mystery of thunderstorms that strike at night
Researchers will spend six weeks this summer probing nighttime thunderstorms on the Great Plains

Part 10: 10 things to know about thunderstorms that strike at night
For the latest information, NSF talks with three atmospheric scientists

Part 11: Expedition to the Aleutian Islands: Geoscientists head to remote Alaska volcanoes
Teams study mountain chain in most volcanically active U.S. state

Part 12: Future wildfires may burn large parts of landscapes
Scientists look back at fire history to see into the future

Part 13: Southwest sliding into a new normal: drier conditions
Weather patterns that bring rain becoming less frequent

Part 14: Ocean temperatures predict U.S. heat waves 50 days out
Pacific pattern forms in advance of hot days in Eastern U.S.

Part 15: California drought patterns becoming more common
Atmospheric patterns linked with drought occurred more frequently in recent decades

Part 16: Five things you need to know about tornadoes
May is the peak month for twisters

Part 17: Future summers could be hotter than any on record
Reducing carbon emissions could cut risk of record-breaking summertime heat in half

Part 18: Atmospheric scientists boldly go into the heart of a tornado
TWIRL project researchers plant instruments directly in tornado's path

Part 19: Q&A: What happens when a volcano beneath a glacier erupts?
Scientists studying Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano took a close look

Part 20: Everglades mangroves' carbon storage capacity worth billions
Scientists say preserving mangroves worth the cost

Part 21: Researchers develop radar simulator to characterize scattering of debris in tornadoes
Results could aid weather forecasters and emergency managers

Part 22: Slow earthquakes in ocean subduction zones shed light on tsunami risk
Instruments placed on seafloor off the coast of Japan lead to new insights

Part 23: Crystals once deep inside a volcano offer new view of magma, eruption timing
Scientists hope to better predict when future eruptions will occur

Part 24: Researchers discover how wildfires create their own weather
In a season of fast-spreading western U.S. and Canada fires, information is timely

Part 25: Two decades of hurricanes change coastal ecosystems: increase algae blooms, fish kills, dead zones
How will estuaries respond to future storms?

Part 26: Hurricanes: Stronger, slower, wetter in the future?
New analysis compares 22 named storms with possible hurricanes of the future

Part 27: Scientists fly above wildfires this summer to clarify chemistry of smoke
Largest, most comprehensive attempt to date to measure and analyze wildfire smoke

Part 28: Scientists launch project to help predict air quality, enhance crop yields
Study looks at how air flows at night