Environment / Natural Disasters

Big Picture: The Banks That Prevent—Rather Than Cause—Global Crises

Seed banks put some much-needed wild vigor back into today's specialized varieties, protecting critical crops from being wiped out. 11.20.2009

Will Our Universe Collide With a Neighboring One?

Our universe may be one of a multitude—and it may bear the scars of past run-ins with its neighbors. 11.04.2009

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Hurricanes

A typical hurricane releases some 600 trillion watts of heat energy, equivalent to 200 times the world’s total electrical generating capacity. 08.18.2009

Disaster! The Most Destructive Volcanic Eruptions in History

Pompeii, Santorini, Pinatubo—a journey through the eruptions that shook the world. 06.23.2009

The World's Biggest Tornado Hunt

Next month, 100 meteorologists will try to finally understand the dynamics of tornadoes—like the one that killed three people in Mena, Arkansas, last night. 04.10.2009

Diamonds Are a Geologist's Best Friend

Tiny carbon spheres hidden under rock and ice may be telltales of cataclysmic comet strikes. 04.06.2009

What Is This? A Dirty Sheep?

Stay away: these poofy blobs are actually quite deadly. 03.09.2009

Nature's Great Piece of Art-Slash-Geometry Lesson: The Snowflake

What makes them look like that, investigating the age-old theory of snowflake singularity, and more 01.07.2009

#20: The “Doomsday Vault” Stores Seeds for a Global Agriculture Reboot

Humanity's chances to survive global warming and nuclear attacks just increased. 12.19.2008

#67: Drilling, Not Earthquake, Caused Giant Hot Mud Volcano

Some claim an earthquake caused this mud river, but new research says otherwise. 12.10.2008

#73: Giant Ice Meteors Fall From Clear Skies

20-pound chunks of ice falling on a sunny day? It's no urban myth. 12.09.2008

Visual Science: The Remote-Controlled Helicopter That Predicts Volcanic Eruptions

Aerovolc 1 has a very sharp sense of smell—and not a shred of fear. 11.18.2008

Ten Ways the World Will End

Will it be a solar flare? Or a gamma-ray burst? DISCOVER's own Phil Plait lays out the odds. 10.28.2008

Rock-a-Pedia

A new open-source atlas could keep you from falling into a sinkhole and help settle the great Arctic land grab. 10.03.2008

Forecasting the Future May Be a Matter of Fun and Games

A new online game uses crowdsourcing to find out how to save humans from extinction. 09.05.2008

The Biggest Weather-Control Flubs in History

How many ways can humans fail at manipulating nature? 06.06.2008

Microwave a Tornado, Lase a Rainstorm

Scientists are developing new technology to control old natural hazards. 06.06.2008

Harnessing the Weather

Could new technology help humans eliminate "acts of God"? 06.06.2008

Sliced: Inside a Tornado

To find out how twisters work, researchers send probes right into the belly of the beast. 05.05.2008

Is It Wednesday? Better Bring an Umbrella.

Afternoon thunderstorms are more frequent in the middle of the week. 04.30.2008

Epileptic Seizures Strike Much Like Earthquakes

Tools for predicting aftershocks could also work for seizures. 03.27.2008

5 Most Radical Ways to Squelch a Climate Crisis

Why we may need to reprogram the planet—and how we can do it. 02.25.2008

Sliced: Anatomy of an Avalanche

Heft: Thousands of tons of snow. Speed: 100mph. Fatalities: 150 per year. 01.17.2008

75. Were the First Americans Wiped Out By an Asteroid?

Giant explosion may have caused continent-wide fires and a 1,000-year cold spell 01.14.2008

Did a Tsunami Wipe Out a Cradle of Western Civilization?

Like the Indian Ocean disaster, this wave was a mass killer. 01.04.2008

Death By Cosmic Pinball

Astronomers triangulate the source of the dinosaur destroyer. 12.03.2007

Did a Comet Cause the Great Flood?

The universal human myth may be the first example of disaster reporting. 11.15.2007

World Plague Center

Philip Landrigan tracks the massive health fallout from breathing NY air after 9/11. 09.07.2007

Some Dinos May've Survived the Cataclysm

If mammals, birds, and lizards pulled through, why not some dinosaurs? 08.29.2007

Map: Where Do the Nastiest Hurricanes Emerge?

If you think the U.S. East Coast has it bad, check out the western Pacific. 08.28.2007

Watching the Birth—and Death—of an Island

In the South Pacific, the crew of a yacht saw new land form right beneath their boat. 08.08.2007

Earth Speaks in an Inaudible Voice

You can’t hear it, but our planet’s ultradeep hum could save your life. 08.02.2007

What Caused the Great American Extinction?

A comet may have decimated native animals—and culture. 07.25.2007

World Versus the Volcano

Huge eruptions leave the world cold and hungry. 03.19.2007

Life After the Wave

The Sri Lankan landscape on a path to recovery after the 2004 tsunami. 12.05.2006

Natural Selections: Life After the Wave

Dramatic photos show how the tsunami devastated Sri Lanka's landscape, but ecologists predict it will recover. 12.05.2006

Seconds From Disaster

Japan installs the world's first nationwide earthquake-detector system. 09.01.2006

The Next Katrina

Urban planners zero in on the areas of the Gulf Coast most vulnerable to the threat of extreme weather. 08.01.2006

Will 2006 Bring More Hurricane Horror?

Climatologists debate how bad the global warming fallout will be. 07.02.2006

Fire in the Sky

Why America's ecological treasures sometimes just need to burn 06.25.2006

The Disaster Detectives

National forensics experts who have seen entirely too much tragedy. 06.15.2006

The Next Big Quake

Engineers apply weather forecasting methods to earthquake prediction. 04.17.2006

The Year in Science: Environment

Siberian methane, the recovering ozone layer, hurricane history in tree rings, and more. 01.30.2006

X [marks the spot]

The Wave Felt Round The World 01.17.2006

Emerging Technology

Ordinary people can solve communication problems much quicker than clueless government officials when catastrophes like hurricane Katrina strike 12.01.2005

Lost in the Wave

A new scientific mystery: Why haven't sophisticated DNA techniques identified more of the dead killed in last year's tsunami?And what will it mean for New Orleans? 11.22.2005

Is the West Coast Ready for a Tsunami?

Is the West Coast Ready for a Tsunami? 09.09.2005

Discover Dialogue: Meteorologist William Gray

Eight of the last 10 years have been very active—we've never had as much activity. Yet we went from 1992 until last year with no hurricanes coming through Florida 09.09.2005

Tilt!

If high-rise buildings were designed more like ships, would they float upright during an earthquake? 07.24.2005

Discover Data

05.01.2005

X

Flight or Fright? 03.31.2005

Drilling San Andreas

Despite decades of study, why earthquakes happen and when they do remains one of the great mysteries of science. A two-mile-deep tunnel boring into America's most infamous fault may soon change that 03.31.2005

From the Archive: Waves of Destruction

Tsunamis have always been mysterious monsters—mountain-size waves that race invisiby across the ocean at 500 mph, drain harbors at a single gulp, and destroy coastal communities without warning. But now some researchers are trying to take the mystery away. 01.05.2005

X Marks the Spot

01.02.2005

20,000 Microbes Under the Sea

Scientists have discovered that nearly a third of all the life on this planet consists of microbes living under the seafloor in a dark world without oxygen. Many of these tiny creatures make so much methane gas that if even a small proportion of it is released, we might be overwhelmed by huge tsunamis, runaway global warming, and extinctions 03.28.2004

Geology

01.02.2004

Season of Fire

After centuries of trying to make sense of numbers and observations, researchers may finally have discovered the time of year volcanoes are most likely to erupt. We're in it now. 02.01.2003

Works in Progress

A new kind of movement takes the quake out of earthquake 11.01.2002

Rain, Rain, Go Away

A superabsorbent polymer reinvigorates an old dream 09.01.2002

Science's Favorite New Technology

How did we track ocean whirlpools, monitor volcanoes, predict earthquakes, and watch suspension bridges bend before GPS? 03.01.2002

Works in Progress

Look out Oregon, here comes another one 12.01.2001

Ready to Rumble

11.01.2001

Seismic Shift

If a nuclear sub blows up in the ocean and no one hears it, did it really explode? The Russians won't say, but a seismologist in Arizona knows the answer 09.01.2001

Weather Chaos

(with a 50% chance of error) 06.01.2001

Water Gate

11.01.2000

Thar She Blows

10.01.2000

Seeing The Light

In an increasingly satellite-dependent world, understanding the power of the aurora borealis has become critical 07.01.2000

Bubbling Under

03.01.2000

Avalanche!

If a scientist stands in the way of 150 tons of snow crashing down a mountain at 50 mph, can he figure out why it let loose and when it will again? 12.01.1999

Under the Volcano

Look out Tacoma and Seattle. Majestic Mount Rainier is overdue for a shattering and deadly eruption 11.01.1999

Antarctica's Hot Spot

Braving hurricane winds and 40-foot waves, scientists struggle to unerstand Antarctic warming. 11.01.1999

Under the Volcano

Look out Tacoma and Seattle. Majestic Mount Rainier is overdue for a shattering and deadly eruption 11.01.1999

China's On Fire

10.01.1999

Discover Dialogue

Colorado State University meteorologist William Gray flew into his first hurricane in 1958 and got hooked. He's now one of the leading experts in forecasting the Atlantic hurricane season. 08.01.1999

The Year in Science: Earth 1997

They Saw It Coming 01.01.1998

The Year in Science: Earth 1997

They Saw It Coming 01.01.1998

The Year in Science: Evolution 1997

Cretaceous Pompeii 01.01.1998

Breaking Waves

08.01.1997

New World Pompeii

Fourteen hundred years ago a central American volcano erupted, encasing an entire village in ash. Today that modest village is revealing what no stone temple or gold mask ever could: the details of ordinary life. 02.01.1997

The Pincer Drought

01.01.1997

Inside a Tornado

10.01.1996

Just Gas, Part I

10.01.1996

Molasses Mountains

09.01.1996

The Last Great Impact on Earth

In 1908 hundreds of square miles of Siberian forest were flattened and burned by a mysterious fireball. Only now, nearly nine decades later, are we learning what really happened--and not a minute too soon. 09.01.1996

Lorne Whitehead

07.01.1996

Too Many Names

01.01.1996

Ring of Quakes

01.01.1996

Inflation Watch

01.01.1996

The Coming Himalayan Catastrophe

Along the fault where India crashes into Asia, huge mountains arise, and huge earthquakes occur. East of Delhi lies a stretch of the fault where a major quake is long overdue. The Indian government is building a hydroelectric dam there. 07.01.1995

Hurricane From Hell

04.01.1995

A Giant's Malaise

03.02.1995

Waves of Destruction

Tsunamis have always been mysterious monsters--mountain-size waves that race invisibility across the ocean at 500 mph, drain harbors at a single gulp, and destroy coastal communities without warning. But now some researchers are trying to take the mystery away. 05.01.1994

Fire Storms

A major fire is news when it consumes homes and claims lives--but when it makes weather it's science. 05.01.1994

Life in a Whirl

As hurricanes and tornadoes, vortices are best avoided; but for many organisms they're richly rewarding. 08.01.1993

Falling Into the Gap

A new theory shakes up earthquake predictions. 10.01.1992

Breaking the Storm

Physicists with their heads in the clouds are learning how to turn dangerous hailstorms into crop-saving rain showers. 05.01.1992