npj Natural Hazards最新文献

We examined whether annual health check-up attendance was associated with a lower risk of cognitive decline, including among older survivors who lost housing during the 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Baseline data were collected seven months before the disaster from 4873 adults aged 65 years or older in Iwanuma City, Miyagi Prefecture. Follow-up surveys in 2013 and 2016 assessed health status, lifestyle, and disaster experiences, and were linked to municipal health check-up records and cognitive function assessments. Using augmented inverse probability weighting adjusted for 40 covariates, we estimated absolute risk differences in percentage points (pp): health check-up attendance was associated with lower risk of cognitive decline (risk difference [RD] -1.12pp, 95% confidence interval [CI] -1.35 to -0.88), with a stronger protective association among those whose homes were destroyed (RD -2.38pp, 95% CI -3.51 to -1.24). Maintaining health check-ups after disasters may mitigate health and lifestyle disruption and support cognitive resilience.

Changes to convective storm motion over urban areas may have important implications on rainfall accumulation and flood risk. Here, we investigate speed changes in storms passing over cities using weather radar data and convection-permitting numerical simulations. The observational analysis consists of tracking individual rain cells across eight cities and comparing movement speeds near the cities relative to a control upwind region. Second, we simulate ten heavy rainfall events crossing Indianapolis, Indiana, and compare cloud-layer horizontal wind speeds from two scenarios: one with and one without the city. We find that the speed of the observed rain cells decreases over and downwind of five urban areas, and seven simulations reveal dampened cloud-layer wind speeds over Indianapolis. Stronger updrafts induce horizontal wind slowing, driven by the warm urban surface. We conclude that rainfall intensification is the primary driver of enhanced urban rainfall accumulation, yet storm slowing contributes to more frequent and stronger enhancements.

Issuing timely severe weather warnings helps mitigate potentially disastrous consequences. Recent advancements in Neural Weather Models (NWMs) offer a computationally inexpensive and fast approach for forecasting atmospheric environments on a 0.25° global grid. For thunderstorms, these environments can be empirically post-processed to predict wind gust distributions at specific locations. With the Pangu-Weather NWM, we apply a hierarchy of statistical and deep learning post-processing methods to forecast hourly wind gusts up to three days ahead. To ensure statistical robustness, we constrain our probabilistic forecasts using generalised extreme-value distributions across five regions in Switzerland. Using a convolutional neural network to post-process the predicted atmospheric environment's spatial patterns yields the best results, outperforming direct forecasting approaches across lead times and wind gust speeds. Our results confirm the added value of NWMs for extreme wind forecasting, especially for designing more responsive early-warning systems.

Global crises, including climate-induced disasters and health emergencies, are disrupting human mobility, making it critical to understand population movements for effective planning. Here, we systematically review 946 studies, framing mobility as simultaneously responding to external shocks and transmitting impacts. Our analysis first maps the field's methodological and geographic landscape before focusing on three dimensions: (1) universal response patterns to external shocks, (2) structural inequalities mediating these responses, and (3) cascading effects from mobility to other interconnected systems. We identify predictable temporal and spatial dynamics in human mobility responses driven by adaptive behaviors and psychological factors. Ultimately, these responses are filtered through vulnerability pathways determined by income, race, gender, and disability status, transmitting cascading effects across environmental, health, and economic systems. Based on the review findings, we propose the FAIR-HEART framework for equitable mobility governance and discuss the future directions, providing actionable guidance for building resilient societies.