February 2016

Canterbury―the largest city in New Zealand's South Island―made headlines around the world in September 2010 when a magnitude 7.1 temblor struck near Darfield, and again six months later when a magnitude 6.3 earthquake devastated the city.

Tropical Cyclone Winston continues to churn in the South Pacific, days after devastating Fiji as a Category-5 storm, the strongest ever to strike the island nation.

Imagine a group of young kids learning how to protect buildings during earthquakes, studying the best place along a river to site a bridge, analyzing traffic flow, developing procedures for cleaning up an oil spill, or designing a model mag-lev train.

As you may have noticed, we've redesigned our website. The goal is simple: Make what matters most to you easily accessible, when you want it, wherever you are.

Following December's major flooding in the state of Tamil Nadu in Southern India, we travelled from AIR's office in Hyderabad to survey damage in and around Chennai, Kanchipuram, and Thiruvallur.

This year's strong El Niño brings an elevated level of excitement to our seasoned AIR meteorologists, flood experts, and thunderstorm gurus whose greatest passions are found in the world of weather phenomena. Perhaps surprising to some, however, is the fact that those inclined to studying infectious diseases have a similar interest in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

“Men argue,” wrote Voltaire, “nature acts.” Today people are certainly arguing about the scope, impacts, causes, and even (albeit increasingly rarely) the very existence of climate change.

Thanks to Storm Desmond and the recent flooding in the north of England and Scotland, flood defenses are a hot topic.