Past Events

Seminar - Waking the giant: climate forcing of geological hazards

Potentially hazardous geological and geomorphological systems, such as volcanoes, active faults and unstable rock masses, are revealed often to be critically poised, such that they can be ‘set-off’ by very small perturbations in their external environments.

This relationship underpins a link between episodes of major climate transition in the past and the influencing, modulation or triggering of geological and geomorphological hazards, and provides a means by which anthropogenic climate change may invoke a potentially hazardous response from the geosphere.

About

Bill McGuire is Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL. He was a member of the UK Government's Natural Hazards Working Group, established in 2005 in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and in 2010 a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), addressing the Icelandic ash problem. He is a contributing author on the 2011 IPCC Report on climate change and extreme events. His current research focus is climate forcing of geological hazards. His books include: Natural Hazards and Environmental Change; A Guide to the End of the World - Everything You Never Wanted to Know; Surviving Armageddon - Solutions for a Threatened Planet; and Seven Years to Save the Planet. Bill presented the BBC Radio 4 series: 'Disasters in Waiting and Scientists Under Pressure' and 'The End of the World Reports' on Channel 5 and Sky News Channel. He has also made television appearances on BBC's Horizon and Decoding the Past on the History Channel.

Contact brett.cherry@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.

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