Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards

Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards provides a valuable new insight into how climate change is able to influence, modulate and trigger geological and geomorphological phenomena, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and landslides; ultimately increasing the risk of natural hazards in a warmer world. Taken together, the chapters build a panorama of a field of research that is only now becoming recognized as important in the context of the likely impacts and implications of anthropogenic climate change. The observations, analyses and interpretations presented in the volume reinforce the idea that a changing climate does not simply involve the atmosphere and hydrosphere, but also elicits potentially hazardous responses from the solid Earth, or geosphere. Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards is targeted particularly at academics, graduate students and professionals with an interest in environmental change and natural hazards. As such, we are hopeful that it will encourage further investigation of those mechanisms by which contemporary climate change may drive potentially hazardous geological and geomorphological activity, and of the future ramifications for society and economy.

List of Contributors Foreword Bill McGuire and Mark Maslin Chapter 1: Hazardous responses of the solid Earth to a changing climate Bill McGuire Chapter 2: Future climate changes in the context of geological and geomorphological hazards Felicity Liggins, Richard Betts and Bill McGuire Chapter 3: Climate change and collapsing volcanoes: evidence from Mount Etna, Sicily Kim Deeming, Bill McGuire and Paul Harrop Chapter 4: Melting ice and volcanic hazards in the twenty–first century Hugh Tuffen Chapter 5: Multiple effects of ice load changes and associated stress change on magmatic systems Freysteinn Sigmundsson and others Chapter 6: Response of faults to climate–driven changes in ice and water volumes at the surface of the Earth Andrea Hampel, Ralf Hetzel and Georgios Maniatis Chapter 7: Does the El–Niño – Southern Oscillation and influence earthquake activity in the eastern tropical Pacific? Serge Guillas, Simon Day and Bill McGuire Chapter 8: Submarine landslides and tsunamis in a changing climate Dave Tappin Chapter 9: Heat waves and slope stability in high mountain terrain Christian Huggel and others Chapter 10: Impacts of recent and future climate change on natural hazards in the European Alps Jasper Knight, Margreth Keiler and Stephan Harrison Chapter 11: Assessing the past and future stability of global gas hydrate reservoirs Mark Maslin, Matthew Owen, Richard Betts, Simon Day, Tom Dunkley Jones and Andrew Ridgwell Chapter 12: Methane hydrate instability: a view from the Palaeogene Tom Dunkley Jones, Andrew Ridgwell, D. J. Lunt, Mark Maslin, D. N. Schmidt and Paul Valdez Index