James Dalziel

I recently published the pre-print for a paper based on my MRes thesis at the University of Bristol, ahead of submitting for peer review: "Seismic Efficiency during Volcanic Unrest: Insights from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull Eruption". Available here: doi.org/10.31223/X52...

My presentation was based off a paper I wrote with members of CSER & the University of Birmingham through the Global Volcano Risk Alliance: "Assessing Volcanic Hazards and Financial Exposure: A Closer Look at Insurance Industry Preparedness". Preprint available here: doi.org/10.31223/X5C...

First RIAGE — (Re)Insurance-Academia Global Earthquake Workshop The first RIAGE Workshop is a space for academics and industry experts to explore cutting‑edge earthquake risk research, CAT modelling, and resilience strategies for global insurance.

The (Re)Insurance-Academia Global Earthquake (RIAGE) workshop will be held at UCL, May 18-19 & is free to attend, in-person spaces limited but online also available. Opportunities to submit abstracts for oral/poster presentations across 6 thematic sessions.
Details & registration here:

In the first of many conferences for this year (more on that soon), I really enjoyed attending & presenting at the 2026 VMSG Annual Meeting. Interesting conversations about volcanic hazard management, climatic implications, science communication & insurance. Plus a Lancaster volcanology reunion!

Interested by some of the topics discussed in 7.4, particularly around Tonga's influence on polar vortices. Liu & Tang (2022) appear to find evidence of its aerosol cloud effects leading to an increase in precipitation & intensity of Tropical Cyclone Cody. Do these findings support this?

The report also discusses other potential climatic impacts of the eruption, such as influence on ENSO & polar vortices (affecting cyclones). This is touched upon in a review paper I wrote this year (currently in preprint), on financial implications of eruptions for insurance: doi.org/10.31223/X5C...

Given the degree of aerosols ejected from the 2022 Tonga eruption, this report gives detailed findings on the resulting atmospheric impacts. It shows a small but measurable cooling effect, resulting in a surface temperature change x10 smaller than Pinatubo 1991.

Cliff face stabilised with rock bolts and rock netting following rockfall adjacent to a residential apartment block in Kuala Lumpur. This is one of hundreds of critical slopes monitored by the Department of Mineral and Geoscience in Malaysia. On the left of the image is a large pylon and in the centre is a road with a small red digger on the left. To each side of the photo is a large hill covered in foliage.

Malaysia faces substantial risks from rainfall-triggered landslides driven by extreme meteorological conditions.

BGS has been awarded funding to support the country's climate resilience plan, focusing on minimising economic & social impacts from these hazard events.

www.bgs.ac.uk/news/bgs-awa...

Map showing the location of the earthquake offshore of northern Japan. The earthquake is marked by star. Concentric rings of different colors show the level of shaking generated by the earthquake.

M 7.6 earthquake 73 km ENE of Misawa, Japan

earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

Map showing tsunami warnings and measured wave heights for the 2025-12-09 M7.6 earthquake offshore Japan.

Here is the latest tsunami information for the M7.6 earthquake that just struck offshore northern Japan. The warnings are for waves up to 3 m, but the highest waves measured so far are <0.5 m. It is still possible for larger waves to arrive.

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www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.ht...

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Big week for webcams getting wiped out by volcanoes.

This paper by Dervisi et al. is a fascinating development in the world of earthquake aftershock prediction. Past WRN research partnerships have looked at forecasting aftershock hazard based on strain rate data, so it'd be interesting to see how this ML model performs in comparison.

The underwater seismometer network is so great, as evidenced from yesterday's EQ off-Tohoku.
Reposting unofficial visualization by x.com/kotoho76/sta...

When the Earth Moves: 25 Years of Probabilistic Fault Displacement Hazards - Eos Surface ruptures causing earthquakes pose risks to infrastructure and human lives, but advances in models and data in the last few decades have improved our ability to mitigate their effects.

When the Earth Moves: 25 Years of Probabilistic Fault Displacement Hazards eos.org/editors-vox/...

Original paper here: pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geospher...

Big U.S. West Coast earthquakes could come as a one-two punch Cascadia and San Andreas fault zones appear to generate synchronized earthquakes

www.science.org/content/arti...

Big U.S. West Coast earthquakes could come as a one-two punch Cascadia and San Andreas fault zones appear to generate synchronized earthquakes

Seismologists & risk modellers are always aiming to better understand relationships between quakes on major faults. This Science article, based on Goldfinger et al. (2025), uses palaeoseismology to find possible stress triggering between the Cascadia subduction zone & northern San Andreas fault:

This brilliant initiative & resulting White Paper gives important insights into the geohazards affecting Indonesia, challenges & research priorities for better understanding of hazard, & recommended solutions to address challenges, strengthen resilience & improve disaster risk reduction.

Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet | Samanth Subramanian A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life

Great to see @mikeaclare.bsky.social @noc.ac.uk quoted in this piece in the Guardian today www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se... about the Hunga Volcano eruption and the subsequent telecommunications outage in 2022.

Seismic waveforms and power spectral density plots showing the signal of a landslide lake outburst flood.

Planet satellite image from August 2025 of a large landslide blocking a river and creating a lake.

The Matai’an landslide dam in eastern Taiwan has failed this afternoon (eos.org/thelandslide...), flooding Guangfu, about 15 km downstream focustaiwan.tw/society/2025.... Even in the middle of a typhoon, the resulting flood produced a detectable seismic signal at stations ~40 km away.

'Supershear' earthquakes a major threat to California, say scientists USC Dornsife researchers say powerful, fast-moving quakes will strike the Golden State, urge stronger building codes and better monitoring

This article, based on a recent Seismological Research Letters paper from scientists at the Statewide California Earthquake Center (SCEC), examines occurrence of supershear earthquakes, the need for updated hazard planning & suitable building design to reflect risks: dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories...

Natural Catastrophe Analyst - Earthquake/Hurricane Specialist An exciting opportunity to join an established research network team at Willis (a WTW business), helping clients understand and manage risk while shaping the Willis “view of risk.” Using your scientif...

Yet another Nat Cat job? Actually, we're searching for TWO experts, specialized in tropical cyclones or earthquakes. US or UK, remote work definitely an option. Great job for an ECR physical scientist looking to join the insurance/reinsurance industry! eedu.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

🌋 Excited to share my new essay in Aeon: one of the most underappreciated global risks isn’t an asteroid or supervolcano—it’s the eruptions we don’t see coming:

Volcano alert: Scientists discover a signal that could transform early warning systems Detecting a signal within earthquake waves called shear-wave splitting may improve early warning systems for volcano eruptions.

Volcano alert: Scientists discover a signal that could transform early warning systems - the role of shear-wave splitting: www.earth.com/news/volcano...

Hopefully this work will be complimented by my own work with scientists from the University of Birmingham and Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (currently in review), examining volcanic hazards and financial exposure from an insurance perspective.

Cities near volcanoes: which cities are most exposed to volcanic hazards? Abstract. Cities near volcanoes expose dense concentrations of people, buildings, and infrastructure to volcanic hazards. Identifying cities globally that are exposed to volcanic hazards helps guide l...

This paper by Meredith et al. (2025) examines global city exposure to volcanic hazards, using metrics such as population and distance to GVP Holocene volcanoes to quantify and rank cities at risk. This data has also been visualised through a web app. nhess.copernicus.org/articles/25/...

Crescent city river gauge record

Just to illustrate how long waves from a #tsunami can keep going, this is a tide gauge record from Crescent City CA (known for its sensitivity to tsunami waves due to bathymetric and resonance effects) showing significant wave activity still continues 24+ hours after their first arrival. 🧪⚒️

A National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) diagram illustrating how tsunami wave information in the deep ocean is transmitted to tsunami warning centers (right)

Kamchatka earthquake highlights the advances in tsunami early warning systems 🌊 🛰️

BGS Prof David Tappin, Marine Geologist & tsunami expert explains how the Kamchatka event highlighted the improved mitigation measures now in place.

www.bgs.ac.uk/news/kamchat...

Hurricane Helene set up future disasters, from landslides to flooding – cascading hazards like these are now upending risk models Risk models can’t rely just on the past anymore. A team of geoscientists suggests new ways to forecast evolving hazards in real time as cascading disaster risk worsens.

This article, based on Yanites et al. (2025) in Science, discusses how hazardous events such as earthquakes, wildfires, & storms accelerate erosion & sediment transport, increasing sensitivity & risk of cascading hazards such as landslides & floods:
theconversation.com/hurricane-he...

Maps showing how the June 23, 2010 M5 earthquake near Val des Bois, Quebec, was felt across eastern North America (to a distance of nearly 1000 km). Map on the right is a closeup of felt shaking reports from the epicentral region where some damage occurred and landslides were triggered.

Photo of a red barn that was impacted by a landslide following a M5 earthquake in Quebec. Brown soils outline the landslide, with green grassy fields and trees in the background.

Earthquakes in eastern #Canada? June 23, 2010 - a damaging M5 #earthquake in western Québec was felt in Ontario, #Québec and as far away as Washington DC. It triggered landslides and produced the strongest shaking ever felt in #Ottawa (~60 km away): earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/pprs-pprp/pu...
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