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Articles

Disasters and how to avert them
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Jul 21 2005
Drowned out by admirable but deafening calls for debt relief and an end to poverty, masked by the critical debate on climate change, and buried beneath news of the London bombs, the G8 leaders last week took the first steps towards establishing a global threat identification and warning system, designed to ensure that we are never again caught napping by extreme geophysical hazards along the lines of the Asian tsunami, or worse.

Catastrophe watch
Bill McGuire
Prospect
June 2005
Super-eruptions, asteroid impacts and cosmic winters-such cataclysmic events, known as gee-gees, are no longer science fiction. The tsunami has helped focus minds on the potential dangers. We must act now.

This eruption could put a tsunami in the shade
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Mar 10 2005
Have you noticed that everything is getting bigger these days. Televisions, cars, burgers - even the people who eat them? The same seems to be happening with natural catastrophes. Not content with worrying about tsunamis - even though the standard variety has shown that it can erase a third of a million lives - we are now losing sleep over mega-tsunamis, waves tens of metres high capable of trashing the entire Atlantic coastline.

Reading between the lines
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Jan 6 2005
Seismographs have been used for more than 150 years to record the ground shaking that accompanies earthquakes. A seismograph is a pendulum, consisting of a suspended heavy weight attached to a recording device - traditionally a pen touching the surface of a paper chart on a rotating drum.

We need a warning system too
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Dec 30 2004
Another Boxing Day, another devastating natural catastrophe. Exactly a year after the Bam earthquake claimed 26,000 lives in southern Iran, the whole of south Asia is reeling following a massive quake off the west coast of Sumatra. Once again the same questions are being asked. Why was there no warning? Why were the authorities not better prepared? Why did so many men, women and children lose their lives?

How to measure the size of an volcanic eruption
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Sep 02 2004
One of the most fascinating things about volcanic eruptions is the enormous variation in their scale and violence. On the one hand they can involve the tranquil effusion of sluggish red lava - spectacular but essentially harmless unless your house happens to be in the way. On the other they can take the form of explosions so staggeringly huge that ejected gas and dust blot out the sun for years, plunging the planet into bitter volcanic winter.

Nice day for an eruption
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
May 06 2004
We know that dust from volcanic explosions can chill our climate. Now, Bill McGuire reports, it's becoming clear that weather and changing sea levels can squeeze out lava

When the ground shakes
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Jan 08 2004
It is perhaps difficult to grasp that as we in the UK slept peacefully in our beds on Christmas Night, in the southern Iranian city of Bam 30,000 men, women and children were dying in theirs.

More investment in storm research is encouraged
Mark Saunders
Business Insurance
Dec 01 2003

Will global warming trigger a new ice age?
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Nov 13 2003
If you can remember back to the bitter winters of the late 1970s and early 80s you might also recall that there was much discussion in scientific circles at the time about whether or not the freezing winter conditions were a portent of a new ice age.

Forecasting sucess (pdf 745kb)
Mark Saunders
Reinsurance
Nov 2003

Heebie gee-gees
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Oct 22 2003
Global geophysical events, such as huge tidal waves or volcanic super-eruptions, could devastate the planet - so why doesn't anybody care?

In the shadow of the volcano
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Oct 16 2003
Out of the blue, and for no immediately obvious reason, the terrible fate of the Roman city of Pompeii once again occupies centre stage. Still 76 years short of the 2000th anniversary of the burial of the town beneath a thick shroud of ash and debris fro...

When the snow melts, the Earth will quake
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
May 29 2003
Japan was hit by yet another earthquake this week. Could snow be to blame?

Hurricane forecasting: the move towards business relevance (pdf 300kb)
Mark Saunders/David Simmons/Niklaus Hilti
B4
Spring 2003

Volcanoes rule the waves
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Feb 20 2003
Far from being bastions of strength and rigidity that stand unmoved and unchanged by the passage of time, active volcanoes are dynamic structures that are constantly shifting and changing. Some, in fact, are little more than piles of ash and lava rubble - rotten to the core and looking for the slightest excuse to collapse.

Taming Vulcan's might
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
Jan 09 2003
Bill McGuire on the engineers who have to outguess a volcano

Hazardous Earth: the super-cats are coming (pdf 1.61mb)
Bill McGuire
Insurance International/Commercial Insurance
Summer 2002
Bill McGuire warns of the need to deal with the risk of natural super-catastrophes and suggests a role for insurers

Warning from the dead
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
May 02 2002
One hundred years ago this month, the worst volcanic catastrophe of the 20th century wrought carnage on the Caribbean island of Martinique

When the top blows: why volcanic eruption has huge damage potential
Bill McGuire
Insurance Day
April 30 2002

Super-cat that will threaten life on Earth: it is only a matter of when
Bill McGuire
Insurance Day
April 23 2002

A world of fire or ice
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
March 21 2002
With global warming dominating the climate change debate, it is surprising to think that just a few decades ago, all the talk was of a new ice age. To many, this is simply another example of scientists doing a U-turn. In fact, nothing much has changed.

The phantom menace
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
August 2 2001
Perhaps a thousand one-kilometre sized chunks of rock are buzzing around the Earth like bees around a honey-pot and we have only spotted about half of them. In a race against time, scientists working on the Spacewatch telescope at the University of Arizona are trying to find the remainder of them before one ends its billion-year journey by hammering into the Earth and obliterating civilization.

Information, information and more information (pdf 21kb) John Owen-Davies, 2000.

Earth's Future Climate, Chapter In 'Science into the Next Millennium' (pdf 35kb) Mark Saunders, December 2000

Wave of destruction
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
October 12 2000
Tsunamis are silent, stalking horrors that often appear without warning and with no apparent cause to devastate a coastline thousands of kilometres from their source.

Above us the waves
Bill McGuire
The Guardian
December 02 1999
Police-lieutenant Devlin McMahon battled his way through the crowds and plucked the small child to safety before she could be trampled beneath the mass of humanity surging across the Brooklyn Bridge