Field journals

At 14:46 local time on March 11, 2011, the Pacific Plate slipped beneath the Okhotsk Plate by as much as 80 meters along a 500-kilometer rupture — the fourth-largest earthquake ever recorded. Six minutes later, a tsunami nearly 40 meters tall overtopped seawalls along the Sanriku coast.

When Eyjafjallajökull's glaciated summit cracked open in April 2010, the ash plume it sent into the jet stream grounded 95,000 flights and cost the airline industry $1.7 billion. It was the largest closure of European airspace since World War II.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeast Louisiana on August 29, 2005, as a Category 3 storm. The storm surge — up to 8.5 meters in some places — overwhelmed New Orleans' levee system. 80% of the city flooded. 1,833 people died.

From June 2019 through March 2020, wildfires consumed 24 million hectares of southeast Australia — an area larger than England. 33 people died directly. Up to three billion animals were displaced or killed. The smoke circumnavigated the globe.

On December 26, 2004, the Indian Plate slid 15 meters beneath the Burma Plate along a 1,300-kilometer rupture off the coast of Sumatra. The resulting tsunami killed 230,000 people in 14 countries — the deadliest tsunami in recorded history.