Landslides in a changing climate

Overview

Landslides are one of the most deadly but poorly appreciated natural hazards. Occurring on every continent on the planet, and indeed on other planets as well, they are responsible for thousands of deaths and billions of pounds worth of losses annually.

Over the 40 year career of Professor Petley, there has been growing evidence that the pattern of landslides is being heavily modified by the effects of human-induced climate change, which is altering both large-scale weather systems, such as the Asian monsoon, and localised rainfall events, such as cloudbursts.

This lecture will draw upon examples from New Zealand, the Himalayas and the UK to examine how both our understanding of the impacts of climate change on landslides, and the patterns of loss from landslides have changed. Reviewing initially the devastating August 2026 landslide and debris flow in Nepal and Tibet, in which over 5,000 people were killed, it will explore the ways in which new technologies have allowed huge improvements in our understanding of landslides. It will review global patterns of landslide losses, and investigate the ways in which these have are being changed by the rapid shifts occurring in our climate. Finally, it will review future prospects for landslide triggered losses, emphasising that both climate driven changes in the hazard and human driven changes in vulnerability mean that losses are likely to accelerate in the coming years.

Biography

Dave Petley is a geographer and earth scientist with 40 years of experience in higher education. In the early part of his career he developed two distinct areas of landslide research. In the first, he uses a combination of very high resolution field monitoring using new technologies alongside novel laboratory testing, to understand the mechanisms and processes through which slopes fail. In the other, he has used novel methods of collecting data to understand patterns of landslide losses in space and time at both a global and a national level.

More recently, whilst maintaining a research career, Dave has played a major role in academic leadership, serving as Pro-Vice Chancellor at both the University of East Anglia and the University of Sheffield, and then as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hull and now at NTU. Dave has also held a range of international roles in landslides, including as a long-standing member of the Slope Safety Technical Review Board for the Hong Kong Government.

Description supplied by the event organiser.