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So what my role is as a scientist at NASA is to work with satellite data from rainfall and topography so looking at the slopes

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and the soil types, to really figure out where and when landslides are occurring.

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Now landslides tend to occur where we have steep slopes, we have some loose soil

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that's been saturated. This is an example of a major landslide that was in El Salvador, but landslides all around Central

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America and South America and in the U.S. - nearly every state has landslides.

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So it can be caused by heavy rainfall, earthquakes and even freezing and thawing.

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Now floods occur when the soil has already been pretty saturated and the ground really can't absorb any more water

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from overflowing rivers or runoff from mountains.  And so it causes a buildup of water that we can actually see from space.

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By looking at -  this is an example of some Thailand floods -

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we're able to see these images and different data from space

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to get a broader picture of Earth and try to anticipate where we might have floods and landslides in the future.

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Now GPM is building off of TRMM's capabilities so we're actually able to use higher resolution or more detailed measurements

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to get a much better understanding of where and when we might experience floods and landslides in near real time, which means right away.

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This is just an example of some ideas of models that we're currently developing at NASA and other places to tell us

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what might happen with these extreme events and how they might be changing in a changing climate.

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Exellent. And really this is not only fascinating  information for the science, but it's also great for community safety as well.

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Absolutely. So NASA and the researchers here and elsewhere

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try to take this data and provide it for decision makers to make informed

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decisions about evacuations and where to relocate people when there's a disaster.