It started with a melting glacier that set off a huge landslide, which triggered a 650-foot high mega-tsunami in Greenland last September. Then came something inexplicable: a mysterious vibration that shook the planet for nine days. Over the past year, dozens of scientists across the world have been trying to figure out what this signal was. Now, they have an answer.
It's called a "cascading hazard," said Kristian Svennevig, a geologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. And it all started with human-caused climate change.
For years, the glacier at the base of a huge mountain towering nearly 4,000 feet above Dickson Fjord had been melting, as many glaciers are in the rapidly warming Arctic.
As the glacier thinned, the mountain became increasingly unstable before it eventually collapsed on September 16 last year, sending enough rock and debris tumbling into the water to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The subsequent mega-tsunami — one of the highest in recent history — set off a wave which became trapped in the bendy, narrow fjord for more than a week, sloshing back and forth every 90 seconds.
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📸 : Danish Army
Wildfires destroying homes in the Midlands and Shropshire crews moving between fire and flood show why sustainable construction must now treat climate resilience as a core design requirement. Sustainable building design, low carbon design and eco-design for buildings need to account for overheating, fire risk, drainage capacity, defensible space and durable fabric performance.
Whole life carbon, embodied carbon and life cycle cost are becoming inseparable from safety, insurability and asset value, making whole life carbon assessment and lifecycle assessment essential tools for developers, councils and investors.
Karachi’s mangrove loss reinforces the construction value of green infrastructure and nature-based flood protection. Tidal creeks, mangrove belts and resilient coastal landscapes can reduce erosion, store carbon and protect communities, supporting environmental sustainability in construction without relying solely on hard engineering. For sustainable urban development, green construction and eco-friendly construction must prioritise site planning, biodiversity and building lifecycle performance alongside energy-efficient buildings and net zero carbon buildings.
Plans for a wind-turbine recycling facility in the Scottish Highlands point to a more mature circular economy in construction. Renewable infrastructure must address end-of-life reuse in construction, resource efficiency in construction and the embodied carbon in materials, especially composite blades and complex low carbon construction materials. The shift supports circular construction strategies, low embodied carbon materials and net zero whole life carbon targets, aligning with BREEAM, BREEAM v7 and wider expectations for environmental product declarations (EPDs). The strongest signal for decarbonising the built environment is clear: sustainable building practices must measure the carbon footprint of construction across design, use, maintenance and decommissioning.
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