ABSTRACT
Most environmental hazards are atmospheric in origin. Only a portion of the world’s population lives near active geological faults or on unstable slopes, but all are exposed to weather-related extremes. Some individual weather elements, like temperature, constitute a direct hazard to human welfare when they create physiological cold stress or heat stress. But storm-related disasters mostly occur when extreme atmospheric conditions com bine adversely, or interact with other environ - mental factors, to create risk.
