June 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption - the eruption reduced global temperatures in 1992.
Tectonic hazards are hazard events caused by tectonic plates colliding into each other, moving against each other, moving apart or subduction between a less dense plate and a more dense plate.
Examples of tectonic hazards include:
Volcanoes - these occur when hot magma is forced to the Earth's surface through fissures and cracks in the Earth's crust.
Earthquakes - these most commonly occur when two tectonic plates move against each other. Rocks break underground at the centre of the earthquake, and then the Earth's crust shakes when energy is released.
Tsunamis - caused by the rapid displacement of water.
Tropical cyclones - rapidly rotating storm with a low-pressure centre, spiral arrangement of thunderstorms and strong winds.
There is a distinct difference between the labelling of natural hazards and disasters.
Natural hazard - a natural event with the potential to harm people and their property.
Natural disaster - the realisation and impacts of a natural hazard (injuries, deaths, disruption and damage).
The two key words in bold here make these definitions differ considerably. Essentially a hazard has the potential to harm and a disaster is the realisation of the hazard ie. that its actually happening.
hazard profiles
Hazard profiles are key to categorising and simplifying the risks associated with different hazards. It is a description and analysis of a specific type of local hazard event. It can be performed for each natural hazard.
The criteria which makes up a hazard profile includes frequency, speed of onset, duration.
This is an example of a hazard profile for California's natural hazards. It lists all of the hazards that affect California and profiles each event according to the four characteristics important in analysing hazard events.
Profiling is important as it allows you to compare the physical processes and attributes that hazards share. It also allows decision makers and key players in terms of managing hazard able to simply understand where their efforts need to be targeted in terms of time and money.
This video goes through the structure of the Earth - this will help us to understand how the structure of the Earth effects the occurrence of tectonic hazards globally.