Local residents and groups across the nation are stepping up efforts to have their areas certified as global geoparks, where rare landscapes useful for learning how the Earth was formed will be preserved and utilized as natural parks. Preparations are under way in eight areas, such as Muroto in Kochi Prefecture, to follow in the footsteps of Itoigawa river in Niigata Prefecture, which became the nation's first global geopark last year. Associations to promote areas as global geoparks have been established in 20 regions, including the Chichibu area in Saitama Prefecture. Geoparks are areas that are internationally certified as geological inheritance parks, where precious geographical landscape or geological layers remain.

The frequency of violent typhoons whose winds exceed 194 kph could increase about 10-fold by the end of this century due to the continuing trend of global warming, a team of government scientists has concluded. The prediction was made by a research group at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. They said it was possible a strong typhoon with winds of more than 216 kph, similar in strength to the 1959 Isewan Typhoon (internationally known as Super Typhoon Vera), would strike Japan every year.