Volcán de Colima currently is the most active volcano in Mexico where many rain-induced lahars occur every year. La Lumbre ravine is the ephemeral channel that drains the west-southwestern slopes of the volcano. In 2016, while Volcán de Colima experienced a prolonged explosive phase, several lahars were documented in this channel. One of them is …[Read More]
On August 4, 2020, the coast of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, was rocked by an explosion caused by the blowing up of 2750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in fertilizers (Figure 1). It resulted in at least 181 casualties, 6,000 injuries and 10-15 billion US dollars in damage [Ref 2]. Footage …[Read More]
Breaking news: a bizarre early-September snowstorm dumped snow from Montana to New Mexico, a medicane hit Southern Italian regions and Greece, heatwaves and droughts are expected to increase in the future… These extreme events are becoming more and more frequent and one question spontaneously arises: is climate change making the weather more extreme? This is …[Read More]
Since 1998 the American Geosciences Institute has been running an annual celebration of all things geoscience – Earth Science Week. From its inception, Earth Science Week has grown in popularity and is now celebrated across the planet. This year Earth Science Week will run from 11 to 17 October and the theme of the week …[Read More]
Ice caps, valley glaciers, cirque glaciers, piedmont glaciers, ice sheets… I’m guessing that if you are a glaciology enthusiast, you have already heard about these types of glaciers. But you probably don’t know anything about regenerated glaciers, am I right? Well, you are in the right place! Let’s find out more about this little-known glacier …[Read More]
The August 2020 NPG Paper of the Month award goes to Josh Jacobson and colleagues for their paper “Beyond univariate calibration: verifying spatial structure in ensembles of forecast fields” (https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-27-411-2020). The ability to know the future has long been sought after and coveted. Yet, in contrast to prophecies and crystal balls, modern methods of prediction …[Read More]
Jade feels uncomfortable as she glides across the multi-faceted piazza of Earth sciences. Sometimes parents should think a tad longer about prospective names for their progeny, especially in case they push them into the world of minerals, rocks and equations-of-state. With all the facts on jade in her back-pocket, Jade wonders whether she should brush …[Read More]
After a few years spent at an Earth Science department researching social inequalities and hydrological extremes — i.e. floods and droughts — I have often been asked these rhetorical questions: “Isn’t it obvious that the weakest individuals or social groups suffer the most in case of extreme hydrological events? So, why should we study these …[Read More]
Geodynamics does not stop at the core-mantle boundary – the Earth’s outer core is a truly dynamic geosystem. This week Stefano Maffei (Research fellow) and Chris Davies (Associate Professor) from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds tell us more about the possible interplay between mantle and core and some of …[Read More]
Loess is an aeolian (wind-driven) silty sediment covering over 10% of the Earth’s land surface; it occurs predominantly in the mid-latitudes. On a global scale, loess is among the most widespread unconsolidated sediments, and of crucial importance for agricultural regions where loess deposits are known to form fertile soils because of its ability to store …[Read More]