From space, planet Earth resembles a glassy blue marble, a term that was first used to describe a photograph of the Earth taken by the Apollo 17 crew on their way to the moon in 1972. Aside from providing stunning views of our planet, images of the Earth taken from above can also be used for meteorological observations. This beautiful photograph, taken by the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satel ...[Read More]
Megacities at EGU2012
Today’s guest post comes from Michelle Cain, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Almost a whole day’s worth of sessions on megacities – where to begin? I certainly couldn’t pick just one talk to write about, so here’s a mish-mash of the session in general and a few talks in particular. First things first: what is a megacity? Officially defined (by who, I d ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Seeing double
On 6 September 2009, monsoon clouds had built up throughout the day over the Donggi Cona lake in central China. Janneke IJmker, now a researcher at Deltares in the Netherlands, was doing fieldwork there as part of her PhD at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. By dinner time, the sun shone on raindrops from the clouds producing a magnificent double rainbow over the lake, which IJmker captured with ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Orange anvils
The anvils in this picture are not heavy steel or iron blocks but rather soft clouds coloured orange by the setting sun. The term is used to describe the upper part of a cumulonimbus or thunderstorm cloud that tends to spread out in an anvil shape as warm air bumps up against the bottom of the stratosphere (the atmospheric layer between 15-50 kilometres height). Katja Weigel, a researcher at the I ...[Read More]