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]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Zurich lit by lightning
In Zurich, Switzerland, June is often the wettest month of the year. Summer thunderstorms that give clouds a purple-grey colour and bright up the skies with strong lightning bolts are common place. This picture, taken by Ryan Teuling from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, captures one of these bolts, lighting up the centre of the city.Teuling took this photo in June 2008 when he worked at ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Sundogs in Alaska
The northern part of the US state of Alaska is tundra, an area where freezing-cold temperatures hinder tree growth. The result is an unobstructed view of the rising or setting sun that allows photographers to beautifully capture our star. It was in this treeless area that Yongwon Kim, a researcher from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, took this stunning photo of an eerie sun in 2010.Sundogs, at ...[Read More]