EGU Scientific Divisions

Making earthquakes understandable: How “Near Me” search behavior can guide better risk communication

Bob Bateman November 14, 2025

When a tremor strikes, people instinctively turn to their phones — and to Google. Source: Bob Bateman

When a tremor shakes the ground, the first thing many people do isn’t check a scientific database: they reach for their phone. Within seconds, searches like “earthquake near me” surge across Google. This simple phrase captures something profound: a universal need not to understand seismic mechanics, but to know “Am I safe?” Over the past few years, this “near me” framing has quietly reshaped how t ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: meet Thanushika Gunatilake, researcher of earthquake impacts on geothermal energy

Simon Clark October 28, 2025

Thanushika Gunatilake

Hello Thanushika – welcome to GeoTalk! Before we delve deeper, could you introduce yourself to our readers? Thank you for having me! I’m Thanushika Gunatilake, an Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. My research connects natural and human-induced processes in the Earth’s crust; from earthquake nucleation in the central Apennines, subduction dynamics, and volcanic activity, to geoth ...[Read More]

The spectral shadow of Samalas: When climate models conjure the Earth’s forgotten fury

Asmae Ourkiya October 24, 2025

Rinjani Volcano (3726m, Lombok Island, Indonesia) in eruption. A lava flow is emitted on the flank of the intra caldera cone of Gunung Baru. Mild explosive activity at the vent is producing a 1500m high gas and ash plume, while a viscous lava is entering the 200m deep caldera lake. A hot spring on its shower release a plume of iron hydroxide precipitates giving a peculiar yellow color. Source: Imaggeo

This Halloween, we turn our gaze from fictional haunts to the chilling, rigorous world of paleoclimatology. The paper by Hartmann et al. (2025), published on Climate of the Past, focuses on the implementation of external forcings in a regional climate model around the 1257 CE Samalas volcanic eruption. This paper can be quite the unsettling investigation, since it treats the Earth itself as a time ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: Meet glacial hauntologist, Elizabeth Case (you read that right, a glacial hauntologist!)

Simon Clark October 10, 2025

Elizabeth Case

Welcome to GeoTalk, Elizabeth! Could you introduce yourself and your background? I’m a genderfluid glaciologist living between previously glaciated, currently glaciated, and flood-prone landscapes. I am a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. I did my bachelor’s in physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and my Ph.D. in glacial geophysics at Co ...[Read More]