This photo, taken in early 2011 at Murphy Dome, a mountain in Fairbanks North Star Borough in the US state of Alaska, shows a beautiful natural phenomena known as aurora.Auroras, also called northern lights in the Northern Hemisphere, are stunning light displays visible mainly at high latitudes. There, it is easier for energetic particles from the Earth’s magnetosphere and solar wind to follow the ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Volcanic twilight
Mount Etna, located in the east coast of Sicily in Italy, is one of the most active volcanos in the world and is home to spectacular eruptions. This photo, taken by Robin Campion from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, shows bright-red lava and a smoking scoria cone on the upper east flank of the volcano during an eruption in 2006.“Fast-flowing lava flow was erupted from an eastwards tr ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Lonely Tree
The Lonely tree. Image by Alexandre M. Ramos , distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence. The photograph was taken near to Üetliberg in Switzerland. The Üetliberg mountain is close to Zurich and part of the Albis mountain range. Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also oth ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Forest Fires
Forest Fires. Image by Sandro Makowski, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence. Slash and burn activity in Southern Ecuador. The photo was the taken during field work at the San Francisco valley, a microcatchment in the province of Zamora, south-east of Ecuador. The valley is the study area of the DFG research unit FOR 816 “Biodiversity and Sustainable Management of a Megadiverse Trop ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Why are jet streams not good wind energy sources?
Commercial airlines know jet streams well. Planes often hitch a ride on these strong, high-altitude atmospheric winds, which blow from west to east, to fly faster, and they are the reason why long-haul easterly flights (such as those between the US and Europe) are quicker than the corresponding westerly journeys. Scientists are also familiar with these fierce and persistent winds, which occur at a ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Fog over Forest
Fog over Forest. Image by Konstantinos Kourtidis, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons License. Fog sweeps over a pine forest in the early morning hours. The image was taken on a winter morning in February 2008. The photo was taken from the window of the photographer’s house in Xanthi, Greece. The fog is of the type of upslope fog or hill fog, which forms when winds blow air up a slop ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Rock Fall
Rock Fall. Image by Fausto Guzzetti, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence. The photograph shows a rock fall occurred near Valtopina, Umbria, Central Italy, at an unknown date. Rockfalls are a mass movement hazard. They mostly occur on steep rock faces, with the blocks that fall detaching along an existing weakness. The scale of a rock fall can range from a few blocks of rock to rock ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Mount Yasur
Strombolian activity on Mount Yasur, Vanuatu. Image by Derya Gürer, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence. Imaggeo is the online open access geosciences image repository of the European Geosciences Union. Every geoscientist who is an amateur photographer (but also other people) can submit their images to this repository. Being open access, it can be used by scientists for their prese ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Lava flow into sea
Lava from the East Rift Zone entering the sea near Kalapana (Hawaii Big Island). Image by Martin Mergili, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons License. The image shows a flow of basaltic lava out of a lava tunnel into the sea. The location of the scene is the shoreline of Hawaii Big Island near the village of Kalapana. Flow direction of the lava is from the bottom to the top of the image, v ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Iceland spar, or how Vikings used sunstones to navigate
Nowadays, we can rely on GPS receivers or magnetic compasses to tell us how to reach our destination. Some 1000 years ago, Vikings had none of these advanced navigation tools. Yet, they successfully sailed from Scandinavia to America in near-polar regions where it can be hard to use the Sun and the stars as a compass. Clouds or fog and the long twilights characteristic of polar summers complicate ...[Read More]