Indonesia

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

Asmae Ourkiya October 24, 2025

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]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Mount Bromo – volcanic deity

Olivia Trani December 2, 2019

Featured in this photo, rising out from a sea of violet fog at dawn, is one of Indonesia’s most iconic volcanoes, Mount Bromo. The mountain is a large volcanic crater, also known as a caldera, which formed when an ancient cone volcano collapsed in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene epochs, between 126,000 and 8,300 years ago. The current structure stands at 2,392 metres in the eastern region ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Indonesian mangroves and tsunamis

Olivia Trani May 13, 2019

Pictured here is a solitary mangrove tree, rooted off the northern coast of the Indonesian island Flores. While this tree has the shallow sandy reef to itself, mangroves are often found clumped together in large forests covering tropical and subtropical coastlines. The propped-up roots of mangrove trees often tangle together, creating a dense natural barrier that can weaken the coastal impact of o ...[Read More]

September GeoRoundUp: the best of the Earth sciences from around the web

Olivia Trani October 5, 2018

Drawing inspiration from popular stories on our social media channels, major geoscience headlines, as well as unique and quirky research, this monthly column aims to bring you the latest Earth and planetary science news from around the web. Major stories This month has been a whirlwind of Earth and space science news; the majority focusing on natural hazards. Powerful cyclones, earthquakes, and ts ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: How El Niño triggered Indonesia corals die-off

Laura Roberts-Artal March 3, 2017

In the glistening waters of Indonesia, shallow corals – the rain forests of the sea – teem with life. Or at least they did once. Towards the end of 2015 the corals started to die, leaving a bleak landscape behind. An international team of researchers investigated the causes of the die-off. Their findings, published recently in the EGU’s open access journal, Biogeosciences, are rather ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: The calamity of eruptions, or an eruption of benefits?

Laura Roberts-Artal August 7, 2015

So here is a question: why would anyone want to live in the vicinity of an active volcano? The risks are well known, with hazards arising from lava flows, lahars, ash falls, debris avalanches, and pyroclastic density currents, with many often having deadly consequences. But despite the danger, more than half a billion people live in the direct vicinity of volcanoes. Could it be that communities pr ...[Read More]