weather

Imaggeo on Mondays: Rain on the Namib Desert

Olivia Trani December 16, 2019

Rain in the Namib Desert. Credit: Christoph Schmidt (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu).

Pictured here is the arid Namib Desert on a not-so-arid day. The desert is known for its extremely dry conditions and abundance of sunshine, but this photo, taken by Christoph Schmidt, chair of geomorphology at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, gives us a rare glimpse of a rainy day. The Namib Desert spans about 81,000 square kilometres in southwest Africa, stretching throughout the entire co ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Inside the whale’s mouth

Olivia Trani August 19, 2019

Inside the Whale's Mouth. Credit: Michiel Baatsen (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Often there are moments in our lives when we are reminded of the strength and magnitude of our environment, whether that’s trekking through a mountain range or gazing at the horizon from the ocean shore. Yet arguably there are few things that can make you feel as small as a particularly powerful summer storm. “The atmosphere is undoubtedly one of the most dynamic components in the Earth System. No ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Our QUEST for innovative tools to understand changing environments and climates

Sebastian Breitenbach and Adam Hartland June 10, 2019

A multi-year cave monitoring programme in New Zealand's Waipuna Cave focusses on developing novel quantitative proxies for palaeoclimatology. We measure drip rate, temperature, electrical conductivity and many other parameters, analyse the isotopic and elemental composition of the water, and compare our results with the length and origin of recorded rainfall. With our data, we hope to better understand the interplay of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation and the Southern Westerlies and the local response to changes in their dynamics. This monitoring is part of the EU Marie Curie RISE Project "QUantitative palaeoEnvironments from SpeleoThems – QUEST". Credit: Sebastian Breitenbach (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

The photo shown here shows typical sampling work underground. You can see Ola Kwiecien and Cinthya Nava Fernandez, researchers at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, collecting dripwater in New Zealand’s Waipuna Cave as part of a four-year EU-funded monitoring programme. Our research aims at developing innovative geochemical indicators that we can use to quantify changes in the hydrological system ...[Read More]

A flood of attention: extreme weather and digital media

Tim Middleton May 2, 2018

Seine river flooding near the Eiffel Tower in 2016. (Image Credit: Guilhem Vellut, Wikimedia Commons)

In June 2016, Paris was transformed. The River Seine burst its banks, submerging some of the nearby roads; floodwater lapped at the tops of street lamps and traffic lights. The event marked the the worst flooding in Paris for more than 30 years. When a flood event hits a major city, numerous researchers are keen to collect data for their work. However, Rosa Vicari, a PhD student at the the École d ...[Read More]