Today’s field photo is by Tempest Anderson, of the ‘Roseau Dry River flowing with Boiling Mud’, a picture taken in the aftermath of the May 1902 eruptions of the Soufrière of St Vincent. The full published caption explains the origins of this boiling mud – a phenomenon we now call a lahar: ‘This is a small stream in the Wallibu Basin. When the water undermines the ba ...[Read More]
How NOT to write to an editor
Over on the Nature Methods blogs site, there are some interesting posts with advice for authors on how to prepare cover letters, rebuttal letters, appeal letters and the like. Here’s an example of ‘how NOT to write to an editor‘, based on a recent experience of mine. I shall let the author remain anonymous, but my hunch is that this is not an isolated example of this sort of beha ...[Read More]
An 18th Century London Volcano
A 3D printer model of the Soufriere of St Vincent, an active volcano in the southern Caribbean.
We are now just three weeks away from the launch of an ambitious public engagement project – ‘London Volcano‘. This will see us build a large scale-model of volcano on the front lawn of London’s Natural History Museum. This activity is all part of Universities UK Week 2014, and our aim is to highlight the work we are doing on ‘Strengthening Resilience in Volcanic Area ...[Read More]
Thermal imaging of volcanic eruption plumes
Thermal imaging using infra-red cameras is now a widely used tool in the monitoring and analysis of volcanic explosions, and this pair of time-series snapshots of two short-lived ‘Vulcanian‘ explosions at Volcán de Colima, Mexico, shows one example of why. In each panel, times (in seconds) are times since the start of the explosion sequence; and the temperature scales (vertical colour ...[Read More]
The destruction of St Pierre, Martinique: 8 May, 1902
May 8th marks the anniversary of one of the worst volcanic disasters on record: the destruction of St Pierre, Martinique, in 1902, at the climax of the eruption of Mont Pelée. Below are a snapshot of images from one of the contemporary accounts of the disaster, ‘The volcano’s deadly work‘, written by Charles Morris in 1902. This eruption followed just one day after a similarly de ...[Read More]