In between Lombok (the location of infamous Rinjani) and Flores (with the magic lakes of Kelimutu) is the island of Sumbawa. It lies in the heart of the most volcanic region of the most volcanic nation on Earth. The two largest eruptions of the last 1500 years both came from this region. Lombok has never…
Late on 8 September 2023, a major earthquake hit the region of the High Atlas mountains in Morocco. As of writing, the full extent of the damage is not yet known. The ancient city of Marrakesh, just north of the mountains, was hit badly. Settlements in the mountains themselves have not yet been reached. The…
Much of our world is in hiding. It lies below the surface of the oceans and is largely invisible to us, a Maria Incognito. It is a hostile world: we are creatures of the solid ground, who long left the seas behind and cannot return. But more of this forbidden world is being uncovered, by…
Sometimes a project becomes remarkable. Some years ago we started thinking about what to do with the James Webb Space Telescope, whenever it would become available. An idea was developed and we worked out what kind of data would be needed. It turned out to be feasible, so we proposed it. That is harder than…
It is hard to remember what Iceland was like three years ago. At that time, most (or all) eruptions were in the eastern volcanic zone, from Katla (and friends) to Krafla. (Ok, one can argue about the precise borders. Grimsvotn was about to erupt. The Thorbjorn swarm had happened and an eruption at Reykjanes was…
In view of the current tectonic activity at Katla, we offer our readers a repost. Katla has a reputation among some of the disaster crowd, and any shaking there can lead to predictions of worldwide doom. It sometimes seems like a Yellowstone on ice. Hence this story. Physiology has a dog; physics has a cat.…
The largest eruption of the 21st century happened at sea. And it wasn’t Hunga Tonga. The Comoro islands form a forgotten archipelago, somewhere between Africa and Madagascar with about 200 kilometer of open ocean on either side. On the African side the nearest land is the northern end of Mozambique, close to the border with…
A republication of an older post The dinosaurs would disagree. After owning the Earth, they were now in a bit of a bother. A major re-arrangement of the Earth had taken place. Pangea had split; Gondwana was broken up. The Indian ocean had formed but not in a clean way: a number of parallel rifts…
As has been noted here, little is known about people living near volcanoes which had a VEI-7 eruption. But we do know something about Tambora. The slope of Tambora, on the Sangar peninsula of the island of Sumbawa, was home to the Kingdom of Tambora. The kingdom had been mainly located some distance from the…
Volcanoes can erupt invisibly. A sudden, swift explosion in an isolated location may be unobserved and still have worldwide impacts. The source of the large eruption of 1809 remains unknown. We still don’t know the culprits of the volcanic climate catastrophe of 536 and 540. The link between the year without summer of 1816 and…