My own expedition into Etna’s center Jesper Sandberg Introduction I have always been addicted to volcanoes, and that addiction has resulted in many volcanic visits over my last 27 years of life, and I have indeed made many volcanic visits. The highpoint of that was seeing the live lava flows at Kilauea: of course Kilauea…
A few days ago, in the VC back-channel, I made mention of something I had seen on a SciChan program. That October is the anniversary of the 79AD eruption. Albert then chimed in with a link to a BBC article detailing the same. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45874858 Okay, that’s the second thing about October that is interesting. 25…
Italy is a fascinating country, and when it comes to volcanology, Italy has been arguably the most influential location in the planet. The first ever detailed description of a volcanic eruption came from Pliny the Younger writing about the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Vesuvius was also the first volcano to be watched over…
Some days ago I got into a rather enthralling conversation about weird magma types. It revolved around a particular kind of magma called nephelinite. Some of you may know about this magma variety. Or perhaps not. It is after all a word that doesn’t show up as frequently as basalt or rhyolite. If this name…
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May In the previous posts we looked at the Eifel volcanics, the Laacher See (the largest eruption in western Europe for the past 1000 centuries), and volcanic dating of the Younger Dryas. The eruption occurred a bit over a century before the sudden cooling. But what caused…
In the previous post Gijs described the surprising history of Europe’s most underestimated volcanic field. Much of the time the Eifel does nothing. On occasion it does a small eruption, just when you weren’t looking. And very rarely, it goes big, covering the surrounding areas in meter-thick ash. Gijs described the area, the monogenetic volcanoes,…
Think of one thing that has interested you for as long as you can remember, or at least for so long the level of factual knowledge you have of it is almost ridiculously vast. That one thing that always brightens up your day when you hear or read something about it, no matter how busy…
The volcano helpfully called ‘Vulcano’, one of the islands, north of Sicilyhas give its name to all volcanoes in the world. Vulcano last eruption was in 1888-1890. During the long repose period, a settlement has grown from a few houses to villas and hotels. Frazzetta et al. wrote in 1984 (quoted by Boris Behncke) “A…
One from the archives (from 2013, with small additions). Karen Z on Snowdonia The British Isles have an extreme diversity of geology. Travel 20 miles from just about anywhere, and you’ll find a region with a very different history. Almost every geological division of time left a mark somewhere here. I live on ice age…
We are delighted to present a guest post by Clive: A letter from Hadrian’s Wall Publius Aelius Hadrianus Augustus, The Emperor of Rome, inherited a largely developed Empire. There is no need to write a biography. Others have already done that. Suffice it to say he was a man who consolidated, set defences, and established…