Due to this article being so graphics heavy, I had to break it up into two parts, with the second part coming tomorrow evening. It is somewhat ironic that my brain is operating mainly in a graphical mode, and that I think in visualisations and graphic models, whereas at the same time I am about…
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…
A guest post by our very own media master, Nick Small: A historic earthquake in Anatolia As you will all know, an M7.8 earthquake caused massive devastation across Southern Turkiye and Northern Syria on Monday 6/2/23. It ruptured about 100km of the East Anatolian fault at a critically shallow depth of 17.9 km. It was…
Taupo is one of those volcanoes I do not like to write about in Volcanocafé. It is one thing to write a historical retrospect of what it has done in yon olden days, and something completely different when it is doing something interesting. The reason is simple, Taupo is one of those volcanoes that have…
Volcanology is filled with moments when you look at your favourite volcano doing something interesting, and you hope that it will erupt. There is no shame to admit it, we are secretly cheering our favourites on towards the inevitable eruption. Time and time again we are though let down by our volcanoes, and if you…
In the last decade, science has been under increasing attacks and have lost in status among the general population. Where famous scientists a century ago could rake in some serious dosh by going on lecture tours explaining their findings, today’s scientists are increasingly unknown and scorned by the general population. Instead, we see the rise…
I am taking this opportunity to look at 5 volcanoes that at least I find interesting. I am doing this out of the perspective of the life-curve of an eruption. I find this perspective to be interesting, and I think that it is something that would be both entertaining and informative for our dear readers.…
Alaska can be a shaky place. Earlier this week, at 10:15pm local time on Wednesday, there was an M8.2 earthquake in the region. It was the largest earthquake on Earth since the M8.3 in Chile in 2015. Let’s award the US the gold olympic medal for earthquaking (after all, the Chilean winner was from the…
Background The good part about volcanology is that nature will sooner or later test both your theories and your scientific models. In this case what was tested was the original model of the available pent up seismic strain in the currently active area of Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland. It turned out that the amount of…
Today is the 10 year anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake. The M9 off the coast at Sendai, Japan, was impressive enough by itself, but the main impact came from the huge tsunami that followed. I remember it well. My lecture the previous day had been on the physics of tidal waves and tsunamis. I had…