On August 30th massive rain storms precipitated huge amounts of water in this basin in Utah. These then travelled along a canyon in a flashflood and triggered a debris flow. Additionally, there is drone footage following the front of the flow. It is amazing how rain can trigger such a force of nature. Unfortunately, […]
Category Archives: Earth Science
Volcano monitoring on the next level
Volcanoes are being monitored for quite some time now. Deformational changes and seismicity can be recorded with decent accuracy. However, the link to volcanic activity has been unclear the entire time. But recent research might shed light on this matter. Let’s take a quick tour under some volcanoes. Down below When we look into the […]
The difference of a decimal for a tsunami
Off the coast of Chile a strong shallow earthquake triggered a tsunami. Warnings have been going out to Chile, Peru, Hawaii and New Zealand. The first estimation of the energy of the earthquake was at M7.9 but was then corrected to 8.3. This correction results in an update of the tsunami predictions. I created this […]
Exploring Challenger Deep
The Challenger Deep at the Marianna trench is the deepest point on earth measuring 10.91km. People used to think our oceans were pretty flat underneath the water and did measurements with a plumb. So when surveyors came to this particular point at this subduction zone the line proved to be too short. When tectonic plates […]
Progressing ash plume of Eyjafjallajökull
In May 2010 air transportation in Europe came to a halt, when Eyjafjallajökull on Iceland erupted. Now, two years after that eruption scientist have gathered and evaluated all kinds of data how the ash plume moved through Europe. This data taken from satellites, plane and the earth can help evaluate particle dispersion better and limit […]
Aran Islands, Ireland
The Aran Islands just off the coast of Ireland left geologists puzzled for a while now. On top of this cliff huge boulders are found. Up to now the only explanation for waves energetic enough to transport these rocks would be a tsunami. Unfortunately, at least for the explanation, no tsunami happened there since 1755. Now […]
The subjective science of seismic interpretation
The final step in the work with seismic data is seismic interpretation. In a scientific field called geophysics, interpretation sounds highly subjective; Very different from the usual statistics, ray and wave phenomenae. This can’t be right, right? I’d love to say it’s very clear and seismic data reveals a perfect image of the subsurface. But […]
Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand
There are a couple of places in this world, I really would like to see. A friend just added the Moeraki Boulders to this list, posting it to facebook. These are spherical boulders off the coast of New Zealand of unusual size. My first guess, would be dinosaur eggs (wouldn’t that be cool?). The actual explanation […]
