It is sometimes said to be the highest volcano in Europe. There is an obvious problem with that: El Teide is not in Europe. It may be Spanish, but the location is in the Canary Island which ...

Albert’s article Volcanoes and rain explores the possible links between volcanic eruptions and subsequent periods of wet weather. But there is another side to this story: rain can, in turn, have ...

It has been wet in the UK. Nothing unusual there, it may seem, although compared to the tropics, the rain is mostly mild. Temperatures are moderate and therefore the air does not contain as much ...

Life in paradise can be hard. Paradise is a Greek word of Persian origin made famous by the Jewish bible: it comes from a mix of very different cultures. The word means a walled garden. The garden ...

A fun question: which are the southernmost, most equatorial and northernmost volcanoes in the world? We need to add two provisos here, otherwise this question is impossible to answer: the volcano ...

Iwo Jima is famous. The battle between the US and Japanese forces are well remembered – by both sides. Before the war, about 1000 people lived here. After the war, none. There is a military base only.

Living near the sea can be good. First and foremost, the sea provides a food supply in the form of fish and shellfish which is available throughout the year. The open water provides fast transport ...

Figuring out the eruption history of Afar volcanoes is taking longer than I expected, so in the meantime, I will have to post about other topics. And lately, one that has been present in my volcano ...

It came as a shock – quite literally. It shouldn’t have, because a recent paper had predicted that the area was preparing for a large earthquake. On 29 July, at 23:25 UTC, the 5 th largest earthquake ...

On 15 July, a video of an explosive eruption of Erta Ale (Afar Region, Ethiopia) volcano was briefly discussed in the comment section. It was a small ash plume emerging from the summit of the ...

The double-booked land is also known as the Afar Triangle, a low-lying region wedged into the Ethiopian Plateau. The region is not for the intrepid. The name is synonymous with remoteness. It is also ...

To me, it’s an eruption because it’s throwing rocks and it’s on a volcano. It could be phreatic or magmatic. It’s phreatic if it’s driven by heated groundwater, or magmatic gasses from an intrusion, ...