America came late. Humanity had come from Africa, and spread out over Eurasia. This happened mainly during the ice age, when lower sea levels allowed walking migration where previously a ...

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 ...

Along the western edge of South America, the Andes Mountains encompass one of the largest concentrations of volcanoes on Earth. Many of these volcanoes are active, and in the historical record of just ...

Today is 270 years since the destruction of Lisbon. The earthquake of All Saints day 1755 in Lisbon changed a nation and is still remembered across the continent. Hence a republication of our 2016 ...

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, ...

Some events can cast long shadows. The UK is still talking about the storm of 1987 (‘the worst night since the Blitz’), the winter of 1963, the storm floods of 1953, the London smog of 1952, the Great ...

The lava flow running east is the one produced in January-March. The blacker ash covers around 20km>sup>2 in this image. That suggests a volume of 0.01 to 0.001 km 3: no more than a VEI 2. The convent ...

Here is the famous Steppe, the dry grass-land, the never-ending plain stretching across Eurasia from China to Hungary. Rainfall is too limited for trees to grow. The climate is harsh, with hot summers ...

Indeed, hail is not as dramatic or deadly as hurricanes, or tornadoes, or floods, which are far, far better documented in contemporary literature. But they are a very relevant meteorological ...