New Finds at Pompeii

Excavations at Pompeii near Mt, Vesuvius have revealed the discovery of two corpses that were buried in the pyroclastic flow in AD 79.  The incredible discovery can be read here.

A One Year View of Global CO2 Circulation

This is a pretty cool video rom NASA. It is a three minute video. It looks as if the air circulation is driven by the oceans, which in turn are deflected and arranged around the edges of landmasses. The year modeled is 2006 and the day on the screen capture above is February 24. Watch the video here.

The Piper Demands Payment

It's coming! The Southwest drought that began in 1999 has caused reservoir levels in the Southwest to plummet. Climate change is the cause most likely.

Read the report here. 

Watch a Video of the Edenville Dam (Michigan) Fail

Someone was standing on the abutment of the Edenville Dam when it gave way! You can see the footage here in this one minute video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=63&v=Hc3u_CHVHJ8&feature=emb_logo.

A Landslide in Columbia - In a Landfill!

Landslides are so interesting! I subscribe to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Landslide Blog and get a report every morning detailing some kind of landslide around the world. This morning, there is news of landslide in Bogota, Columbia in a landfill. See here.

If you would like to subscribe to the AGU's Landslide Blog, see the link here.

The Latest Image from Hubbell

The giant red nebula, NGC 2014, and its smaller blue neighbor, NGC 2020, part of the Large Magellanic Cloud in the Milky Way, about 163,000 light years away, in this new image by the Hubble Space Telescope.Credit...By NASA, ESA and STScI

The Large Magellanic Cloud can be seen from the Southern Hemisphere on Earth.

The Incredible Story of the White Island (New Zealand) Volcanic Eruption of December, 2019

Screen capture from video taken offshore during the eruption

Outside Magazine has published a detailed and informative first-hand account of the fatal steam blast eruption of New Zealand's White Island that occurred in December, 2019. You can access the story here. Warning - the story is quite graphic about rescuers arriving on scene inside the crater after the blast. Please be sure to click on the video link provided in the story detailing the photographic journey of one Brazilian tourist who was there.

It was December 9 and a beautifully clear New Zealand day. At 2:11 PM, the volcano let loose. GNS Science is New Zealand's provider of Earth and geoscience information and hosts GeoNet. Here is a description of the White Island volcano from GeoNet. If you are going to visit New Zealand and are interested in geology, GeoNet is a fantastic resource for all things geologic.

The Australian Summer Leads to Extreme Coral Bleaching Event

This past Southern Hemisphere summer has led to an extreme coral bleaching event at Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef. You can read about the preliminary findings here. This is the 3rd bleaching event on the Reef in the last five years. From the graph above, it appears that most of the severe bleaching has occurred along the southern half of the 1,600 mile-long series of reefs. Coral reefs and bleaching events can be good indicators of warming climates (as if there is a need for additional indicators).

The Pale Blue Dot Revisited

On Valentine's Day, 1990 the Voyager space craft. some 3 billion miles from Earth, snapped a picture of our planet. NASA has updated the photo and the complete story is here.

Yep. As Carl Sagan wrote of this image: "That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”

The "here" is the tiny blue dot inside the sunbeam that runs up and down the photo.

Speed Record in Grand Canyon Remains Intact

A group of eight persons rowed through the Grand Canyon in just under 38 hours, missing the speed record by a few hours. My wife Helen hiked down to Phantom Ranch to see them pass Bright Angel Creek. Read about it here.