Fleur Loveridge

The Zambezi river flows under a road bridge

Sunset on the Zambezi

Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria falls)

Applications open for a 3-year Post Doc position in Leeds (UK) on the #UKRI funded Still Waters project. We are looking for #hydrology #geomorphology modelling skills to embed surface hydrology into #malaria models with fieldwork in Zambia. Pls contact me for more details: tinyurl.com/3356rt44

Gateshead pioneers research into mine water heat technology Gateshead's Living Laboratory is providing

Good work going on with the Mining Remediation Authority around getting heat from old mines and into our buildings. Featuring our fibre optic cable interrogating equipment being put to good use.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Two cavers walking along a track on a snow covered moor, beneath clear blue skies.

Even if we ultimately went underground, it was so good to see the sunshine yesterday.

Underground sensors assess Aberdeen's geothermal energy potential The data will be used to build a 3D map of granite lying deep beneath the city.

Great to see this Aberdeen geothermal exploration make the news. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A square cut hypogenic walking sized cave passage with numerous stalagmites and small calcite straws. A muddy helmet-less caver sits in the centee admiring the formations, taking care not to damage or dirty them.

Will it ever stop raining?
At least our maze cave mapping project is an all weather activity. Here is some of the new 140m of cave explored and documented last weekend. What will this weekend hold i wonder?

The world, which sometimes seams a terrible place these days, is feeling a much better place with @norcrosscricket.bsky.social and Alex Hartley on my radio again.

That’s not cricket: How ‘creeping Hindutva’ stumped sportsmanship ahead of the T20 World Cup The reality of the sport is that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in local Indian politics can cause a typhoon in another country’s cricketing fortunes.

www.dawn.com/news/1970764...

I have a lot of sympathy for the PCB and Bangladesh. The BCCI has ever increasing power and political interference. Does that make the other boards innocent? No, but you have to recognise the power imbalance. As @elizabethammon.bsky.social says, the ICC needs to apply its own rules.

I am kind of with you on that tbh. Hugs.

A heavily scalloped underground stream passage, with a caver admiring a calcite formation in the distance

Small gours and causing steps in the stream passage, with a greenish pool beneath them

A high level passage above the streamway, with extensive calcite roof and wall formations, and a caver shining her light down a smaller oxbow part way up the wall.

There are a lot of horrible things happening in the world. I can't offer answers, or even cat pics. But I have been having a go at taking some cave pics while away at new year. First time for a while. Hopefully you will like them.

Bar chart showing annual

What are the key things in the Warm Homes Plan?

The headline is a big emphasis on electric technologies (sold, batteries, heat pumps), with less focus on insulation.

That will reduce bills - we think getting the full solar-battery-heat pump combo saves £1,000 on a typical yearly energy bill…

I have been on a literally and social media holiday. While away I appeared on the One Show (segment recorded before Christmas) talking about heat pumps. Its great that such a mainstream show is covering this important topic. Should be available on iPlayer for another couple of weeks. #PumpItUp

Listening to a discussion about AI in university education with Amol Rajan & Prof Duncan Iveston on Radio 4 Today. Too short to get into the nuance of course, but an observation that copilot can do a literate review for you very quickly perfectly illustrates one of my main concerns with AI…1/1

Healy

What a beautiful place for her to rest. Sending all our love.

📌 Gaping Gill is the highest unbroken underground waterfall in the UK

Fell Beck crashes 100m to the floor of the cavern before draining through to Ingleborough Cave. The main chamber measures 129m long, 31m high, and 25m wide.

📸Martyn Farr

#ChristmasCalendar #YorkshireDales

Almost a year since the Bridgewater Canal embankment failure. Canal embankments are the oldest of UK infrastructure, are deteriorating & at risk from climate change. Impounding water, they have high potential failure consequences. We more action to understand their condition and improve resilience.

Leeds is the largest city in Europe without some sort of rapid mass transit system.
And they build the Christmas market on the cycle routes making it harder for me to get to work for 6 weeks of the year.
Roll on the tram.

NEW RESEARCH: UK heat pumps can perform far better than many think.

Our analysis of HeatPumpMonitor.org data shows well-designed systems achieve ~40% higher efficiency than past trials (SCoP 3.86 vs 2.81), cutting bills (~£224/yr) and emissions.

Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Literally the most important story in UK politics today. A low discount rate unlocks public investment in a much bigger array of infrastructure projects, as it changes how Government accounts for the future benefits of them.

Using old coal mines to heat homes?

Gateshead is doing it.

Their mine-water project—the UK’s largest—draws 15°C water from boreholes, uses heat pumps to boost it to 80°C, and sends that heat through an underground network.

The system now warms 350+ homes and 23 buildings.

Leeds Students Involved in York’s Deep Geothermal Project Leeds geophysics students contributed to the University of York’s Deep Geothermal Project to support the UK’s growing geothermal research.

📢 ThreeLeeds students were involved in the University of York’s Deep Geothermal Project.

The geophysics undergraduates gained hands-on field-work experience installing seismic sensors and learning how seismic surveys operate.

👀 Learn more about their experience: tinyurl.com/4mtxrhx8

Inside a well-lit exhibition space, two people stand side by side wearing white virtual-reality headsets, experiencing a VR demonstration. A third person in the background, wearing a long coat, looks at items in a display case. To the right, a man in a jacket leans over a wooden table, interacting with a tablet. On the table are additional VR headsets and a large camera with a zoom lens. Behind them on the wall hang several large photos showing underground cave-exploration scenes.

“Underground worlds – caves of the Yorkshire Dales and Vietnam” is a new exhibition showcasing how Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park and the Yorkshire Dales boast some of the largest and longest cave systems 👇

https://www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/international-caving-exhibition-opens-in-hawes/

GeoGrid Hear from the GeoGrid project team as they discuss the learnings and insights from their Alpha Round 4 project. GeoGrid is exploring the use of Geothermal Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) to store renewable electricity as heat with Leeds University as a trial site

In case you missed it, Prof Fleur Loveridge @undertheground.bsky.social and Dr Emma Bramham presented at the GeoGrid Show & Tell event organised by project partner LCP Delta @lcp-delta.bsky.social at the end of September.

🎧 Listen to the talk: tinyurl.com/2vthca6h

Costs can be comparable to other low carbon options for retrofit, but can be higher more generally. Hence key to get policy right for SGL approach, especially where they can help with coordinated switching using a utility model in space constrained areas outside of heat network zones.

Schematic showing policy for individual heat pumps (boiler upgrade scheme or BUS, social housing decarbonisation fund, heat pump ready programme) and for heat networks (heat network zoning, green heat network fund). Heat and Buildings Strategy applies to both, but nothing specifically for shared ground loops.

SGL provide a good solution outside of heat network zones, but where housing is still relatively dense. But much current policy excludes SGL and focuses on individual heat pumps or heat networks. [Note - since this paper was written some parts of SGL scheme costs can now come under BUS]

SGL work really well when there is no space for individual heat pumps (e.g. flats, terraced houses). But you need shared infrastructure below ground, e.g. in a shared garden, beneath a street. Hence work best where there is a social landlord or a new development, to provide coordination + impetus.

A schematic showing terraced housing and a block of flats, each connected to a shared ground loop ground heat exchanger, with individual distributed heat pumps in each property.

We have a new (open access) paper on the opportunities (and challenges) for ground source heat pumps systems using shared ground loops (SGL).
doi.org/10.1016/j.rs...

Prof Fleur Loveridge @undertheground.bsky.social will present the University of Leeds Geothermal Campus project at the West Midlands Regional Group of the Geological Society of London.

📅 09 December 2025
⌛ 18:30 - 19:30
📍 Mott MacDonald offices, Birmingham & online

Register 🔗 bit.ly/4rynn4y

The SmartRes Project: Advancing Shallow Geothermal Systems in the UK : Geosolutions Leeds The UK has come a long way in decarbonising electricity. With the closure of the country’s last coal-fired power station, we’ve entered a new era of cleaner energy. Yet, one major challenge remains: h...

🌍 Shaping a Low-Carbon Future 🌍

Our colleagues, Dr Adam Booth @geophysics-adam.bsky.social and Prof Fleur Loveridge @undertheground.bsky.social, are helping unlock the potential of geothermal energy in UK cities through the SmartRes project.

More about the project👉 tinyurl.com/39bsbnww