Pete Rowley

Maybe volcanic lightning?

Picture of two stone counters in a food stall excavated at Pompeii

Are we sure it's not a Roman fast food stall?
www.npr.org/2020/12/27/9...

Some pyritised ammonites from Charmouth last weekend

a man in a top hat stands next to a child and says " goggles on please " ALT: a man in a top hat stands next to a child and says " goggles on please "

One of the fluoro strips in my office has been going for the last month. Estates came in and replaced it today but they only have LED versions now. My office has gone from flickering Stasi-like interrogation room to making me wonder if I'm Mike TV

Assessing the impacts of ocean-entering lahars: A globally-important but poorly-understood process at University of Southampton on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Assessing the impacts of ocean-entering lahars: A globally-important but poorly-understood process at University of Southampton, listed on FindAPhD.com

Come do an exciting new PhD project with fieldwork in the Caribbean and S Pacific working on understanding what happens when powerful lahars enter the ocean - with me, @isobelyeo.bsky.social at @noc.ac.uk

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

a man in a suit says shall i file it in front of a pile of boxes ALT: a man in a suit says shall i file it in front of a pile of boxes

Sorry, I missed that, I was too busy opened a notebook randomly at a blank page to make notes. Am I making you twitch yet?

Pile of notebooks as evidence

I just have a lot of notebooks and tend to just grab the nearest. This one is a big A4 one which is generally too much of a nuisance to lug about :D

Burn GIF ALT: Burn GIF

Office hours just now:
Student: "will this notebook be OK? I'm concerned that ring bindings might not be hardy enough"
Me: "This ringbound notebook is fine. I've been using it since..." *checks first page* ".... 2006"
Student: That was the year I was born.

That's an awesome model.

If someone's so concerned about their Englishness and the fact it goes back 1000 years, they should probably reflect that if that is how they measure it, and it only goes back 1000 years, they're probably French.

Cities near volcanoes: which cities are most exposed to volcanic hazards? Abstract. Cities near volcanoes expose dense concentrations of people, buildings, and infrastructure to volcanic hazards. Identifying cities globally that are exposed to volcanic hazards helps guide l...

This paper by Meredith et al. (2025) examines global city exposure to volcanic hazards, using metrics such as population and distance to GVP Holocene volcanoes to quantify and rank cities at risk. This data has also been visualised through a web app. nhess.copernicus.org/articles/25/...

Looking for recommendations!

I went an online storage for our research group and their data. So we can archive video data, image data etc., from a long line of projects. Files downloadable, but secure/backed up. Where people can deposit easily for our own purposes (made open by other means).

Text from Return to the Volcano: "An unusual story circulated after the war that Allied aircraft attacking Rabaul had dropped bombs into the craters of Tavurvur volcano to trigger an eruption that, hopefully, would be sufficiently large to dislodge the Japanese from their military base. So unusual was the story that many people believed it was probably untrue—a rumour, a myth, a good yarn. But the volcano bombing did take place. Takashi Kizawa told one of us (R.W.J.) of seeing bombers avoiding other targets and circling towards Tavurvur where they released bombs into the craters. The bombing had no effect, and Japanese soldiers considered the event to be a great joke. Kizawa, however, took a different view: that the enemy was inventive and determined enough at least to attempt a new technique. It helped him confirm his view that Japan would lose the war. Norm Fisher also told R.W.J. that he was consulted officially by the Royal Australian Air Force during the war about the use of bombing in triggering an eruption at Rabaul. He dismissed the suggestion outright, but after the war was amused to discover bomb craters within the volcanic craters of Tavurvur."

Reports in Return to Volcano Town indicate that bombing may have been attempted at Tarvuvur too - in this case to see if they could cause an eruption.

Selfie of a woman stood in front of a conference poster

We tried compiling a global database of deposit descriptions of pyroclastic density current deposits. The aim was to help us do big data analysis, look for common trends, and to support modelling.

We got some interesting results but also, found some really significant issues and gaps #IAVCEI2025

Huh, that's impressive. I would have expected it to be pretty sheltered from that where you are

My challenge for this weekend is to work out the delay on the BBC Glastonbury coverage based on what I can hear in the back garden and the speed of sound.

Cat asleep on table with head hanging off the edge

If cats are liquid this must be some kind of pitch-drop experiment

Diane Morgan's episodee of Who Do You think You are is a wonderful genre crossover / 4th wall experience.

Delighted that this paper has hit p[ublication. Nemi did a truly amazing job on all of this, and together with 3 other papers (1 published 2023, the others winging their way to print soon) has really moved forward our understanding of moisture in pyroclastic sediments.

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

From the clevercomebacks community on Reddit: Rage Against Something Explore this post and more from the clevercomebacks community

Reminds me of this www.reddit.com/r/clevercome...

Great to see this research covered by the BBC - looking forward to seeing what we discover from all the data that were collected last month! Nice work by @isobelyeo.bsky.social on radio and TV interviews!

Driving across the Mendips today made me very aware of these people

Top marks for identifying a single hill without further context though!

Uig! Dunes by the Ardroil campsite

Uig, Lewis. Western isles of Scotland

Suaineabhal