The Association for Geographic Information (AGI) and the Government Geography Profession (GGP) have agreed to work together to combine their experience, expertise and outreach to further the impact of geospatial data and technology within the public sector. By working together, they will help grow the geospatial community, and will build on recent activities such as the AGI’s Skills Roundtable. “The UK is at the forefront of geospatial. Now more than ever, geographers are combining increasing quantities of geospatial information with advances in technology, such as AI and ML, to drive new insi ..read more

The WMO State of the Global Climate report 2022 focuses on key climate indicators – greenhouse gases, temperatures, sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification, sea ice and glaciers. It also highlights the impacts of climate change and extreme weather. Drought, floods and heatwaves affect large parts of the world and the costs are rising Global mean temperatures for the past 8 years have been the highest on record Sea level and ocean heat are at record levels – and this trend will continue for many centuries Antarctic sea ice falls to lowest extent on record Europe shatters records for glaci ..read more

  On February 6, around 4:15 a.m. local time, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck south central Turkey near the Turkey/Syria border. Just 11 minutes later, it was followed by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock. The largest aftershock at the time of writing was a M7.5 aftershock which struck 95 km (~60 miles) to the north. USGS observations and analyses indicate all these events are occurring within the East Anatolian fault system. Though an earthquake of this magnitude is rare anywhere in the world, this type of event is generally expected on long, plate-boundary strike-slip faults ..read more

Massive earthquakes don’t just move the ground — they make speed-of-light adjustments to Earth’s gravitational field. Now, researchers have trained computers to identify these tiny gravitational signals, demonstrating how the signals can be used to mark the location and size of a strong quake almost instantaneously. It’s a first step to creating a very early warning system for the planet’s most powerful quakes, scientists report May 11 in Nature. Such a system could help solve a thorny problem in seismology: how to quickly pin down the true magnitude of a massive quake immediately after it ha ..read more

  Earth is far from a solid mass of rock. The outer layer of our planet – known as the lithosphere – is made up of more than 20 tectonic plates; as these gargantuan slates glide about the face of the planet, we get the movement of continents, and interaction at the boundaries, not least of which is the rise and fall of entire mountain ranges and oceanic trenches. Yet there's some debate over what causes these giant slabs of rock to move around in the first place. Amongst the many hypotheses put forward over the centuries, convection currents generated by the planet's hot core h ..read more

  New research provides further evidence that rocks representing up to a billion years of geological time were carved away by ancient glaciers during the planet's "Snowball Earth" period, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research presents the latest findings in a debate over what caused the Earth's "Great Unconformity"—a time gap in the geological record associated with the erosion of rock up to 3 miles thick in areas across the globe. "The fact that so many places are missing the sedimentary rocks from this time period has been one o ..read more

  It is worth repeating that scientists know more about Mars, Venus, and the dark side of the moon than they know of Earth’s ocean depths. To date, less than 20 percent of the ocean floor has been mapped—13 percent in just the past four years. But scientists would like to map it all by 2030. It’s an essential undertaking, but it’s going to take dedicated effort, public support, and government funding. Such a project can be accomplished only through dedicated global cooperation. The payoff stands to be tremendous—for everything from ship navigation to climate modeling. A clear view of the ..read more

An underwater volcano off Tonga erupted on Saturday, triggering tsunami warnings and evacuation orders in Japan and causing large waves in several South Pacific islands, where footage on social media showed waves crashing into coastal homes. Japan's meteorological agency issued tsunami warnings in the early hours on Sunday and said waves as high as three metres (9.84 feet) were expected in the Amami islands in the south. Waves of more than a metre were recorded there earlier.   Public broadcaster NHK said no damage or casualties had been reported, interrupting its regular programming to ..read more

  Mount Semeru, the tallest and most active volcano on the Indonesian island of Java, has routinely spit up small, mostly harmless plumes of ash and gas for years. The circumstances changed on December 4, 2021. Following a partial collapse of the summit lava dome early in December, sensors began to detect elevated seismic activity, according to the Volcanological Survey of Indonesia (PVMBG). After more of Semeru’s lava dome gave way, billowing fronts of superheated ash, tephra, soil, and other debris raced down several channels on the mountain’s southeastern flank. Pyroclastic ..read more

When humans pump large volumes of fluid into the ground, they can set off potentially damaging earthquakes, depending on the underlying geology. This has been the case in certain oil- and gas-producing regions, where wastewater, often mixed with oil, is disposed of by injecting it back into the ground—a process that has triggered sizable seismic events in recent years. Now MIT researchers, working with an interdisciplinary team of scientists from industry and academia, have developed a method to manage such human-induced seismicity, and have demonstrated that the technique successfully reduce ..read more