Into the underworld: the mountains beneath our feet
14 January 2025Sanne Cottaar is Professor of Global Seismology in Earth Sciences. She wants to understand Earth’s inner structure: how it shaped the surface and allowed life to form.
2023 was the hottest summer in two thousand years
14 May 2024Researchers have found that 2023 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in the past two thousand years, almost four degrees warmer than the coldest summer during the same period.
Effect of volcanic eruptions significantly underestimated in climate projections
23 June 2023Researchers have found that the cooling effect that volcanic eruptions have on Earth's surface temperature is likely underestimated by a factor of two, and potentially as much as a factor of four, in standard climate projections.
Medieval monks accidentally recorded some of history’s biggest volcanic eruptions
05 April 2023By observing the night sky, medieval monks unwittingly recorded some of history’s largest volcanic eruptions, according to a new analysis of 12th and 13th century European and Middle Eastern chronicles.
Lava from 2021 Icelandic eruption gives rare view of deep churnings beneath volcano
16 September 2022After centuries without volcanic activity, Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula sprang to life in 2021 when lava erupted from the Fagradalsfjall volcano. New research involving the University of Cambridge helps us see what is going on deep beneath the volcano by reading the chemistry of lavas and volcanic gases almost as they were erupted.
Risk of volcano catastrophe ‘a roll of the dice’, say experts
17 August 2022While funding is pumped into preventing low-probability scenarios such as asteroid collision, the far more likely threat of a large volcanic eruption is close to ignored – despite much that could be done to reduce the risks, say researchers.
Scientists 'see' puzzling features deep in Earth’s interior
19 May 2022New research led by the University of Cambridge is the first to obtain a detailed 'image' of an unusual pocket of rock at the boundary layer with Earth’s core, some three thousand kilometres beneath the surface.
Earliest human remains in eastern Africa dated to more than 230,000 years ago
12 January 2022The age of the oldest fossils in eastern Africa widely recognised as representing our species, Homo sapiens, has long been uncertain. Now, dating of a massive volcanic eruption in Ethiopia reveals they are much older than previously thought.
Climate change will transform cooling effects of volcanic eruptions, study suggests
12 August 2021Researchers have shown that human-caused climate change will have important consequences for how volcanic gases interact with the atmosphere.
Minor volcanic eruptions could ‘cascade’ into global catastrophe, experts warn
06 August 2021Researchers call for a shift in focus away from risks of 'super-volcanic' eruptions and towards likelier scenarios of smaller eruptions in key global 'pinch points' creating devastating domino effects.
