Weather World Record Attempt

Part of the BBC School News Report event involves an attempt to break the world record for the largest interactive weather report... Here's Aaron's report:

Schools all across the U.K today are taking part in a world record attempt to create the largest interactive weather report. Schools from the Shetland Isles to schools on Jersey and even schools on St Helena are taking a temperature reading at approximately 9:15am and emailing the temperature to the BBC Weather Centre to gather the readings and to see whether we can break the record and get into the Guinness World Record Book. Every school's temperature reading will have to be seen by an independent witness for their reading to be counted and go towards the record attempt.

At our school we took the temperature and it was 3◦C. our reading was witnessed by Mr Hickton who is a member of the Amber Valley Rotary Club.

Aaron checking the temperature

Geo School News Report

A bunch of budding Year 8 and 9 geo-journalists will be taking part in the BBC's School News Report today...
Find out more on the BBC website, and watch this space for their stories.

Good luck Geo-News Report Team!!

What happened to global warming?

Lots of people have been asking in the past few days why it is so cold when people keep banging on about global warming... A nice little video clip here from the BBC, which emphasises the difference between weather and climate.

Philippine volcano fears....

I still remember Mr Munday, one of my A Level Geography teachers, telling us that whenever he taught natural hazards/plate tectonics, he could pretty much guarantee that there would be an earthquake or a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world, and I have certainly found that to be the case every time that I have taught hazards/tectonics.

The most recent news is that more than 20,000 people have had to evacuate their homes in the area around Mayon in the Philippines, following a series of ash explosions and lava flows.

More from the BBC here...

People Powered Maps...

Most of you will, by now, have seen the fantastic Worldmapper maps, put together by a team of geographers from Sheffield University. (If you haven't, you should go and have a look now... And even if you have, go and have another look, as there are now almost 700 maps available.)

However, Professor Danny Dorling has been busy producing a new set of cartograms showing population density for various different countries. This is the UK one, and you can find out more about the project and look at some of the other maps in this BBC article, or view the full set of maps on the Worldmapper website:

Indonesian earthquake and Samoan tsunami

Lots of you have come into lessons over the past couple of days talking about the tsunami that struck Samoa and American Samoa and the series of earthquakes around the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.

The events are still in the news, with international relief teams being flown in to help in the rescue and clean-up efforts.

The BBC has lots of information, images and video clips about both - with In Pictures series here for the tsunami and here for the earthquakes.

We picked up all the activity on our seismometer - I haven't managed to get screenshots of the seismographs yet, but when I do, I'll post them on the Swanwick Seismology blog here.

A new type of cloud?

Some fantastic images here, with some interesting ideas from the Cloud Appreciation Society about how clouds should be classified...

Honduras earthquake

Four people were killed and tsunami warnings were issued this morning when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Honduras.

More from the BBC, including some reader accounts, here.

The Man Who Cycled The World...

Those of you who enjoyed following Mark Beaumont's progress as he cycled the world will be pleased to hear that his book, The Man Who Cycled The World, is out now...

And... even more exciting is that Mark is about to embark on his next adventure - on 27th May, Mark will set off from Anchorage in Alaska - on his way to Ushuaia, 15000 miles away in southern Argentina.

The BBC will be filming Mark's journey for a documentary series, The Man Who Cycled The Americas, and you can follow Mark's progress here.

Editing to add a link to an interview with Mark for The Scotsman.

In the footsteps of Shackleton

In 1908, Ernest Shackleton and his team set off to explore the Antarctic "terra incognita"... Towards the end of last year, some of their descendants embarked on an expedition to retrace Shackleton's footsteps.

There is a nice arcticle and video clips from the BBC here and their expedition is the subject of this evening's Timewatch at 8.40pm on BBC2.

Saudi Sandstorm

An excellent (though rather scary) set of images from the BBC of "one of the most powerful sandstorms in decades" which hit Riyadh - the Saudi Arabian capital - on Monday.

Spot the difference!

Both Sydney... But one's in Australia and one's in Canada...

And as this article from the BBC illustrates, it's all too easy end up in the wrong place when you're booking your holidays...

Geography Matters!! ;-)

And more snow...

Actually, not more snow in our neck of the woods, just very cold so that the snow we had yesterday and last night was nicely frozen and dangerous... It looked very pretty though:


Lots and lots of stories, videos, photos, etc. on the BBC website, and a nice set of photos by Twitter users on Flickr (including mine from Smalley Dam yesterday)...

I particularly like this though...

Explore: Patagonia to the Pampas

Those of you who liked Tropic of Capricorn (and/or Simon Reeve!) will be pleased to know that he is back this evening with a new series - Explore... Detail about the first programme is here:

Simon Reeve leads a team of presenters on a journey through the spectacular landscapes of Argentina, from the vast ice fields of Patagonia to the wide-open plains of the pampas.

In the south, a group of indigenous people are locked in a historic dispute with the area's biggest landowners, Italian clothing giants Benetton; in Buenos Aires, the children of the disappeared are seeking to find out the truth of what happened to their parents at the hands of Argentina's generals; and in the pampas we meet one of the last true gauchos, whose way of life is being destroyed by an argricultural revolution.

On the way, we take in one of the greatest matches in world football, visit a penguin colony on the edge, and meet a bishop with a rather unorthodox interest in Evita.

BBC2, 9.00pm

Changing Derbyshire

Nice resource from the BBC looking at how Derby is changing with developments such as Westfield and Derby Cityscape... Lots of photos, artists' impressions of future developments, and some interesting discussions about the impact that all this will have on the city.

Artistic Clues to Coastal Change

I've just been reading an interesting article from the BBC about the use of 19th Century paintings to aid the study of coastal erosion...

Many Victorian paintings such as the one above ('Bonchurch, Isle of Wight' by Thomas Leeson Rowbotham, 1863) show coastal scenery, geological features and coastal defences in lots of detail, and Dr Robert McInnes, a retired coastal engineer, has devised a system for using these paintings to assess change.

The full article from the BBC is here.

Earthquake in Pakistan

It seems that whenever we are studying tectonics, there is an earthquake or a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world. Unfortunately, this time is no exception...

An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter Scale struck 35 miles from Quetta in the Balochistan province of Pakistan this morning at 4am. So far, the death toll is 160, but this is expected to rise.

The USGS has details here including a Google Map showing the location, and you can find out more from the BBC where there is a set of eyewitness accounts, an In Pictures series, and some video footage.

More on The Box...

You can join the Facebook group... check out Follow The Container, and see photos of the Box in this Flickr pool...

The Box

Various geobloggers have been writing about this over the past week or so...

Click on the picture to find out more about the project, watch some video clips, track The Box, and even make your own model of it!

The Tinsley Towers are no more...

One of the many videos already on YouTube of the demolition of the towers which took place at 3am today... BBC story here...



Very sad...