Marking 200 years since the ‘super’ eruption of Tambora
April 1, 2015
5-11th April 1815 Next week I’m fortunate to be attending the International Conference on Volcanoes, Climate and Society at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The purpose of the conference is to mark 200 years since the eruption of the Tambora volcano, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, between 5-11th April 1815. The eruption is one of …
Looking ahead to the solar eclipse (and back to the archives)
March 19, 2015
20th March 2015 Tomorrow morning, across much of the UK, we’ll have the rare opportunity to witness a solar eclipse. For around 7 minutes (around 9:30am in the Nottingham area), up to 98% of the sun will be obscured by the moon. If you’re in the Faroe Islands you might be lucky enough to witness …
Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (part 2).
February 10, 2015
Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (part 2). ‘Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ part 1 (https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/weatherextremes/2014/11/28/sources-in-focus-newspaper-reports-of-extreme-weather-in-the-western-isles-in-the-nineteenth-and-twentieth-centuries-part-1/) explored the impact of extreme weather on ferries and shipping. Following on …
Delving back into the past to look into the present and future
January 30, 2015
AHRC and LABEX – a new partnership A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to represent the Weather Extremes team at a Franco-British Research Workshop organised by our funders AHRC, and LABEX (Laboratory of Excellence), a similar funder in France. The title of the workshop was ‘Delving back into the past to look …
Cold weather records: reflections from the bus stop
January 19, 2015
As I was waiting for the campus hopper this morning my fingers were steadily growing numb. The texts and emails I sent from my mobile were even more laden with errors and typos than normal, as button pressing became increasingly challenging. It was most definitely cold. There is no snow on the ground here in …
Extreme weather events in focus: White Christmases
December 11, 2014
Following the first snowfall of the year on Sunday,and the arrival of a ‘weather bomb’ in northern parts of the UK , in my final blog of 2014 I thought I would explore some wintry weather of Decembers past. Data search The TEMPEST database is now up and running and we have been busily entering the …
Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in and around Stornoway and the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (part 1).
November 28, 2014
Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in and around Stornoway and the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (part 1). Since the project started in December 2013, blogs have highlighted several categories of historical sources which can provide evidence of past extreme weather events, for example, diaries and parish registers. In …
‘Foaming rivers of snow’ and lost sovereigns: sampling William Parsons’ diaries
November 18, 2014
In the previous blog post, Lucy highlighted the value of diaries in our extreme weather research and pointed to the richness of these sources, whether they were produced specifically as weather diaries or as more general records of everyday events and activities in which weather features. In both cases, compilation demanded quite a particular kind …
Sources in focus: Diaries
October 31, 2014
Knee-deep in diaries Many of the documents that we’ve been consulting in the archives over the last few months have been diaries, indeed Marie-Jeanne recently said that she was “knee-deep in diaries”, a feeling that I can empathise with! Some are meteorological registers – diaries specifically of the weather – but many are diaries that …
The Prediction Machine
October 18, 2014
Last week the Environment and Society research group in the School of Geography was treated to a seminar by artist and researcher Rachel Jacobs. Rachel mainly talked about her most recent commission that came from Radar Loughborough University Arts with support from the Geography Department at Loughborough University – ‘The Prediction Machine’. Rachel was one of …
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