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Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 Profile picture
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26 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Honoured to once again appear on SciShortform’s roundup of the best un-lengthy science journalist of the past half year! Thrilled that, this time, I have two Top Picks! Thanks muchly to @CatalyticRxn et al.
The first, a Top Pick for a Single Study Deep-Dive, was this one for @nytimes: nytimes.com/2021/01/23/sci…
The second Top Pick, for Essays, was this one, also for the @nytimes: nytimes.com/2021/05/04/sci…
It’s always fun to be in such remarkable company—the other writers on that list are truly phenomenal writers.

And thanks (as ever) to my editor @michaelroston, who green lit both pieces and used his alchemy to ensure they sounded mellifluous when read aloud.

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More from @SquigglyVolcano

Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 Profile picture
27 Oct
In 1935, the US military dropped 3.6 tons of explosives on Mauna Loa, the largest volcano on Earth. And in 1992, engineers blew a hole in Mount Etna with 7.7 tons of dynamite.

Their aim: to divert the flow of deadly lava.

Did it work?

Me, for @NatGeo nationalgeographic.com/science/articl…
First off, this came about thanks to a little side note in my upcoming book, SUPER VOLCANOES—which, by the way, has got some lovely reviews and is out in the US next week! Preorders mean a lot, so if you fancy a copy, click here: amazon.com/Super-Volcanoe…
I've told the abridged version of the Hawaiian tale before, but it was fun to expand on it and dive into other attempts to divert lava flows with explosives.

Turns out that lava very often doesn't care how much you try to blow it up. It'll just keep on flowing.
Read 28 tweets
Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 Profile picture
19 Sep
Okay—an eruption has begun at La Palma, the most northwesterly island in the Canary Island archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. It was announced (somewhat amusingly) in All Caps by @involcan just moments ago.

So: should we be worried? A thread, by me.

La Palma, an island not far off the shoes of Morocco, is administered by Spain. It's also one made of volcanoes—two large ones, specifically, an older northern one and a younger southern one. The younger one, Cumbre Vieja (CV), is known to be very active. volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn…
CV is about 125,000 years old. That's young for volcanoes. This elongated volcano erupts in a variety of ways, but often this involves fissures opening up in the ground and lava spilling and fountaining out, ~like the flank eruption on Kīllauea in 2018. nytimes.com/2018/12/12/sci…
Read 34 tweets
Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 Profile picture
5 Jul
Okay, I've resisted long enough: it looks certain that that big explosion in the Caspian Sea wasn't a ruptured oil or gas pipeline or a rig fire, but the paroxysmal eruption of a mud volcano.

What is a mud volcano, I hear you ask? Let me help out.

THREAD TIME! *klaxon noises*
First, let me say that this thread partly aims to amplify this excellent detective story by @CriticalStress_, while being informed by others, including @Chmee2. But I hope I can provide some more info too for those coming at this afresh.
And I'm hoping to write this up as an article, but July 5th isn't the best time to get in touch with my mostly American editors! So we'll see.

Okay. Let's dive in!
Read 22 tweets
Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 Profile picture
27 May
So...the eruption of Nyiragongo on Saturday may have been short-lived, but as the heightened seismic activity in the region and the evacuation order for part of the city of Goma makes clear, something's still happening. But what?

A short thread... france24.com/en/africa/2021…
First off: it's important to remember that I'm a science journalist. I trained as a volcanologist, but my job is to report on things like volcanic activity by talking to scientists and write up stories based on that. I'm one step removed from the real-time events. 2/x
My @NatGeo story on the short-lived but nevertheless destructive and deadly eruption of Nyiragongo this past weekend can be read here. It also explains why the volcano is so dangerous, and why it came as a surprise even as it was being monitored. 3/x nationalgeographic.com/science/articl…
Read 24 tweets
Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 Profile picture
24 May
NEW: This weekend's eruption could have been worse, but it doesn't change the fact that Nyiragongo remains one of Africa's most dangerous volcanoes—partly because of its exotic lava, partly because of complex sociological factors.

Me for @NatGeo + thread! nationalgeographic.com/science/articl…
The oddly small eruption this weekend didn't reach the populous city of Goma, in the DRC. But it hit 17 villages, cut off water and electricity supplies, took out a school and destroyed hundreds of homes. 15 people have been confirmed dead at the time of writing.

1/x
This also happened, lest we forget, during a pandemic. Thousands fled across the border to Rwanda, and the majority of those deaths happened during an evacuation-based traffic accident. Things were pretty chaotic.

2/x
Read 16 tweets
Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 Profile picture
22 May
Nyiragongo is no joke. It’s arguably one of the most dangerous volcanoes on the entire continent, and a nightmare for those in the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda.

A brief thread... 1/x
Nyiragongo is a mountainous volcano born of the East African Rift, the expanse of land in the region that’s slowly being pulled apart and will, perhaps, one day (20 million years for now) produce the planet’s youngest ocean. That’s super cool, eh?

2/x
This rifting also means that you get some highly active and very diverse volcanoes in the region, often with strange magma compositions. That alone makes eruption forecasting quite difficult, but many of the volcanoes in the region are also not yet sufficiently monitored.

3/x
Read 17 tweets

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