Climate Change Introduction

Via Paul Hunt

UK in 21st Century

SENECA Learning - OCR B Geography now available

This is good news for Year 11, who may find this as a useful learning resource, and also for Year 10, who can use it to review topics which we have already covered, and help refresh knowledge on the key knowledge that is contained in each topic. Remember that the case studies here will not necessarily be the ones that we are using, taken from our (most excellent) textbook and revision guide.

You may be best to create a free account and login so that your progress through the unit can be tracked.

We like this idea... Try it out Y10s

Impressive time lapse costal landforms from year 10 today 👍 #geography @Preston_School pic.twitter.com/eEstv0hz4Y

— Andrew (@mrcullingford06) April 19, 2018

Pyroclastic Flows - Volcanic Impacts

Well worth watching by Year 10, with respect to the Hazard Risk equation...

VOLFILM Pyroclastic Flow Impacts (English) from VolFilm on Vimeo.
and here is what they are....

VOLFILM Pyroclastic Flow Hazard (English) from VolFilm on Vimeo

Click the VOLFilm link to see 2 more films on lahars.

Expedition Volcano - one to watch...

Check out BBC2 at 9 o' clock tonight (after Blue Planet II has finished) for the first episode in a series based around the Nyiragongo volcano 

Details from BBC iPlayer website

In the heart of Africa, deep in the Congo, is one of the most spectacular volcanoes on Earth - Nyiragongo. This spectacular volcano contains a massive boiling cauldron of molten rock - the world's largest continually active lava lake. But it is also one of the most dangerous volcanoes on the planet. It has erupted twice in the last 50 years, most recently in 2002, wreaking havoc and destruction on the people who live in the nearby city of Goma. This region is also dangerous for another reason - it has been racked by war and humanitarian crises for most of the last 30 years, so Nyiragongo is one of the least studied active volcanoes on Earth.

But now, an international and local team of scientists are mounting a major expedition to study the volcano. They are attempting to discover the warning signs that it is building towards a new eruption, so they can alert the people of Goma before it erupts again. The team will take around four tonnes of climbing equipment, scientific instruments and supplies up to the crater rim. Then a small team will descend into the crater itself - 350m down a potentially deadly rockface - to spend a week camping right next to the lava lake. The expedition is led by Belgian scientist Dr Benoit Smets, who is an expert on Nyiragongo. He is joined by British geologist Prof Chris Jackson. Together, they work with the rest of the team using gas-sampling equipment, thermal cameras and sound waves to try and predict when the volcano will next erupt.

But there is another side to this volcano. As well as the threat of eruption, it impacts life in Goma and the surrounding area in many surprising ways. Humanitarian doctor Xand van Tulleken investigates how Nyiragongo has transformed people's lives by looking at the hidden dangers - from deadly disease to suffocating gases. In charge of expedition logistics is former Royal Marine Aldo Kane. It is his job to get everyone in and out of the crater safely. But during the expedition, he will also risk his life to get the team as near to the lava lake as possible.

GCSE Blog - essential for Year 10

Year 10s - you need to visit this blog regularly...

New blog for OCR 'B' Geography - useful for Year 10s

A new blog written by Mr. Parkinson, to support Year 10s (and 11s at revision time) with GCSE studies.
As you will know, Mr. Parkinson wrote sections of the 2 OCR books for the 9-1 OCR specs, and is going to be teaching Year 10 group OCR 'B' GCSE Geography.

The blog will share the resources that are used to teach OCR Geography from September.

Flooding in the North of England - I hope you're following events...

Originally posted over on LivingGeography blog…


I never blog over the Christmas and New Year period…

Except for this blog post, which is unprecedented….
Except for that time when I blogged about the S.E Asian tsunami…. and that other time…

What does unprecedented mean?

It's been used quite a few times over the last few days to refer to the rainfall, and seems to be being used as some sort of 'excuse' for the extent of the flooding that has hit Cumbria, Carlisle, and then Leeds, Lancashire and West Yorkshire including Mytholmroyd, and the surrounding area, and now across into York, Selby and Tadcaster. Flood defences have been overwhelmed and a lot of buildings have been inundated, businesses are threatened, and people's homes and possessions have been ruined, in some cases several times, and for many for the first time in living memory. Many of these people didn't have sufficient insurance, and are going to have real trouble getting it now.

Over the last week or so, heavy rainfall has hit the NW and now further east, as several storms have passed through, with Frank due to arrive later today. The rainfall totals are far in excess of seasonal averages, with Shap and Capel Curig amongst places that are being reported as having very high rainfall totals.
My family all live in York, and my dad went into the city centre yesterday to check on the flooding, which has changed the city's mood completely - yesterday there was no internet or phones for some people, and shops were accepting cash only as card payments weren't possible. The city has been flooded before... is it the worst that it has ever been in the city? Is it really unprecedented? Certainly there are more houses and other buildings close to the river channels than ever, and many of these were seen in aerial photographs of the affected areas. There was also the collapse of an important bridge in Tadcaster, and many rivers in North Yorkshire had record levels of flow (or at least since their discharge was recorded)

The headline says it all. Tomorrow's @LeedsNews front page.... #flooding #Yorkshire #Leeds #NorthernPowerhouse pic.twitter.com/1eyNmPDQqd

— YorkshireEveningPost (@LeedsNews) December 27, 2015

Weather is making the news around the world too:
- a deadly swathe of tornadoes in the southern states of the USA
- record levels of water in the Mississippi, which is normally at low levels because the rivers further north are frozen
- huge snowdrifts in Texas...
- over 150 000 affected by flooding in S. America in Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay.
- 'record' warm temperatures in the Arctic
and many more...
- a record El Nino event...

This Guardian editorial provided a useful context… as did quite a few of the articles in yesterday's paper, and on the website, including an excellent article from the streets of York itself.

Guardian Editorial – 27^th December 2015

The peculiar destructiveness of modern floods arises from complex causes acting over long periods. They are not just a product of unprecedented rainfall, but of well-established patterns of land use and river management. All too often these have been greedy, arrogant, and short-termist: changing them will require co-ordinated efforts, maintained over decades. The way in which the floods have recurred over the past decade does not make for optimism

So is what is happening now truly unprecedented? Or is unprecedented starting to be the new 'normal'?

York is a medieval city which has several rivers running through it, and no doubt has flooded many times before, even worse than the previous 'worst ever floods' in 2000 probably. There have been several tweets which seem to show that that the rivers are really 'reclaiming' areas that used to be watercourses and pools in medieval times. This mirrors something that I used to talk about when I worked for the GA, following the flooding that hit Sheffield and Hull in 2007. "They're called floodplains because they flood" was a quote by Philip Eden on one of the first slides in the presentation, and in the paper yesterday (and today's Independent) it appears that around 10 000 homes a year are still built in flood plains. Indeed, George Monbiot has written about the inevitability of the flooding given the way that upland areas are managed. I also talked in my GA lectures about the changes to insurance coverage that took place.

A few other links I noticed:

• Geogabout blog post with some useful resource links, curated by David Drake
• A N-S divide in flood protection ?
• Gaia Vince writing in the Telegraph
• David Cameron visiting flood victims

The Guardian's editorial:

We will have to make difficult decisions on what can be saved and what must be sacrificed to rising waters, unreliable coastlines and dangerously high rivers. Not all property, not every house, but surely every person can be made safe in this new, warmer time. (That is more than can be said for poorer parts of the world.)

And finally, I've been curating a Pinterest board… no doubt there are some Flipboard magazines out there too...


Follow GeoBlogs's board UK Flooding incl. Dec 2015 on Pinterest.

Don't forget you can also now follow all the main EA river gauges on Twitter via GaugeMap website. These have been followed and tweeted endlessly.

I hope that the recovery continues to show the resilience of these communities, which have already been affected. I expect there to be a reappraisal of flood defences and land-use management, and of return periods, and also the longer-term impacts of almost £6 billion of losses.
Stay safe for the arrival of storm Frank, I hope that nothing unprecedented is about to happen….

Update

Lowest Atlantic pressure last 200 years 913mb Braer Storm 1993; #StormFrank >930mb low but not "unprecedented" pic.twitter.com/xbyejvOsLA

— RGS Weather (@RGSweather) December 30, 2015

Population stories in the news today

Plenty of population interest in the news today.
Firstly, the announcement from the Chinese news agency Xinhua that the government intends to end the One Child Policy, first introduced in 1980

This is partly due to economic reasons apparently, but also to try to rebalance the country's population. Currently around 30% of the population is over the age of 50. Many of these people may have only one child now to potentially support them in their old age.

A lot of case studies will now have to be re-written.

There was also a story about the UK's population.
There have been some ONS releases relating to the country's median age etc. and the latest forecasts of the UK's growth suggests that were heading for 70 million.

Plenty of interest for GCSE and 'A' level students.

There is also a new visualisation of migration trends here.

Public Radio International on the One Child Policy

The China One Child Policy is now 35 years old.
It was introduced to slow the rate of population growth in the country.

There is a brief piece here which is worth listening to in order to get an idea of the impacts of the policy on the population structure, and the wider Chinese economy in the future.

Five migrant stories from Greece

For Year 10 to watch as a contrast to the DVD case studies.

Syrian Crisis.... in a nutshell

Essential viewing for Year 9, 10, 12 and 13 in particular...

The first few minutes is particularly useful in identifying the underlying causes of the current migrant crisis involving Syrian asylum seekers.

Census Song

Via Rob Chambers