Christian's Blog

  The coastal hazards in the UK are very severe and shallow on many different coasts around the Isles. The east coast of the UK is the hardest hit, with the erosion rate the fastest in Yorkshire and the Humber, where 56 percent of the coastline is at risk. The coastal erosion in those eastern coastlines is hit all day long by large ocean waves and high wind speeds gusting. Another part of the UK near England is also experiencing high-risk erosion because " around a third of the coast in the south of England is being actively eroded — threatening such areas as Norfolk, Suffolk, and East/West Sussex."   Britain's coastlines have been dramatically receding as an effect of Climate Change. There is evidence of this in a 2020 article from the UK's Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership "found that 3700km of UK coastline is experiencing greater than 10cm of erosion per year." The coastlines are eroding away consistently more than in other ar...

The UK and Primarily England do not receive much extreme weather since the land is located so far north of where heat waves, sandstorms, and tornadoes usually occur. The most common extreme weather condition consists of heavy rainfall, freezing cold temperatures with strong winds, and occasionally heavy snow. Shockingly after some research, I have found the UK does experience droughts and extreme heat. In fact, the UK and areas surrounding England have some hotter temperatures in the last decade. The July 2019 heatwave recorded a record high 38.7 degrees Celsius (approx. 101.6 degrees Fahrenheit). It continued to heat up as it eventually reached 39.4 degrees Celsius (approx. 103 degrees Fahrenheit) only a couple of days later. The weather was oddly hotter than usual, so the  Cambridge University Botanic Gardens studied why the temperature rose. They discovered that "a n extreme pattern in the jet stream caused the heatwave" The jet stream supposedly separates hot air in the s...

Coastal areas of England encounter some mass movements, especially since it rains quite frequently near the shore. There is not much history of mass movements occurring in the UK because the soil is healthier because of a combination of mass amounts of rain and sunlight that it receives yearly. There are very few mass movements that have occurred along the England shore. Some background information about the shorelines of England and why the mass movements don't occur as much is because "t he scree fragments move downhill under gravity, with new pebbles and boulders being added each year... the slopes extend out beneath the lake (England’s deepest), which was itself formed by glacial erosion during the Ice Ages that ended about 10,000 years ago." The mass movements do not occur much anymore like it used to thousands of years ago because the slops extend under England's deepest lake which is rock solid. Within that setting of the lake "t he rocks here are volcanic...

  The countries that lie within the UK and especially the territory of England do not experience any volcanic activity. Volcanic activity within the UK is so rare that "it has been around 60 million years since there was an active volcano in the UK". Though, back 60 million years ago, when volcanoes were erupting actively, "r emnants of these explosive landforms can be found throughout the countryside. From Snowdon and Ben Nevis to the Borrowdale hills," some of where Britain's most impressive extinct volcanoes are located today. One of the most impressive volcanoes that erupted approximately 65 million years ago is in the Cullin Hills, Isle of Skye. Researchers describe it as the " most dramatic mountains in the United Kingdom. If they look fearsome now, imagine what they must have been like at the height of their lava-spewing life in the early Paleogene era". If you did not know, the UK has many extinct volcanoes, primarily due to the UK be...

England is located in the Northwestern section of Europe, far from plate boundaries causing only minor earthquakes every once in a blue moon since there are no active faults. The geology of England and primarily the UK overall is so old that it has "hundreds of millions of years across much of the west of mainland Britain – and it is riddled with ancient fault lines that were once very active but are now virtually extinct." The last earthquake to occur in England had a most severe recent earthquake, of "5.2 magnitude, struck Market Rasen in Lincolnshire in 2008 and was felt as far away as Newcastle and London." It looks like London hasn't had an enormous earthquake hit in a while (over a decade). Since earthquakes are not expected within England's area due to a lack of active tectonics and plates, the seismicity is shallow (shown below). The picture below illustrates the empty amount of seismic activity throughout the entirety of England/UK.  Sources: Univer...

  England is located primarily on the Eurasian Plate. England/UK are not technically located on any one plate margin, so they are not active tectonically. That does not mean it has not been active before; according to The Geological Society that " a series of tectonic events has resulted in the current location and structure of the UK - in the last 700 million years, we have gradually drifted north from near the South Pole!". The current location of England/UK is more south of the North Pole than originally in years past. The closest plate boundary to the UK is a Divergent Plate Boundary on the Mid - Atlantic Ridge. It is located in the middle of the Mid - Atlantic Ridge, so it is distant from where earthquakes can cause tsunamis. The U.K. and primarily England have minimal earthquakes according to a U.K. news website Express " on average the earthquakes in the UK range from magnitude-0.7 to magnitude-2.0." Overall, England and the other sections of the U.K. are...