Tornadoes form when warm, humid air collides with cold, dry air. The denser cold air is pushed over the warm air, usually producing thunderstorms. The warm air rises through the colder air, causing an updraft. The updraft will begin to rotate if winds vary sharply in speed or direction1
The Earth rumbles and a hiss of steam issues from the top of Mt Ruapehu. Are these two events related? Is the earthquake caused by the volcano? Or is the steam caused by the earthquake?
Tectonic plates
When Alfred Wegener first proposed the idea of continental drift (the precursor idea to plate tectonic theory), it didn’t quite explain the full story. While he correctly showed that Africa and South America fitted together, his model wasn’t able to explain the violent forces that occur around the Earth’scrust.
<span>These are known as tephra, pyroclats or more generally as volcanic bombs.</span>
Convection currents occur in the MANTLE. The mantle is the second layer of the earth after the crust. The mantle is approximately 2900 km thick. Convection currents are triggered or fueled by the heat from the Earth's core.
The part of the mantle closest to the core gets heated. It then becomes less dense than the layers above so it rises. When this rising plume interacts with the crust it cools and becomes more dense than the layers below and so it sinks and this circular motion continues to form convection currents.
