Iota, this is the name of the last category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. Iota is a non-name because normally hurricanes are named by NOAA starting from A to Z but when the alphabet is over, they are just identified from a letter of the Greek alphabet. Iota is a special cyclone not just because its name implies that the hurricane season is particularly rich in storms but also because of its e ...[Read More]
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Milutin Milankovitch’s first paper about Earth’s climate. Milankovitch argued that the amount of solar radiation Earth receives, and hence its climate, varies cyclically as its orbit changes due to gravitational tugs from the other planets. His climate theory fell into disrepute during the 1950’s but was rehabilitated in the 1970’s. Today, many peopl ...[Read More]
Scientists struggle to get ice samples from the depths of glaciers where fundamental pieces of information about the climate of Earth are stored. But in many places around the periphery of the Greenland Ice Sheet, you don’t need to drill a deep ice core to obtain ancient ice, you can simply walk across the ice sheet’s margin and look at the layered ice surface. There you can read the ice as though ...[Read More]
It is the smallest planet of the Solar System, the closest to the Sun and the quickest at orbiting around it, the one with the least inclined and most elongated orbit, the only one where a day lasts two-thirds of a full year, the one with the highest bulk density. Mercury is a planet of extremes, but rarely visited by space missions (compared to Mars, Venus and the Moon). This week Dr. Nicola Tosi ...[Read More]
This Mind Your Head blog post is a follow-up from Jean Holloway’s talk during the online short course on mental health that aired during the last EGU General Assembly, where she discussed overcoming anxiety. Anxiety is excessive worry or fear, and is a normal part of life, until it becomes frequent or debilitating. This post is written by someone with lived experience as an academic who struggled ...[Read More]
On October 30th, a strong earthquake with Mw 7.0 occurred in the Aegean Sea, between the main cities of Samos in Greece and Izmir in Turkey. The hypocenter location and focal mechanism suggest shallow depth (~10 km) and normal faulting on the E-W plane. This is in agreement with the tectonic setting where an N-S extension is dominant. Moreover, the rupture propagates near the Menderes Graben in We ...[Read More]
Back in August, I attended Oceanhackweek 2020. As an oceanographer by trade and free software nerd by heart, I loved the idea of an event that combined the two. I looked forward to learning from other oceanographers and coders, and perhaps giving something back to the free software community. What is a hackweek/hackathon? If you have yet to dip your toes in the wonderful world of free software, th ...[Read More]
When I graduated in the 80’s, a job in oil and gas was seen as a glamorous and exciting career for a geoscientist. Even some dramatic falls in the oil price could not dent the optimism within the industry, and oil cities like Calgary thrived. However, life for geologists working in our city has changed dramatically over the last few years. A peak oil price of around $106 per barrel in June 2014 wa ...[Read More]
Soils do a lot! From supporting food production and filtering water, to storing carbon, cycling nutrients, and hosting organisms, soils are fundamental for our day-to-day lives. But take a look around you. If you’re like me – sitting in an office at the moment – your feet rest upon a carpeted floor, you’re surrounded by four walls, and the only view out of the window is that of a ribbon of tarmac ...[Read More]
This image shows bottomset beds from the Kerinitis Gilbert-type delta. The Pleistocene delta uplifts along the active southern margin of the Corinth rift in Greece. A bottomset bed is one where layers of sedimentary material lying along the bottom of a body of water near the point of entry of a stream are subsequently covered by foreset and topset beds in the formation of a delta. Thus in this ima ...[Read More]
