2020 was a brilliant year for our blogging network here at EGU. Across the EGU’s official blog, GeoLog, as well as the network and division blogs there were so many interesting, educational and just downright entertaining posts this year it was hard to get the blog editors to choose their favourites! Nevertheless at the beginning of January, to …[Read More]
120 years ago in 1901, Swedish meteorologist Nils Ekholm used the term ‘greenhouse’ to describe the heating effect that a planet’s atmosphere has on the surface temperature of the planet, the first time that this now much-used and abused metaphor was published. He wrote: “The atmosphere plays a very important part of a double character …[Read More]
In the midst of summer when the sun does not set at high latitudes one can sometimes catch a glimpse of the mesosphere shortly after sunset or before sunrise. These thin veils, known as noctilucent clouds, are the highest known cloud-like structures forming at about 80km above the surface. At this height, they are still …[Read More]
Cyclone Idai, which was labelled by the UN as possibly the worst climate calamity to ever hit the Southern Hemisphere, pounded Beira, Mozambique, in March 2019. The European Space Agency images revealed that a huge new inland ´lake´ measuring about 80 miles by 15 miles, an area the size of the European state of Luxembourg, …[Read More]
The indigenous name of the 3405 meter high Fitz Roy mountain in Patagonia, on the border between Argentina and Chile, is frequently translated as “smoking mountain”. This photo may visually explain an origin of this name. On the day the photo was taken, vortices downwind of the peak drew warmer, humid air from below, forming …[Read More]
The image captures an atmospheric extreme event, a so-called sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) that occurred on Feb. 12, 2018. It is visualized through potential vorticity above the North Pole at the 10hPa level (~30km) above the Earth’s surface and consists of a split of the winter polar vortex into two separate vortices that interact with …[Read More]
When it is dark over Ny Ålesund, Svalbard, a bright green laser beam can be seen quite often, shooting from the AWIPEV Arctic Research Base observatory towards the sky. This beam belongs to “KARLi” the Koldewey Aerosol Raman Lidar, run by the Alfred Wegener Institute for more than 25 years, which contributes to long-term, atmospheric …[Read More]
In October 2015 a series of massive thunderstorms rolled across the Eastern Mediterranean. In the hours and days that followed many people living along the Israeli coast had to go to their nearest medical centre because they were experiencing respiratory problems, which appeared very similar to asthma. But what could have caused these breathing problems? …[Read More]
Now #shareEGU20 has come to an end, division officers have changed and this includes the Early Career Scientists (ECS) Representatives. Time to meet them! Union-level and Deputy Union-level ECS Representatives Anouk Beniest and Anita Di Chiara Display "Anouk and Anita" from YouTube Click here to display content from YouTube. Learn more in YouTube’s privacy …[Read More]
During my PhD I was working at the German Neumayer III station in Antarctica for my research on polar atmospheric chemistry. Since my instrument was set up on an observatory south of the main station, every day I would walk past a Scott pyramid tent to go and do my research. One day, in the …[Read More]
