EGU Blogs

Natural Hazards

NH Medallists episode III – Claire Horwell and her interdisciplinary work on volcanic emission hazards for human health

Vale Cigala June 8, 2020

In today’s interview, we talk with Prof. Claire J. Horwell. Claire has been awarded the 2020 Plinius Medal for her outstanding interdisciplinary research on the respiratory health implications of inhaling volcanic emissions, and other particulates. my research focuses on protecting communities from exposures to potentially harmful airborne particulates Hi Claire, can you please briefly introduce ...[Read More]

NP

Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

Is planting trees a feasible large-scale solution to mitigate climate change?

Davide Faranda June 8, 2020

In the last few years it has become a common practice to compensate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by planting trees. This idea is simple and rooted on a very basic principle: trees get the energy of sunlight, and by photosynthesis they take water from the ground and CO2 from the air, releasing oxygen in the atmosphere. The CO2 is then stored in trees and surrounding soil. Tree planting efforts ar ...[Read More]

GeoLog

Public Engagement Grant Winner – Crabby’s Reef

Chris Skinner and Christina Roggatz June 5, 2020

Ocean acidification could be described as climate change’s evil twin, not that it needs one. The world’s oceans are partly absorbing the carbon dioxide we are pumping into the planet’s atmosphere, which then reacts with seawater and forms carbonic acid. This process decreases the pH of the oceans, making them more acidic. If you are a crab resident of the ocean, this is not good news. Norma ...[Read More]

CR

Cryospheric Sciences

Women of Cryo I: Dr Emma Smith

Emma Pearce June 5, 2020

Women make up 50.8% of the world’s population, yet fewer than 30% of the world’s researchers are women. Of this percentage, women of colour comprise around 5%, with less than 1% represented in geoscience faculty positions. Women are published less, paid less, and do not progress as far in their careers as men. Even within our EGU community, women account for only one third of all members, an ...[Read More]

GD

Geodynamics

The Sassy Scientist – Meddle With Medals

The Sassy Scientist June 5, 2020

Befuddled by the yearly returning celebration of science during the Nobel award ceremonies, and heavy-heartedly noticing the absence of Earth sciences at this ball time after time, Pippi pulled herself out of her rationally induced depression and asked: Shouldn’t there be a Nobel prize in Earth sciences? Dear Pippi, Well, isn’t that a particular poignant question? Earth sciences simply being denie ...[Read More]

SSS

Soil System Sciences

Plant carbon allocation, soil nutrient availability and the mycorrhizal business

EGU Guest blogger June 4, 2020

The soil market: plants spend some of their carbon on buying nutrients from mycorrhizae Similar to the way that we take up carbon (C) through the food we eat, plants absorb C in the form of CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and use it to build sugars (Fig. 1). After having a good snack, our body decides where to send the C it has just gained: should I use it to grow muscles (or fat), ...[Read More]

GD

Geodynamics

Starting to teach? Here are 3 tips!

Editorial team 1 June 3, 2020

Starting to teach a course at a university can be an exciting but daunting experience. In today’s post Menno Fraters shares his experiences of starting to teach a class of 100+ students during the challenging time of the COVID-19 pandemic. He provides three quick tips for when you start teaching, that may be useful for teaching in academics. During your time as a PhD student, you may have al ...[Read More]

HS

Hydrological Sciences

Hydrological tipping points: Can we tip the bucket?

EGU Guest blogger June 3, 2020

We live in a time of unprecedented pressure on water resources. The combination of drivers, such as human water use and land use, climate change by greenhouse gases and the human modification of other components of the Earth system coupled to the water cycle, may be pushing water resources beyond levels of sustainability at all spatial scales (Gleeson et al., 2020; Zipper et al., 2020). A particul ...[Read More]

GeoLog

Imaggeo on Mondays: The Grid – A serpentine pseudomorph after carbonate

Kristina G Dunkel June 1, 2020

The structures in this photo might look three-dimensional, but they are completely flat. It is a photo of a polished thinsection of a rock, taken through a petrographic microscope under cross-polarized light. The width of the image is just 2 mm. The brownish mineral around the edges is carbonate, the white to grey mineral in the centre is serpentine, a water-bearing silicate mineral. The different ...[Read More]

SSS

Soil System Sciences

Our team is growing … unprecedentedly!

Olga Vindušková May 30, 2020

It is my great pleasure to introduce you to our new SSS Early Career Scientist (ECS) & Outreach team. This year, apart from having a new ECS Representative – Layla San Emeterio – we realized that there’s just too much fun for one person! That’s why this year, our division has also elected two ECS Co-representatives: Mika Turunen and Dan Evans. Mika and Dan started immediately helpi ...[Read More]