It’s not so common for us to think about pure metals as minerals, or even crystals, but just like pinocchio could be a real boy, pure metals can be minerals too. This is because, if the metal cools down from a melt very slowly, layers of metal atoms can add onto previously solidified atoms, forming a defined lattice of atoms, and ta-dahh, it’s a single crystal! This is different from m ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoPolicy: How to use webinars to share your science with a wider audience!
Since the explosive spread of COVID19, the way most academics work has changed and it can sometimes feel like we’re all living on conference calls, Skype and online events. While this may not suit everyone’s preferred working style, it’s difficult to deny that people are now more willing to engage online and it’s worth thinking about how we can take full advantage of this new method of working! Ha ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the week – The curious case of “glacier mice”
Did you know that glacier mice can be found at the surface of some glaciers? They’re not the tiny rodent you might be imagining, but actually little balls of moss, which appear to be full of mysteries still to be uncovered… What is a “glacier mouse”? On glaciers around the world, mostly at high-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, little balls of moss develop and move around the ice. Origi ...[Read More]
Tectonics and Structural Geology
Mind your head: The Imposter Syndrome
This Mind Your Head blog post is a follow-up from one of the talks during the online short course on mental health that aired during the last EGU General Assembly. Imposter syndrome is about the feeling of being afraid to be found to be an imposter. Note that I do not claim to be an expert; in the following, I simply list a few tricks that help me, and people I have talked to, to find their way i ...[Read More]
Geodynamics
The Sassy Scientist – Dress Code Delirium
Unsettled by a well-nigh void wardrobe, Giuseppe bethinks himself of his scholarly stature and posits to moot that his foibles and idiosyncrasies are promulgated through a predilection for plebeian raiments: What should a scientist dress like? Dear Giuseppe, Firstly, heave thine integral collection of aforementioned raiments atop a scorching blaze and instill upon thyself the manner they evanesce. ...[Read More]
GeoLog
New EGU webinar: Careers outside Academia
Last week EGU hosted the second of our official quarterly webinar series, on Careers outside Academia. Up to 70% of scientists will transition to careers outside of academia after their PhD. Transferable scientific skills and knowledge are becoming progressively valued in non-academic job sectors. However, navigating job opportunities and transitioning to different career paths can be difficult. T ...[Read More]
Hydrological Sciences
Pathways towards solving the Unsolved Problems in Hydrology (UPH) – feedback from the EGU SGO chat session
At the EGU 2020 Sharing Geoscience Online (SGO) week, we had a chat room session dedicated to discuss progress and way forward on the 23 Unsolved Problems in Hydrology (UPH). As many of you, we experienced this exciting and fast-typing moment of discussing in-depth scientific issues during a short-duration, text-only chat. Many ideas were typed and some of them are shared with you in this post. Mo ...[Read More]
Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences
NPG Paper of the Month: “Detecting dynamical anomalies in time series from different palaeoclimate proxy archives using windowed recurrence network analysis”
This month the NPG Paper of the Month award is achieved by Jaqueline Lekscha and Reik Donner for their paper “Detecting dynamical anomalies in time series from different palaeoclimate proxy archives using windowed recurrence network analysis” (https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/27/261/2020/). Jaqueline Lekscha did her PhD in physics at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Humbold ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo On Monday: Patterns in the landform
The badlands at the Zabriskie Point (Death Valley, California, USA) rest upon a mudstone foundation. In the prehistoric lakes of Death Valley, fine grained sediments were deposited to form soft rocks. The clay minerals in the mudstone are shaped like tiny plates, which helps create the layers. The combination of the almost impermeable mudstone and Death Valley’s low rainfall makes plant grow ...[Read More]
Seismology
Follow up on: “The sound of COVID-Silence”
Dear colleagues, In the last months, there has been a storm both in traditional and social media about the observation that the Covid-19 lockdown measures cause an unprecedented seismic urban “silence”, which is observed globally on many urban seismic stations. It is the first time that such a protracted noise reduction has been observed on a global scale at the same time. To gather all seismologi ...[Read More]