EGU Blogs

Highlights

GD
Geodynamics

On the resolution of seismic tomography models and the connection to geodynamic modelling (Is blue/red the new cold/hot?) (How many pixels in an Earth??)

June 5, 2019
What do the blobs mean?

Seismologists work hard to provide the best snapshots of the Earth’s mantle. Yet tomographic models based on different approaches or using different data sets sometimes obtain quite different details. It is hard to know for a non specialist if small scale anomalies can be trusted and why. This week Maria Koroni and Daniel Bowden, both postdocs in the Seismology and Wave Physics group in ETH ...[Read More]

HS
Hydrological Sciences

YHS interview Thorsten Wagener: being the head of a research group is “a bit like being a football coach”

June 5, 2019

In its “Hallway Conversations” series, the Young Hydrologic Society has recently published an interview with Thorsten Wagener, who is currently professor and the head of the Water and Environmental Engineering research group at the University of Bristol, UK. The interview was conducted by Wouter Knoben, a PhD student at the University of Bristol. With their agreement, we reproduce below some short ...[Read More]

TS
Tectonics and Structural Geology

Minds over Methods: The faults of a rift

June 5, 2019
Minds over Methods: The faults of a rift

Do ancient structures control present earthquakes in the East African Rift?  Åke Fagereng, Reader in Structural Geology, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University For this edition of Minds over Methods, we have invited Åke Fagereng, reader in Structural Geology at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University. Åke writes about faults in the Malawi rift, and the seismic ha ...[Read More]

GeoLog

Imaggeo on Mondays: Sand and snow on the Tibetan Plateau

June 3, 2019
Imaggeo on Mondays: Sand and snow on the Tibetan Plateau

Roughly 50 million years ago, the Eurasian and Indian continental plates began to crash into each other, dramatically changing the landscape of modern-day Asia. The force of the collision caused the Earth to scrunch together at the zone of impact, subsequently forming the Himalayan mountain range. However, to the north of the crash, a stretch of the Earth uplifted without bunching up or wrinkling; ...[Read More]

WaterUnderground

Update on the groundwater situation in Cape Town

3rd June 2019
Update on the groundwater situation in Cape Town

Post by Jared van Rooyen, PhD student in Earth Science at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa. When the Cape Town water crisis first emerged it took almost a year before active contingencies were put in place. Four major ideas were proposed: (1) Intense water restrictions for municipal water users, (2) greywater recycling facilities, (3) groundwater augmentation of water supplies, and (4) des ...[Read More]

Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology

How does a crystal become a mineral?

June 2, 2019
How does a crystal become a mineral?

There are some crystals that we are all familiar with. Look at an analogue clock (you may need a screwdriver and/or a hammer, and the watch owner might not be too happy) and you will probably find quartz – a crystal with silicon and oxygen arranged in a well-ordered three dimensional pattern. We can also describe quartz as silicon dioxide, which describes its chemistry – one silicon for every two ...[Read More]

CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the Week – The GReenland OCEan-ice interaction project (GROCE): teamwork to predict a glacier’s future

May 31, 2019
Image of the Week – The GReenland OCEan-ice interaction project (GROCE): teamwork to predict a glacier’s future

The GROCE project, funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), takes an Earth-System approach to understand what processes are at play for the 79°N glacier (also known as Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden), in northeast Greenland. 79°N is a marine-terminating glacier, meaning it has a floating ice tongue (like an ice shelf) and feeds into the ocean. Approximately 8% of all the ice contain ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

The Sassy Scientist – Analogue Modelling

May 31, 2019
The Sassy Scientist – Analogue Modelling

Every week, The Sassy Scientist answers a question on geodynamics, related topics, academic life, the universe or anything in between with a healthy dose of sarcasm. Do you have a question for The Sassy Scientist? Submit your question here. David asks: What do you think about analogue modelling? Dear David, Analogue modelling. Well, what’s not to like? Who doesn’t want to spend weeks or months fin ...[Read More]