EGU Blogs

Highlights

Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology

Fire, Fog, Frost, Famine – French Revolution? The Lakagígar eruption in Iceland, 1783-1784 [Part 1]

May 9, 2018
Fire, Fog, Frost, Famine – French Revolution? The Lakagígar eruption in Iceland, 1783-1784 [Part 1]

“On the 8th of June 1783, at Whitsun, there gushed forth from the mountains behind the summer pastures a fire which devastated land, cattle and humans with its effects, both nearby and far away”, wrote Reverend Jón Steingrímsson of Kirkjubæjarklaustur in his autobiography [2]. The “fire” which welled up from a volcanic fissure now known as Lakagígar (the craters of Mount Laki) was the biggest floo ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

To serve Geoscientists

May 9, 2018
To serve Geoscientists

The Geodynamics 101 series serves to showcase the diversity of research topics and methods in the geodynamics community in an understandable manner. We welcome all researchers – PhD students to professors – to introduce their area of expertise in a lighthearted, entertaining manner and touch upon some of the outstanding questions and problems related to their fields. For our latest ‘Geodynamics 10 ...[Read More]

GeoLog

Imaggeo on Mondays: Probing the Pliocene

May 7, 2018
Imaggeo on Mondays: Probing the Pliocene

The heights we go to for science… This photograph shows a member of our team preparing to abseil down a cliff in the Charyn Canyon, in the Ili River basin of southeast Kazakhstan. The Charyn River and its tributaries, a branch of the Ili River north of the Tien Shan Mountains, have cut canyons up to 300 metres deep, carving through rocks of different geologic ages, some as old as 540 million years ...[Read More]

GeoLog

April GeoRoundUp: the best of the Earth sciences from the 2018 General Assembly

May 4, 2018
April GeoRoundUp: the best of the Earth sciences from the 2018 General Assembly

The 2018 General Assembly took place in Vienna last month, drawing more than 15,000 participants from 106 countries. This month’s GeoRoundUp will focus on some of the unique and interesting stories that came out of research presented at the Assembly. Mystery solved The World War II battleship Tirpitz was the largest vessel in the German navy, stationed primarily off the Norwegian coastline as a fo ...[Read More]

CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the Week – Why is ice colourful?

May 4, 2018
Image of the Week – Why is ice colourful?

When you think of glacier ice, what colour first springs to mind? Maybe white, blue or transparent? Well, glacier ice can, in fact, be mesmerising and multi-coloured! Our image of the week shows thin sections of glacier ice under polarised light. These sections were cut from block samples of two Alpine glaciers in Switzerland (Chli Titlis and Grenzgletscher).   In these images the individual ice c ...[Read More]

VolcanicDegassing

Why does it always rain (ash) on me?

May 2, 2018
Why does it always rain (ash) on me?

On May 1st, 1812, a remarkable weather system reached Barbados. ‘At half-past twelve AM a heavy dark cloud obscured the heavens completely. [..]  at half past one a sandy grit began to fall in small quantities‘. Through the night there was the sound of explosions and thunder, and by late afternoon, Barbados had been blanketed in several centimetres depth of ash. The origin of the ̵ ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

EGU 2018: convening a session

May 2, 2018
EGU 2018: convening a session

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2018 took place in Vienna, Austria, from 8–13 April 2018 and brought together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. If you are an early career research, convening a session at the EGU General Assembly can seem intimidating, especially if you are a first-time con ...[Read More]