New Year’s Eve is just around the corner and the last “image of the week” of 2016 will get you in the mood for a party. If your celebration needs a soundtrack with a suitably geeky touch then look no further. Here is the music for climate enthusiasts: The sound of the past 60,000 years of climate. Scientist Aslak Grinsted (Centre for Ice and Climate, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) has transfor ...[Read More]
GeoLog
The best of Imaggeo in 2016: in pictures
Imaggeo, our open access image repository, is packed with beautiful images showcasing the best of the Earth, space and planetary sciences. Throughout the year we use the photographs submitted to the repository to illustrate our social media and blog posts. For the past few years we’ve celebrated the end of the year by rounding-up some of the best Imaggeo images. But it’s no easy task to pick which ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Looking back at the EGU Blogs in 2016: a competition
The past 12 months has seen an impressive 360 posts published across the EGU’s official blog, GeoLog, as well as the network and division blogs. From a lighthearted Aprils Fools’ Day post featuring an extreme chromatic phenomenon (otherwise known as FIB); through to how climate change is affecting mountain plant’s sex ratios; features on natural hazard events throughout the year and children’s dis ...[Read More]
WaterUnderground
Limits to global groundwater use
Post by WaterUnderground contributor Inge de Graaf. Inge is a postdoc fellow at Colorado School of Mines, in the USA. Groundwater is the world’s most important source of freshwater. It supplies 2 billion people with drinking water and is used for irrigation of the largest share of the world’s food supply. However, in many regions around the world, groundwater reserves are depleting as the re ...[Read More]
Planetary and Solar System Sciences
A water ocean inside Saturn’s moon Dione
Deep inside Saturn’s moon Dione lies a global ocean of liquid water, according to scientists of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. Such discovery places Dione as the third Saturn’s moon, beside Enceladus and Titan, to have a subsurface ocean. Previous models of planet interior, based on gravity and shape data of Cassini, predicted no ocean at all for Dione and a very thick ice crust for ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: Ice drilling
This week’s Imaggeo on Monday’s post, captured by Maksim Cherviakov, shows students from Saratov National Research University practicing a method to measure lake ice thickness. The students are using an ice auger to manually burrow through the ice. Afterwards, the ice depth is recorded using a tape measure. “We measure ice thickness every year on the lakes located in the floodplain of the Vo ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week — Allez Halley!
On the Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica, a never-observed-before migration has just begun. As the pale summer sun allows the slow ballet of the supply vessels to restart, men and machines alike must make the most of the short clement season. It is time. At last, the Halley VI research station is on the move! Halley, sixth of its name Since 1956, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has maintained a resea ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoTalk: Using satellites to unravel the secrets of our planet’s polar regions
Geotalk is a regular feature highlighting early career researchers and their work. In this interview we speak to Bert Wouters, a polar scientist at the University of Utrecht, and winner of one of the 2016 Arne Richter Awards for Outstanding Young Scientists. At a time when the polar regions are facing increasing challenges resulting from climate change, understanding how they might respond to them ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoPolicy: A new vehicle emissions test to be introduced, say EU’s top scientists
Last year the European Commission appointed a panel of world leading scientists to advise on key science policy issues. In November, the panel issued their first recommendation report focusing on CO2 vehicle emissions. The month’s GeoPolicy post takes a closer look at this high-level advisory panel and the recommendations they have published. In 2015, the Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) w ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!”
On May 18th 1980 Mount St Helens (an active stratovolcano of the Cascades located in the North West US), erupted explosively following a magnitude 5.1 earthquake. The quake triggered a devastating landslide which swept away the volcano’s northern flank – in what is the largest debris avalanche recorded on Earth to date. Removal of a section of the edifice depressurised the volcano’s magmatic ...[Read More]