Ice streams discharge approximately 90% of the Antarctic ice onto ice shelves , and ultimately into the sea into the sea (Bamber et al., 2000; Rignot et al., 2011). Whilst flow-speed changes on annual timescales are frequently discussed, we consider here what happens on much shorter timescales! Previous studies have shown that ice streams can respond to ocean tides at distances up to 100km inland ...[Read More]
Do you enjoy the EGU’s annual General Assembly but wish you could play a more active role in shaping the scientific programme? Now is your chance! From today, until 9 Sep 2016, you can suggest: sessions (with conveners and description), or; modifications to the existing skeleton programme sessions Explore the EGU2017 Programme groups (PGs) to get a feel for the already proposed sessions and ...[Read More]
The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition (RSSSE) is a free public event 4-10th July 2016 in London. This is a yearly event that is made up of 22 exhibits, selected in a competitive process, featuring cutting edge science and research undertaken right now across the UK. The scientists will be on their stands ready to share discoveries, show you amazing technologies and with hands-on interactive ...[Read More]
Groundwater is an often underestimated natural resource, but it is vital to the functioning of both natural and urban environments. Indeed, it is a large source of drinking water for communities world-wide, as well as being heavily used for irrigation of crops and crucial for many industrial processes. The water locked in the pores and cracks within the Earth’s soils and rocks, also plays an impor ...[Read More]
Figuring out what the climate was like, and how it changed, throughout Earth’s history is like trying to complete a 1000 piece puzzle. Except that scientists usually don’t have all the nuggets and building a comprehensive picture relies on a multidisciplinary approach in order to fill in the blanks. This is particularly true during the Holocene, which spans the last 11,700 years of the Earth’ ...[Read More]
What are debris-covered glaciers? Many alpine glaciers are covered with a layer of surface debris (rock and sediment), which is sourced primarily from glacier headwalls and valley flanks. So-called ‘debris-covered glaciers’ are found in most glacierized regions, with concentrations in the European Alps, the Caucasus, Hindu-Kush-Himalaya, Karakoram and Tien Shan, the Andes, and Alaska and the weste ...[Read More]
How do you get heavy machinery, such as a drill spool onto an ice sheet? This week’s imaggeo on Mondays’ photography captures the freighting of components of a hot water drill to directly access and observe the physical and geothermal properties at the ice-bed interface. In the image, SAFIRE principal investigator Bryn Hubbard and post-doc Sam Doyle help fly in the drill spool at the start o ...[Read More]
Here’s a tricky question for you. Try and name a woman in geoscience who has won an award for their studies in the last 5 years? How about a man? Chances are it is much easier to think of a male geoscientist who has won an award than a female one, but is that because more men win awards in geoscience than women (compared to the number of male and female geoscientists)? This was the question that w ...[Read More]
Once upon a time there was a little mermaid, with the upper body of a human and a tail of a fish, happily diving within the seven seas. Wait … I’m sorry, that is the wrong story. I will tell you today something about a different generation of MERMAIDs, that are pretty useful for seismologists. It is a very exciting story indeed. Over the last decades seismic station coverage dra ...[Read More]
The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough water to raise sea level by 7.36 meters (Bamber, et. al. 2013) and much of this moves from the interior of the continent into the oceans via Jakobshavn Isbræ – Greenland’s fastest flowing outlet glacier. An ancient river basin hidden beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, discovered by researchers at the University of Bristol, may help explain the loca ...[Read More]
