The July 2020 NPG Paper of the Month award goes to Kolja Kypke, William Langford and Allan Willms, for their paper “Anthropocene climate bifurcation” (https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-27-391-2020). All three authors work at the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. William Langford did his PhD at the California Institute of Technology in 1971 under the supervision of …[Read More]
Latest posts
Tectonics and Structural Geology
Ana Margarida Neiva – A woman as hard as granite
Ana Neiva was born on May 7 1941 in Cedofeita, Porto, northwest Portugal – a city carved in granite. Her childhood and youth were spent in Coimbra, where her father worked. João Cotelo Neiva was an eminent geologist and professor at the University of Coimbra, one of Europe’s oldest universities. His influence was decisive …[Read More]
Hydrological Sciences
Do you know about the 3MT competition? What a challenging experience for a PhD student!
Effective communication plays a vital role in our PhD life. We spend significant amount of time working on a desk or in a lab performing our research for many years. However, if we do not effectively communicate our results and ideas to other scientists and researchers, our research will be unacknowledged. Of course, we all …[Read More]
Geodynamics
Venus: science! Today!
After many (attempted) visits to Venus in an earlier era of space exploration, the focus of terrestrial planet science was shifted towards e.g. our other neighbour Mars. Yet, lately, Venus seems to gain scientific popularity and not without reason – there remains so much to figure out about the puzzling planet. The virtual mini-workshop ‘Venus Science Today’ was …[Read More]
Ocean Sciences
Satellite data for ocean reanalysis
To understand the fundamental behaviour of the ocean, and any changes it’s undergoing, we need to know what the ocean is doing today, and on each day in the recent past. We can do this by creating reanalyses, which use data assimilation to combine state-of-the-art models with observations. The focus is often on ocean physics, …[Read More]
Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Palaeontology
Who needs stratigraphers, sedimentologists and palaeontologists? Evolving roles through the energy transition.
By Mike Simmons and Andy Davies. It seems that geoscience is facing something of an existential crisis. The September 2020 issue of Geoscientist, the magazine of the Geological Society of London, contains a number of articles on the future of geoscience and its relevance to society. At the heart of the concerns are a drop …[Read More]
Geomorphology
Interview with the Steepest Descent Organizers
The Steepest Descent is a yearly one-day meeting taking place in Vienna, Austria, close to the EGU general assembly. Participants have the opportunity to see a few keynote talks by outstanding geomorphologists and to discuss their posters in a more informal and geomorphology-focused community than at the EGU. Despite its youth, the Steepest Descent Meeting …[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo On Monday: Hedenbergite – Ilvaite skarn, Calamita, Island of Elba
In this photo taken on the Isle of Elba in Italy you can see several radiating crystals of greenish Hedenbergite, inter-grown with blackish coloured Ilvaite in skarn bodies. Skarn is an unique formation that formed as a result of the interaction between geothermal fluids and the host rock. In this case the geothermal fluids come …[Read More]
Climate: Past, Present & Future
InterArctic project: understanding the interaction between artic environments and societies
The InterArctic project (Fig. 1) focuses on vulnerability, resilience and adaptation of northern societies facing global change. The current rapid warming of Arctic and Subarctic climates has already produced many changes in the social, economic and cultural behaviour of the populations inhabiting these regions and more changes are expected to come. In this context, looking …[Read More]
GeoLog
Colour deficient vision and the geosciences; just another way of looking at things
Like a reasonably large proportion of the population, I have colour vision deficiency (also known as colour deficient vision or colourblindness). I’m not going to get into the technical aspects of what this is like as they are covered well here and here, and you can do an Ishihara test, and other tests here, to …[Read More]