EGU Blogs

Highlights

CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Living IN the Greenland ice sheet: the story of Sites I and II, Camp Century’s older, smaller siblings

January 21, 2022
Living IN the Greenland ice sheet: the story of Sites I and II, Camp Century’s older, smaller siblings

Greenland, cold as it is, was appropriately front and center in the Cold War. Strategically placed between Europe and North America, the United States sought to maintain and enhance its position on the island so that American missiles and bombers were in striking range of many Soviet targets. Soviet bombers and missiles coming toward North America would streak over Greenland making early warning c ...[Read More]

TS
Tectonics and Structural Geology

The power and pitfalls of compliments

January 19, 2022
The power and pitfalls of compliments

Part of a good workplace vibe is good contact between colleagues, as well as good contact between you and your supervisor – or between you and your supervisee. A potentially complex ingredient is the power of compliments. Compliments, per definition, are meant well. However, they can backfire enormously, when they are not received in the spirit in which they are meant. Additionally, part of being ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

Continental drift in academia

and January 19, 2022
Continental drift in academia

After spending about three decades in the hustle-bustle of Asian megacities, I landed up in a quiet European town to continue my research work as a postdoc. When you know you will not meet your family soon in person, you know that you will not get the food you love and, the climate that has guided you in the sun and shadow will be very different; you may expect a life struggle. Yet, people have di ...[Read More]

GeoLog

Imaggeo On Monday: Quartz – sericite mylonite, Calamita, Elba

January 17, 2022
Imaggeo On Monday: Quartz – sericite mylonite, Calamita, Elba

Concomitant thrusting and magmatism resulted in the development of ductile mylonites in the Calamita Schists, part of the contact aureole of the Late Miocene Porto Azzurro pluton. This mylonite is made up of stretched and recrystallized quartz layers, interlayered with thin sericite-rich levels. Sericite resulted from the crushing of contact-metamorphic minerals such as andalusite, cordierite, and ...[Read More]

SM
Seismology

seismoART: Visualising earthquakes through their ground motions

January 17, 2022
seismoART: Visualising earthquakes through their ground motions

Martijn van den Ende, a Postdoctoral research fellow at Université Côte d’Azur, takes us through his seismoArt project – a new and colourful way of visualising the ground motions of earthquakes!   First of all: how does it work? Imagine that you have an incredibly steady hand, holding a pen, and a piece of paper on a table. Once you put your pen on the paper, an earthquake happens ...[Read More]

GeoLog

The James Webb Telescope may forever alter our view of the universe

January 14, 2022
The James Webb Telescope may forever alter our view of the universe

Where is Webb? This seemingly simple question is quickly making its way into everyday conversation, and not just in scientific and astronomy circles. After a long 32-year wait, NASA officially launched the James Webb Telescope a couple of weeks ago on 25 December 2021. More recently, the telescope deployed its final primary mirror segment on 8 January this year, a crucial milestone in its mission ...[Read More]

CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Parenting in Academia: Challenges and Perspectives

January 14, 2022
White print on pavement with parent holding kid by the hand

Trying to juggle teaching, advising, publishing, finding a new (or permanent) job, relocating, attending conferences, and actually doing research sometimes requires more hours in the day than exist (oh and that global pandemic situation is sticking around). Additionally, many scientists have children or are starting a family at the same time as maintaining and building a career. In this week’s blo ...[Read More]

Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology

Challenging racism in the geosciences

January 13, 2022
Challenging racism in the geosciences

The hard truth is, that the geosciences are among the least diverse disciplines in the wide fields of the natural sciences. When we look at the time span from 1973 to 2016, we find that 14,246 PhD degrees were given to white men, while “only” ~5234 were earned by white women in the US. These numbers are already quite shocking, but I promise you it will even get worse: a total of only 163 PhD degre ...[Read More]

GeoLog

What if a tsunami’s magnetic field could predict the height of the wave?

January 12, 2022
What if a tsunami’s magnetic field could predict the height of the wave?

It’s been well established that tsunamis generate magnetic fields as they move seawater (which is conductive unlike freshwater) through the Earth’s magnetic field. Although researchers previously predicted that the tsunami’s magnetic field would arrive before a change in sea level, they lacked the means to simultaneously measure magnetics and sea level to confirm this phenomenon. Now, a new study ...[Read More]

SM
Seismology

“State of the ECS”: What to do in 2022?

January 12, 2022
“State of the ECS”: What to do in 2022?

Hello all, Matthew here wishing you a very Happy New Year! A new year provides an opportunity for a fresh start, a chance to reflect on the past and look to the future. I don’t know about you, but 2021 was a rather mixed bag for me, with strict lockdowns gradually fading into freedoms (and back again…). 2022 still holds many uncertainties, but I do hope that as a community we can come together aga ...[Read More]