Back in August, I attended Oceanhackweek 2020. As an oceanographer by trade and free software nerd by heart, I loved the idea of an event that combined the two. I looked forward to learning from other oceanographers and coders, and perhaps giving something back to the free software community. What is a hackweek/hackathon? If you have yet to dip your toes in the wonderful world of free software, th ...[Read More]
When I graduated in the 80’s, a job in oil and gas was seen as a glamorous and exciting career for a geoscientist. Even some dramatic falls in the oil price could not dent the optimism within the industry, and oil cities like Calgary thrived. However, life for geologists working in our city has changed dramatically over the last few years. A peak oil price of around $106 per barrel in June 2014 wa ...[Read More]
Soils do a lot! From supporting food production and filtering water, to storing carbon, cycling nutrients, and hosting organisms, soils are fundamental for our day-to-day lives. But take a look around you. If you’re like me – sitting in an office at the moment – your feet rest upon a carpeted floor, you’re surrounded by four walls, and the only view out of the window is that of a ribbon of tarmac ...[Read More]
This image shows bottomset beds from the Kerinitis Gilbert-type delta. The Pleistocene delta uplifts along the active southern margin of the Corinth rift in Greece. A bottomset bed is one where layers of sedimentary material lying along the bottom of a body of water near the point of entry of a stream are subsequently covered by foreset and topset beds in the formation of a delta. Thus in this ima ...[Read More]
Earlier this year, the EGU hosted the Integrating science into the EU Green Deal event in collaboration with the Intergroup on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development to outline how the geosciences can most effectively support the European Green Deal and ensure its ambitious biodiversity and zero-pollution targets are reached. The event provided policymakers, scientists and indust ...[Read More]
As Antarctica’s mass loss increases, the threat of crossing tipping points both in the ice sheet and the surrounding Southern Ocean is increasing. But what actually is a tipping point? Have tipping points already been crossed in the past? And what might the future hold? What do we mean by a “tipping point”? Scientifically speaking, a tipping point is generally understood to be a threshold that, on ...[Read More]
Extreme weather events routinely have detrimental socio-economic impacts around the globe. In fact, weather-related events make up over 90% of natural disasters worldwide [1]. In the new millennium, the frequency of many extreme weather events such as droughts and high temperatures, has systematically exceeded the levels seen in the 1980s and 1990s [1], and anthropogenic climate change may further ...[Read More]
When you picture sailing on a ship, what do you imagine? Cool breezes, salt spray, glorious sunrises, the peaceful sounds of breaking waves and passing gulls’ cries? As it turns out, you can go for multiple days at sea without directly looking at, smelling, or hearing the ocean waves – at least, you can if you sail on a 71-meter-long marine seismic research vessel like the R/V Marcus G. Langseth. ...[Read More]
This image shows benthic foraminifera species of Favulina hexagona (Williamson, 1848) together with nanofossils enclosed inside the shell hexagons. This modern foraminifera species was found in the sediment core retrieved from the western slope of the Rio Grande Rise (western South Atlantic). Description by Liubov Kuleshova, after the description on imaggeo.egu.eu. Imaggeo is the EGU ...[Read More]
Dr. Laura Gulia is a senior post-doc at the University of Bologna, Department of Physics and Astronomy. She has a strong experience in statistical seismology, seismicity analysis as well as seismic hazard and risk assessment. Recently, she investigated the spatio-temporal evolution of the earthquake size distribution throughout a seismic sequence focusing on the b-value, a parameter characterizing ...[Read More]
