Climate of the Past

How glaciers record the winds of change

Martin Wegmann, Ingo Sasgen and Annette Salles April 27, 2022

Primary downlink station for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE-Follow On satellite data in Ny-Ålesund, a town in Svalbard, operated as crucial part of the Ground Data System by the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam German Research Center for Geosciences for the joint mission with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Source: Carsten Falck from the German Research Center for Geosciences.

After decades of observation, one of the profound consequences of anthropogenic global warming is the rapid rise in temperature in the Arctic, refered to as Arctic Amplification. Compared to the mid-latitudes, warming in the Arctic is twice as fast. The reason is mainly due to the positive feedback of a melting cryosphere: Darker surfaces are revealed from melting cryosphere, reflecting less short ...[Read More]

Don’t miss out on these awesome #EGU22 activities!

March 9, 2022

Dear climate enthusiasts, EGU lovers, and early/senior climate scientists, With #EGU22 approaching, we wanted to give you a quick overview of the great short courses and great debates that are planned for this years’ General Assembly! If you want to learn more about the scientific sessions offered, please have a look at our Seasonal love letter from December. Short Courses If you are about to fini ...[Read More]

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return – palaeoclimatological implications of provenance studies of Southeast European loess deposits

November 5, 2021

The loess cliffs of Vlasca, southern Romania (Photo credit: Stephan Pötter).

Previous blog posts have highlighted the importance of loess as an indicator of climate and environmental changes in the past. These posts showed the relevance of loess deposits as archives of Pleistocene climates and environments, the importance of using novel approaches in mapping these and other Quaternary-related sediments, the aspects of dating loess deposits, as well as the peculiarities o ...[Read More]

Bomb 14C – a tracer and time marker of the mid-20th century

July 14, 2021

Figure 1. Radiocarbon production and three main drivers of the variable atmospheric 14C content (modified figure [4]).

1950 CE is known as the year zero in the so-called ‘BP time scale.’ The BP stands for, “Before Present,” and has its roots in the development and conventions of radiocarbon dating [1]. The radioactive isotope of carbon (14C) with a half-life of 5700 years [2; 3] is a cosmogenic isotope produced in the atmosphere by secondary cosmic rays (SCR). Thermal neutrons, the SCR particle responsible for the ...[Read More]