Women make up 50.8% of the worlds population, yet fewer than 30% of the world’s researchers are women. Of this percentage, BAME (Black Asia and Minority Ethnic) comprise around 5%, with less than 1% represented in geoscience faculty positions. The divide between women in the population and women in STEM needs to be addressed. Through a series of blog posts we hope to raise the voice of women in th ...[Read More]
Next generations will not only see impacts of climate change first-hand, but they will also deal with the associated societal implications. Implementing climate solutions and orienting themselves in a growing, green job market need cutting-edge knowledge, which is often hard to get through the ordinary, high-school syllabus. As early-career cryo-scientists (Federica is a PhD student in glacial geo ...[Read More]
There is no doubt that the Arctic is currently losing its sea ice as our climate is warming. And this process will carry on as temperatures continue climbing. But the rate at which sea ice will melt in the future and the exact date when the Arctic will be free of sea ice is not known due to several factors (which will be briefly discussed in this post). Torben Koenigk and I have selected climate m ...[Read More]
Reduced and thinner sea ice makes Arctic waters increasingly appealing for shipping, fishing, tourism, and mineral exploration. However, with increased accessibility and more dynamic ice conditions comes a greater risk for ship crews to encounter sea ice and icebergs outside of their usual seasonal limits. To help them navigate, timely and reliable sea ice information is key. Have you wondered how ...[Read More]
Have you ever wondered what undertaking cryo-fieldwork in a glacial environment typically involves? Well, what about undertaking cryo-fieldwork in a glacial environment during a global pandemic?! Read on to find out all about the challenges I faced on my recent trip to Iceland in July 2021… Fieldwork Preparation As this previous blog post highlights, undertaking cryo-fieldwork requires a significa ...[Read More]
To the untrained eye, the melting surface of glaciers and ice sheets can look a little boring. It’s bright in some places, dark in others, and there are lots of things to fall over and (hopefully not) get your feet wet in. However, a huge range of processes are occurring both upon and just underneath the ice surface, in a 50-ish cm thick layer of ice called the weathering crust (or the “crust” for ...[Read More]
How did we (nearly) all forget about, or simply overlook, a large-scale two-year long mid-20th Century scientific expedition to the northern Greenland Ice Sheet? Particularly an expedition that kick-started some significant glaciological and geophysical careers, developed large-scale polar logistical capabilities, traversed the ice sheet, acquired some novel and critical data, and asked some big r ...[Read More]
When speaking about glaciers and the ice they contain, we generally picture large, clean, and therefore relatively white mountain glaciers… But did you know about rock glaciers? From our Image of the Week, you might notice that they do not quite look like the classic ice glacier you might have had in mind. Indeed, they actually indicate the presence of mountain permafrost, an often poorly understo ...[Read More]
We usually think of a glacier as a white, clean surface. Well, this is only an idealized vision because in reality glaciers are far from immaculate, they can be colored! And this is extremely important since colored (dirty) ice absorbs more solar radiation than clean ice, accelerating melt. One of the places on Earth where it is fundamental to understand these processes is Greenland, where ice is ...[Read More]
One of the first things school children learn is that ice is a solid, and forms by freezing water. Most people think of ice as brittle–have you ever dropped a slippery ice cube on the kitchen floor, and watch it break and shatter into many pieces? It may be surprising, then, to find that ice can also stretch and squeeze, like a ball of pizza dough! Once deformed, ice is then softer in certai ...[Read More]
