EGU Guest blogger

Perspective on Listening to Permafrost

Kerstin Ergenzinger, Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari, Julia Boike February 10, 2023

The Bayelva site (Svalbard, Ny-Ålesund) during polar night (January 28, 2022). Picture by Esther Horvath, Alfred Wegener Institute (Creative Commons Licence CC-BY 4.0)

> Reflections from an ongoing art-science research project Common Grounds < How to visualize thousands of thousands (> 20,000,000) of data points collected in the Arctic atmosphere and subsurface at a permafrost observatory over 25 years? How to tell the story of permafrost, ground that is permanently frozen and an important part of the cryosphere, that is currently warming and thawing at ...[Read More]

The Polar Night Week and the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System

Ugo Nanni & the Early Career Scientists of the Polar Night Week February 3, 2023

Moonrise over the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) during the 2023 Polar night Week. Credit: S. Aparicio.

In the early days of 2023, nearly 100 researchers gathered in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, one of the last permanently inhabited places before reaching the North Pole (see my previous blogpost about Svalbard). The Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) held its fifth Polar Night Week. SIOS is an international partnership of research institutions that study the environment and climate ...[Read More]

Image of the week – The gaze of the ice cap

Giovanni Baccolo January 27, 2023

Slowly approaching an ice cap in northern Greenland. Credits: Giovanni Baccolo.

We are getting used to perceiving glaciers more and more distant and disconnected from our mountains. With each passing year, it is more difficult to observe them, reach them or climb them. They are becoming an exotic element of the Alpine imagination. When our gaze rests on a mountain glacier, with its crevasses and large moraines, we are filled with the fascination of someone observing a new nat ...[Read More]

Image of the week – Birds in the Arctic

Loeka Jongejans January 20, 2023

Northern Gannet in flight in the Lofoten, Norway. Photo credit: L. Jongejans

I am a hobby ornithologist and love watching birds. It is fun and relaxing to search the trees or fields for feathered friends. One has to be aware of their surroundings, which can make birding even meditative. Here, I will tell you more about Arctic breeding birds, their population declines and I present to you three birds of the many I saw on my very first trips to the Arctic. Arctic breeding bi ...[Read More]

End-of-the-year special: this year’s Cryoblog

EGU Cryoblog December 16, 2022

Created with FreeWordCloudGenerator.com

So this is the last post in 2022 for our blog. We have decided that this time, the topic will not be another exciting story about the science of ice and cold in their various forms. This time we are talking about the blog itself, so a kind of meta-post to take stock and understand a little better how our blog works, what it is about, and who our main authors are. To this purpose, we asked all the ...[Read More]

For Dummies: How Arctic sea ice and the AMOC interact

David Docquier December 9, 2022

In this post, I will talk about two famous characters of the climate system; I will define them and see how they have changed in the current context of climate change. I will also show you how these two characters interact, one influencing the other, and vice versa. Finally, let’s see how the future looks like for them and the consequences for the global climate. I hope you will enjoy this story. ...[Read More]

Wake up every one – permafrost microbes feasting – greenhouse gases go

Loeka Jongejans November 25, 2022

I really like to combine science and art. This puts science in a larger perspective and can help understand it in different ways. And perhaps more importantly, it evokes emotion. I wrote haikus and created stencils for every chapter of my PhD thesis. I created these artworks to illustrate the dimensions of the permafrost region and the consequences of global warming on permafrost. Let me show you ...[Read More]

Discover the CordillerICE project!

Gaston Bidou, Domitille Dufour, Emma Denise and Maud Bernat November 18, 2022

Meet the team! Left to right: Emma, Maud, Gaston, Domitille. Picture taken in an ice cave near the Glacier de la Selle, France. Photo credit: Bastien Levy.

In high-school, I learned in a textbook that glaciers are melting. My teacher said that what was written in that textbook was right, and that was it. There was no proof, no explanation, no scientist’s testimony. All of that, I discovered much later during my studies in the geosciences. Yet as the global temperatures keep rising, and our politicians apply rigorously the “keep calm and carry on” mod ...[Read More]

Highlighted Paper – Welcome to the microbial BBQ in Arctic Sea ice

Stefan "Zwiebel" Thiele November 10, 2022

Figure 1: The brown spots are sea ice algae (aka vegan BBQ patties) in the Arctic sea ice, can you see them? [Credit: Stefan Thiele]

There, what is this, spoke the sea ice algae. Is this the first light of dawn? Is it finally this time of the year again? Spring…the best time of the year…the BBQ season? And in the little brine pockets all around the sea ice, the bacterial and archaeal community stirred alive. BBQ? Did somebody mention BBQ? Let’s have some vegan burgers! And so spring began inside of the Arctic sea ic ...[Read More]

A little guide to find your way through the Cryo-Jungle?

EGU Cryoblog November 4, 2022

Are you starting your studies in cryospheric sciences, or are coming into our field from another subject? If so, you may have unsuspectingly waded into a (very thick) soup of acronyms! Don’t fret–here is your “one stop shop” that tells you where to look for more information! Early Career Organisations Unless you’re fortunate enough to be working in a polar-oriented institute (some of our previous ...[Read More]