CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Climate Change & Cryosphere

Climate change and the Cryosphere – With ice we are also losing a piece of our cultural heritage: a glaciologist’s perspective

November 5, 2021
Climate change and the Cryosphere – With ice we are also losing a piece of our cultural heritage: a glaciologist’s perspective
The most famous glacier of the Dolomites (in the Eastern Alps): the Marmolada glacier. Its retreat has been ongoing for over a century and the glacier has now become a distant memory of what it used to be at the end of the Little Ice Age, in the late 19th century. [Credits: Giovanni Baccolo]

Glaciers are shrinking and disappearing in many regions of the Earth. Did you know? I am joking of course. We are flooded with news talking about this. The decline of glaciers has manifold and severe consequences and is one of the most powerful icons of climate change. Here I want to talk a little bit about one of the less talked about impact of glacier decline: the loss of culture and knowledge r ...[Read More]

It’s getting hot in here: Ancient microbes in thawing permafrost

October 22, 2021
It’s getting hot in here: Ancient microbes in thawing permafrost
Figure 1: You wondered what can live in frozen, ancient soil? Here you can see intact (A) and thawing permafrost (B). While Bacilli (red) and spore formers (green) can survive in the frozen and thawed permafrost, other species, such as Actinobacteria (blue) do not like it too much when it thaws. Carbon gets digested into carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), of which most is released into the atmosphere. Little is known about fungi (light brown) but they do exist. [Credit: Maria Scheel, created with biorender.com]

Did you know that the oldest organism on Earth is believed to be a microorganism found in 3-million-year-old permafrost in Siberia? There, it was living at a cosy average temperature of -10 °C at 14 m depth. Or did you hear that some other Arctic soil microorganisms can happily live at extreme temperatures down to -40 °C? Scientists often use these “extreme” microorganisms to get an idea on how ex ...[Read More]

Mapping sea ice from space

September 10, 2021
Mapping sea ice from space
Figure 1. The thinning and retreating of sea ice have led to increased human activity in Arctic waters. Hence, marine traffic and activities such as fishing, shipping, oil and mineral exploitation are expected to increase in the future. To handle navigation in ice-covered waters, vessel crews need appropriate planning support. [Credit: Alex Perz/Unsplash]

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]

Life on the (Ice) Edge: Antarctic Seabirds and Sea Ice

June 4, 2021
Life on the (Ice) Edge: Antarctic Seabirds and Sea Ice
Figure 1. Antarctic seabird use of marginal sea ice environments and primary productivity. Credits: Ellie Honan

The vast expanse of Antarctic sea-ice may appear inhospitable at first, but the region supports one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth. Amongst the organisms that call Antarctica home, certain seabird species have become so well adapted to the harsh conditions that they not only survive in the region, but flourish. Like all Antarctic organisms, seabirds are intricately linked to the contin ...[Read More]

The “Cliffs Notes” on Ice-Cliff Failure

May 6, 2021
The “Cliffs Notes” on Ice-Cliff Failure
An ice cliff above the ocean adjacent to Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. Credits: NASA Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The retreat of large glaciers that drain the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could expose immense ice-cliffs at newly-bared calving faces, which are the exposed ends of glaciers where, in these cases, glacier ice meets the ocean. Past a certain height, these ice cliffs will become susceptible to collapsing from high stresses, a process known as structural ice-cliff failure. If a taller ice clif ...[Read More]

On snowmelt, water security, and a warming climate – Why solution-oriented research matters, now more than ever

April 9, 2021

1 April 2015: for the first time on record, the chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys, Frank Gehrke, had no snow to measure at the Phillips Snow Course near Lake Tahoe at the end of the winter. This was in some ways unsurprising, as California had been in a drought since 2012. But drought was nothing new in the state, and this was the first time on record that snow was completely absent ...[Read More]

Climate Change and Cryosphere – What can we learn from the smallest, most vulnerable glaciers in the Ötztal Alps?

March 19, 2021

The Alps were the first mountains to be studied from a glaciological point of view in the 19th century and they host some of the most studied glaciers of Earth. Some of them are found in the Central Alps and in particular, the Ötztal Alps. Just to cite the most known and largest glaciers in this Alpine sector, we can mention Hintereisferner or Vernagtferner. But in the Ötztal Alps you can also fin ...[Read More]

Rain or snow? Answering the question with citizen scientists

February 12, 2021

As a New Englander interested in weather, I was used to a fairly intuitive air temperature split between rain and snow. Once air temperature got slightly above freezing, I’d commonly see rainfall with snowfall more frequent below freezing. Then something happened when I moved to the Intermountain West of the United States. Instead of seeing rain when it was slightly above freezing, I’d see snow at ...[Read More]

Time To Reflect

December 11, 2020

Albedo or albedon’t? One possible solution to global warming is to turn everything white to increase the planet’s albedo, i.e. how reflective it is (see, for example, this website). A higher albedo would be one way to reduce global warming, by reducing the amount of incoming shortwave solar radiation absorbed by the planet’s surface, which is then re-emitted as longwave radiation that ...[Read More]

Seafloor secrets: traces of the past Patagonian ice sheet

November 27, 2020

Today’s Patagonian ice caps are confined to the high-altitude Andean Mountain range as the Northern and Southern Patagonia ice fields, and they are rapidly melting. The southern part of the Patagonian ice cap drains partially through fast-flowing ice streams into the fjords of Patagonia. Glaciers in this region have been losing ice at accelerating rates by large calving events, due to rising globa ...[Read More]