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 …[Read More]
Soaking up the sun and recharging batteries on a peaceful and quiet summer day, or fighting to stay upright during extreme snow storms in the middle of winter, while continuously recording valuable air temperature, pressure, wind-speed and so much more – such is the life of an automatic weather station on the Greenland ice sheet. …[Read More]
Drones are not only a cool toy to play with. They are also a useful instrument to monitor and study glaciers and ice caps. By taking thousands of images flying above the ice, we can make 3D models of ice masses at centimetre resolution. Using drones, we can now survey small to medium sized glaciers …[Read More]
Those of us fortunate to participate in cryo-fieldwork are well aware of the unique, hilarious, and sometimes bizarre scenarios that we often find ourselves in. For this year’s April Fool’s Day, the EGU Cryosphere Blog team shares crazy anecdotes, with a catch: one of these stories is fake! Are you able to tell fact from …[Read More]
I have just returned from nearly three months in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, where I was doing my PhD placement at Asiaq Greenland Survey. Read on to find out what science I got up to… everything from mapping mountain glacier snowline change to avalanches! How do you map glacier snowline evolution? During my PhD …[Read More]
“If there is a pan of ice that hits the shorefast ice from the North, it can take off a sheet of ice, and you can go with it.” The serious expression of the 67-year-old whaling captain made it impossible to mistake the potential risk associated with the ancient tradition of spring whale hunting from …[Read More]
Hello there! I’m Ninja – a curious little LEGO-figure who doesn’t know much about the cryosphere, but who’s learning! Maybe you read about me in the blogpost by ice sheet modeler Petra Langebroek a few years ago? She brought me to the ice-core drilling camp called EASTgrip, on top of the Greenland icesheet. Together, we …[Read More]
Through the scientific excursion part of the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) course ‘Arctic Late Quaternary Glacial and Marine Environmental History’, a few lucky grad students got to visit Nordaustlandet, northeastern Svalbard. This is the story of our research adventure in this beautiful, remote part of the Arctic. On a bright and early morning in …[Read More]
In July 2021, together with a group of MSc students from the University of Bremen, I set off from the flat plains of Northwest Germany and embarked on a journey to the mountainous regions of Austria, with the Vernagtferner Glacier as our final destination. My aim was to learn as much as I could in …[Read More]
We are used to think of algae as marine or lacustrine organisms, but they are actually able to thrive also on the cryosphere. In a previous post, we learnt how snow algae live and reproduce on snow. Now we will explore how and why scientists study snow algae, and how social media can be used …[Read More]
