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Cryospheric Sciences

Editor post

Image Of The Week – Do My Ice Deceive Me?

April 1, 2016
Image Of The Week – Do My Ice Deceive Me?
F.I.B. in the ice, (credit: the person who took the shot would rather stay anonymous and not tell where the picture was taken sorry)

A few weeks ago, we focussed our image of the week on very particular parts of Antarctica, which display blue ice at the surface. Today we would like to put the spotlight on an even more extreme chromatic phenomenon : the Fyndið ísjaki Brandari (should be pronounced “/fɪːntɪð/ˈiːsjacɪ /ˈprantaːrɪ/“, even though a bit of phonetics never hurt anyone, for the sake of simplicity this phenomenon ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Monitoring icy rivers from space!

March 18, 2016
Image of the Week – Monitoring icy rivers from space!
River-ice cover on the Vistula (Poland) classified from Satellite SAR data. (A – left) River ice cover on Vistula River on 28th January, 2015 (RADARSAT-2, RGB: HH HV VV). (B – right) Ice cover classification based on RADARSAT-2 data. 'Class 1' - smooth ice cover without ice dam underneath (black ice); 'Class 2' - ice cover with loosely agglomerated mobile ice; 'Class 3' - ice cover with consolidated mobile ice, see text for explanation [Credit: Helena Łoś]

Why? When a river freezes over, it changes the amount of water that flows through the river system. River ice affects many of the world’s largest rivers, and in the Northern Hemisphere, approximately 60% of rivers experience significant seasonal effects. The formation and evolution of river ice changes river discharge and is not only of interest to local ice skating enthusiasts. The variations in ...[Read More]

Image of The Week – That’s a Damn Fine Ice Dam!

March 11, 2016
Image of The Week – That’s a Damn Fine Ice Dam!
Figure 1: Perito Moreno Glacier terminus, Argentina. The glacier's continual advance disconnects the Brazo Rico (on the left) from the greater Lago Argentino (right), preventing drainage. Photo Credit: Evan Miles.

With today’s image of the week we want to transport you to Patagonia to look at a unique fresh-water calving glacier –  Perito Moreno in Argentina. This is a hot topic at the moment as the glacier did something rather unusual yesterday, read on to find out more….. This large glacier (Fig 2, highlighted red) flows down a valley, calving into the southwestern arm of Lago Argentino ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Last Glacial Maximum in Europe

March 4, 2016
Image of the Week — Last Glacial Maximum in Europe
Last glaciation in Europe, ~70,000-20,000 year BP (credit: Wikimedia Commons user Ulamm)

During the last ice age*, ~70,000 to 20,000 years ago, the climate was much colder in Europe. As a result, the northern part of Europe was fully covered by the Fennoscandian (a.k.a the Scandinavian ) ice sheet, which extended up to the British Isles and some parts of Poland and Germany. In central Europe, the Alps were also almost fully glaciated. The storage of all this ice on the continent lower ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Antarctic fieldwork 50 years ago!

February 26, 2016
Image of the Week – Antarctic fieldwork 50 years ago!
Rest break in the Sør Rondane Mountains, East Antarctica. Summer campaign 1964-1965 of the Belgian-Dutch Antarctic Expeditions (Credit: Jean-Jacques Derwael)

So far this blog has published many pictures of current polar field work campaigns. Today, we would like to take you back to Antarctic expeditions during the 1960s. The photos presented in this post date back from the Belgian-Dutch Antarctic field campaigns of 1964-1966. The first picture shows Ken Blaiklock (red overalls) with a Belgian surveyor. Ken was part of the 1955–58 Commonwealth Trans-Ant ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet Documented by Satellite

February 19, 2016
Image of the Week – Changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet Documented by Satellite
Changes in mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet over 10 years from GRACE satelite data (Luthcke et al., 2013).

Monitoring the changing ice mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet provides valuable information about how the ice sheet is responding to changing climate, but how do we make these measurements over such a large area of ice? Using NASA’s GRACE satellites (twin-satellites flying in formation) it is possible to make detailed measurements of the Earth’s gravitational field. As ice is gained/lost from ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Happy ValentICE’s day

February 12, 2016
Image of the Week — Happy ValentICE’s day
Gas (mostly methane) bubbles captured during controlled-laboratory freezing of lake water. (Credit : Christophe Espic)

On the eve of 14 February, love and little hearts are everywhere, even trapped in lake ice! The EGU Cryosphere blog team wishes you a happy Valentine’s Day 🙂 Behind this nice picture, there is also science This picture was taken during a laboratory experiment that aimed to reproduce the bubbles observed in Arctic lake ice in the winter. In this shot, we can see two types of gas bubbles in th ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — slush on top of sea ice

February 5, 2016
Image of the Week — slush on top of sea ice
Fieldwork on Greenland sea ice/slush (Credit: Marie Kotovitch)

Many glaciologists look forward to going on fieldtrips and then, once they are back, they make us dream by posting breathtaking photos (like THIS or THIS or THIS). However, the reality of the field can sometimes be very different…. The picture illustrates how difficult it can be to work on sea ice when the snow on top of it starts to melt and forms slush (a mixture of snow and liquid water t ...[Read More]

Image of the Week: Icequakes! Stick-Slip motion under Western Greenland

January 29, 2016
Image of the Week: Icequakes! Stick-Slip motion under Western Greenland
Schematic stick-slip source model explaining the observed first-motion pattern of a basal icequake (orange dot). For each station, the stacked waveform of the direct P wave is shown with first up or down motion. These observations are consistent with the beach ball, which represents a low-angle thrust fault in the ice flow direction. Inset: schematic side view of the stick-slip mechanism, where the ice is sliding over the bed. Beachball and radiation pattern are shown.

The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough fresh water to raise global sea level by around 6 m, therefore it is very important to understand how the ice moves from the interior of the ice sheet towards the oceans. Processes that happen at the base of the ice sheet, where the ice meets the bed, are known to be a key control on how the ice moves. Geophysical techniques, such as recording tiny icequakes ...[Read More]

Image of Week: Blue Ice in East Antarctica

January 22, 2016
Image of Week: Blue Ice in East Antarctica
Blue ice area in front of the northernmost part of the Heimefrontfjella, East Antarctica. Credit: N. B. Karlsson

The blue ice areas of Antarctica are one of the most fascinating parts of the ice sheet. In these regions, snowfall is so low that the ice is laid bare by the wind and consequently sublimates. This exposes beautiful, blue ice surfaces, like an ocean frozen in time. This picture was taken at a site named “Windy Corner” by the Kottas Mountains, in the northernmost part of the Heimefrontf ...[Read More]