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Cryospheric Sciences

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Image of the Week – A Hole-y Occurrence, the reappearance of the Weddell Polynya

March 2, 2018
Image of the Week – A Hole-y Occurrence, the reappearance of the Weddell Polynya
Fig. 1: The Weddell polynya as seen in the 7th September 2017. The size is around 2500 km2. Black areas are sea-ice free (open water) [Credit: NASA].

REMARK: If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, please make sure you’ve voted for it in EGU blog competition (2nd choice in the list)! During both the austral winters of 2016 and 2017, a famous feature of the Antarctic sea-ice cover was observed once again, 40 years after its first observed occurrence: the Weddell Polynya! The sea-ice cover exhibited a huge hole (of around 2600 km2 up to ...[Read More]

Image of the week – Skiing, a myth for our grandchildren?

February 16, 2018
Image of the week – Skiing, a myth for our grandchildren?
Skiing resorts might look very different in a few decades... [Credit: M. Cavitte]

Ski or water ski? Carnival season is typically when many drive straight to the mountains to indulge in their favorite winter sport. However, by the end of the century, models seem to predict a very different future for Carnival, with a drastic reduction in the number of snow days we get per year. This could render winter skiing something of the past, a bedtime story we tell our grandchildren at ni ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Searching for clues of extraterrestrial life on the Antarctic ice sheet

December 8, 2017

Last week we celebrated Antarctica Day, 50 years after the Antarctic Treaty was signed. This treaty includes an agreement to protect Antarctic ecosystems. But what if, unintentionally, this protection also covered clues of life beyond Earth? In this Image of the Week, we explore how meteorites found in Antarctica are an important piece of the puzzle in the search for extraterrestrial life. Meteori ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Antarctica Day

December 1, 2017
Image of the Week – Antarctica Day
The International Geophysical Year hut at Halley Bay, 1957. [Credit: L. W. Barclay. Copyright L.W. Barclay. Reproduced courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey Archives Service. Archives ref. AD6/19/X/25/11 ]

Today, 1st December 2017, marks the 58th anniversary of the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959. The Antarctic Treaty was motivated by international collaboration in Antarctica in the International Geophysical Year (IGY), 1957-1958. During the IGY over 50 new bases were established in and around Antarctica by 12 nations- including this one at Halley Bay which was maintained for over a decade b ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Ice Stupas: a solution for Himalayan water shortage?

November 17, 2017
Image of the Week – Ice Stupas: a solution for Himalayan water shortage?
Ice cones in the high altitude deserts of Ladakh, Himalayas. [Credit: Dadul Lobzang, Ice Stupa Project]

As the world searches for practical innovations that can mitigate the impact of climate change, traditional methods of environmental management can offer inspiration. In Hindu Kush and Karakoram region, local people have been growing, or grafting, glaciers for at least 100 years. Legend has it that artificial glaciers were grown in mountain passes as early as the twelfth century to block the advan ...[Read More]

Back to the Front – Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Aftermath of Iceberg A68!

November 8, 2017
Back to the Front – Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Aftermath of Iceberg A68!
Figure 1: A68 sets sail from Larsen C.
Sentinel 1 SAR image [Credit: Adrian Luckman, Swansea University].

Much of the Antarctic continent is fringed by ice shelves. An ice shelf is the floating extension of a terrestrial ice mass and, as such, is an important ‘middleman’ that regulates the delivery of ice from land into the ocean: for much of Antarctica, ice that passes from land into the sea does so via ice shelves. I’ve been conducting geophysical experiments on ice for over a decade, using mostly s ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Sea-ice dynamics for beginners

November 3, 2017
Image of the Week – Sea-ice dynamics for beginners
A block of ice in a pressure ridge. The scientist has to cross the ridge with equipment to continue measuring the sea-ice thickness on the other side. [Credit: Marius Bratrein, Norwegian Polar Institute]

When I ask school children or people who only know about sea ice from remote references in the newspapers: ‘How thick do you think is the Arctic sea ice?’, I often get surprising answers: ’10 meters? No, it must be thicker – 100 meters!’. It seems like sea ice, often depicted as a uniform white cover around the North Pole and as a key element in accelerated warming of the Polar Regions, imposes a ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Karthaus Summer School 2017

October 13, 2017

Glaciologists often undertake fieldwork in remote and difficult to access locations, which perhaps explains why they happily travel to similar locations to attend meetings and workshops. The Karthaus Summer School, which focuses on Ice Sheets and Glaciers in the Climate System, is no exception. The idyllic village of Karthaus, located in the narrow Schnalstal valley in Südtirol (Italy), has been h ...[Read More]

Mapping the bottom of the world — an Interview with Brad Herried, Antarctic Cartographer

October 11, 2017
Mapping the bottom of the world — an Interview with Brad Herried, Antarctic Cartographer
Brad Herried, Antarctic cartographer at South Pole. [Credit: Brad Herried].

Mapping Earth’s most remote continent presents a number of unique challenges. Antarctic cartographers and scientists are using some of the most advanced mapping technologies available to get a clearer picture of the continent. We asked Brad Herried, a Cartographer and Web Developer at the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota, a few questions about what it’s like to do this unique ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – The true size of Greenland

October 6, 2017

Greenland is a critical part of the world, which is regularly covered on this blog, because it hosts the second largest ice body on Earth – the Greenland Ice Sheet. This ice sheet, along with its small peripheral ice caps, contributes by 43% to current sea-level rise. However, despite being the world’s largest island Greenland, appears disproportionately large on the most common world maps (Fig. 2 ...[Read More]