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Cryospheric Sciences

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Ice on fire at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition

July 6, 2016
Ice on fire at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition
In 2010 thick ash poured from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano after an explosive eruption. Find out more about why this happened at the Explosive Earth Exhibit at this weeks Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. Photo Credit: Eyjólfur Magnússon

The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition (RSSSE) is a free public event 4-10th July 2016 in London. This is a yearly event that is made up of 22 exhibits, selected in a competitive process, featuring cutting edge science and research undertaken right now across the UK. The scientists will be on their stands ready to share discoveries, show you amazing technologies and with hands-on interactive ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Canyons Under The Greenland Ice Sheet!

June 24, 2016
Image of the Week – Canyons Under The Greenland Ice Sheet!
Figure 1: The calculated drainage network for southern Greenland (interpreted from airbourne ice penetrating radar data). It shows an extensive flow network of channels beneath the ice. Which can be interpreted as a possible configuration for water flow pre-glacially, as well as in an ice-free future. The main channel within the catchment area of Jakobshavn Isbræ is marked by the red line. Bed elevation (between 300 and 1300 m above sea level (asl)) is also shown. Inset: location of study area within Greenland.

The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough water to raise sea level by 7.36 meters (Bamber, et. al. 2013) and much of this moves from the interior of the continent into the oceans via Jakobshavn Isbræ – Greenland’s fastest flowing outlet glacier. An ancient river basin hidden beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, discovered by researchers at the University of Bristol, may help explain the loca ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Mushrooms at zero degrees = hair ice?!

June 3, 2016
Image of the Week – Mushrooms at zero degrees = hair ice?!
Hair ice in a forest near Moosseedorf, Switzerland (Credit: Christian Mätzler)

  When you go down to the woods today you’re in for a big surprise….. hair ice!  Did you know that there is a type of ice called hair ice? It is shaped like fine, silky hairs and looks like white candy floss. It grows on the rotten branches of broad-leaf trees during humid winter nights when the air temperature drops slightly below 0°C. A 100-year-old theory states that hair ice a ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Historical aerial imagery of Greenland

May 27, 2016
Image of the Week — Historical aerial imagery of Greenland
Aerial photo of the Zackenberg delta in North-East Greenland taken in 1932. (Credit: Danish Geodata Agency)

A few month ago, we were taking you on a trip back to Antarctic fieldwork 50 years ago, today we go back to Greenland during 1930s! When geopolitics serves cryospheric sciences The Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague awarded Danish sovereignty over Greenland in 1933 and besides geopolitical interests, Denmark had a keen interest in searching for natural resources and new opportun ...[Read More]

European Space Agency Living Planet Symposium 2016

May 26, 2016
European Space Agency Living Planet Symposium 2016
Background: Prague Castle as viewed from the Charles Bridge (Credit: Stephen Chuter)

Living Planet Symposium Between the 9th and 13th May, Prague played host to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) fourth Living Planet Symposium. The event, the largest in its history with over 3300 attendees, brought together the earth observation community across multiple disciplines to discuss significant scientific results and the future developments of earth observation missions. Earth Observatio ...[Read More]

Image of The Week – Tumbling Rocks

May 20, 2016
Image of The Week – Tumbling Rocks
A 15,000 m³ rockfall during the 2015 summer heat wave at Tour de Ronde summit, Mont Blanc Massif. (Photo credit: Ludovic Ravanel.)

This photo captures a rockfall at the summit of Tour de Ronde, 3792 m above sea level in the Mont Blanc Massif. On 27 August 2015, around 15000 m3  of rock fell from the steep walls of the mountain. Why do mountains crumble ? Rockfalls such as the one on the photo have been linked to thawing permafrost. The exact mechanism that leads to these events is not fully understood, however, it is thought ...[Read More]

From Hot to Cold – Volcanology Meets the Cryosphere

May 10, 2016
From Hot to Cold – Volcanology Meets the Cryosphere

Hello again, I’m Kathi Unglert, and you’re about to read my third and final post as a student reporter at EGU 2016. Today I am writing about my experience in the cryosphere sessions from my volcanology perspective. In preparation for the conference I kept thinking about what sort of research I would see in the cryosphere sessions. I had never really attended any specific conferences or meetings on ...[Read More]

Careers at the European Space Agency – How and Why?

May 3, 2016
Careers at the European Space Agency – How and Why?
Flow speed of Jakobshavn Isbræ outlet glacier (South West Greenland) in winter 2014. Credit: ESA

As the pace of modern life speeds up and job competition becomes even more fierce, it is good to have a focused plan of where you would like to be in the future. The European Space Agency (ESA) offers traineeships and research positions to young scientists on a regular basis. They may be a springboard into your chosen career path, but how do you go about bagging one of these valuable opportunities ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Storing water in Antarctica to delay sea-level rise

April 29, 2016
Image of the Week – Storing water in Antarctica to delay sea-level rise
Difference in ice thickness from the initial equilibrium state after 100 years of ice addition (upper panels) and 1000 years after the end of the forcing (lower panels). Two scenarios are shown, 200 km (left panels) and 800 km (right panels) from the coastline, both corresponding to a sea-level mitigation of 10 mm per year (credit: Frieler et al., 2016, fig 3) .

  Sea level rise Sea-level rise is one of the main impacts of the current global warming and its rate has dramatically increased in the last decades (the current rate is about 3 mm per year). Even if greenhouse gas emissions were stopped today, sea level would continue to rise due to the slow Earth climate system response (IPCC, 2013, chap. 13). It is therefore a considerable threat for popul ...[Read More]

When Cryospheric Research Transforms Lives

April 22, 2016
When Cryospheric Research Transforms Lives

My name is Kathi Unglert, and I’m reporting from the EGU 2016 General Assembly as part of the EGU student reporter programme. Below is my second contribution to the Cryosphere Blog – this time about how cryosphere research can have a real impact on people’s lives. Antoni Lewkowicz – he’s famous, according to a comment I overheard in Tuesday’s PICO session on applied geophysics in cryosphere ...[Read More]