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Cryospheric Sciences

Ice-hot news

Ice-Hot News – You have a “cool” new Policy Point of Contact in the Cryosphere Division!

Ice-Hot News – You have a “cool” new Policy Point of Contact in the Cryosphere Division!

At the 2023 EGU General Assembly, our cryosphere division members all voted “YES!” to have a division policy point of contact! If you’re wondering how to engage in science policy at our division level, what a division policy officer does, who was named and what happened next… This blog post should answer a lot of these questions (or I hope)! First off, a little history about how policy officers ca ...[Read More]

An exceptional year: What’s up with Antarctic sea ice?

An exceptional year: What’s up with Antarctic sea ice?

In our blog, we have written a lot about Arctic sea ice (see this post, this post and this post for recent examples). Much less has been written about Antarctic sea ice, i.e. its southern counterpart. That is not surprising as Arctic sea ice has experienced major losses since the late 1970s (beginning of satellite observations), while not much had happened to Antarctic sea ice (despite a small exp ...[Read More]

A ‘Ticking Bomb’: Understanding the 2023 Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) in Sikkim Himalaya

Two photos of a glacial lake, on the left in 2022 and on the right in 2013, visually smaller.

  In this week’s blog post, Dr. Remya S N and Dr. Vishnu Nandan talk about how optical and radar satellite images were used to characterize the very recent catastrophic Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) from the South Lhonak Lake in the Indian Himalaya before and after the flooding and highlight the importance of timely observations and monitoring for people’s livelihoods. The South Lhonak L ...[Read More]

CryoNews – The WMO is making the cryosphere a global priority

A plane and several researchers on the ice in Antarctica.

To us, the cryosphere has always been a priority. It is our field of interest, research, maybe passion, it is the stuff that gets us excited. Now, the cryosphere also became a priority to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). In today’s post we cover a recent news item introducing this very decision made during WMO’s recent congress. Read along to find out  why they emphasize the importance ...[Read More]

The more the merrier – Interview with the two new Cryo ECS representatives

A women on the left in front of a glacier face and a women on the right on front of a city landscape.

After two years of great work, our current cryosphere division ECS representative TJ Young is passing on the task of representing the needs and wishes of the cryosphere division early career scientists (ECS). As they make up a majority of the EGU members, their representatives make sure to see their needs and voices heard. You might know that the EGU ECS community is represented by two union-level ...[Read More]

Lights out: cryosphere instruments perfectly placed to study solar eclipse

Lights out: cryosphere instruments perfectly placed to study solar eclipse

On 04 December 2021, only a handful of people in Antarctica were fortunate enough to experience a total eclipse. As well as spectacular views—including a brief window of totality that darkened the midnight sun for 2 minutes—this phenomenon is known to affect the flow of energy between the Northern and Southern hemispheres of the ionosphere. Because eclipses in Antarctica only happen once every ~20 ...[Read More]

Ice-hot news: A cryo-summary of the new IPCC assessment report!

Ice-hot news: A cryo-summary of the new IPCC assessment report!

We have waited eight years for it, and it is finally out: the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a.k.a. « IPCC AR6 »)! And it is more than 10,000 pages long across Working Groups! Fortunately, a synthesis report integrating the findings of all three working groups should be released in Autumn 2022. However, we, at the EGU Cryosphere Blog, thought it might be us ...[Read More]

Ice-hot news: The IPCC Special Report on the Oceans and the Cryosphere under Climate Change

Ice-hot news: The IPCC Special Report on the Oceans and the Cryosphere under Climate Change

You have probably heard the name “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)” mentioned frequently over the last few years. The IPCC is the United Nations body for assessing science related to climate change and it publishes global assessment reports on this topic every 5 to 10 years. Due to the current urgency of the global climate crisis and the need for more information by decision makers ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Into Iceberg Alley

Crew in hardhats and red safety gear bustle about, preparing our ship for departure. A whale spouts nearby in the Straits of Magellan, a fluke waving in brief salute, before it submerges again. Our international team of 29 scientists and 2 science communicators, led by co-Chief Scientists Mike Weber and Maureen Raymo, is boarding the JOIDES Resolution, a scientific drilling ship. We’re about to jo ...[Read More]

Ice-hot news: The cryosphere and the 1.5°C target

Ice-hot news: The cryosphere and the 1.5°C target

Every year again, the Conference of Parties takes place, an event where politicians and activists from all over the world meet for two weeks to discuss further actions concerning climate change. In the context the COP24, which started this Monday in Katowice (Poland), let’s revisit an important decision made three years ago, during the COP21 in Paris, and its consequences for the state of the cryo ...[Read More]