CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the Week

Image of the Week – What an ice hole!

November 25, 2016
Image of the Week – What an ice hole!
A schematic representation of what causes polynyas to open [Credit: Céline Heuzé]

Over the summer, I got excited… the Weddell Polynya was seemingly re-opening! ”The what?” asked my new colleagues. So today, after brief mentions in past posts, it is time to explain what a polynya is. Put it simply, a polynya, from the Russian word for “ice hole”, is a hole in the sea-ice cover. That means that in the middle of winter, the sea ice locally and naturally opens and reveals the ocean ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Goodness gracious, great balls of ice!

November 18, 2016
Image of the Week – Goodness gracious, great balls of ice!
Ice balls on Stroomi beach, Estonia. [Credit: Aleksandr Abrosimov, Wikimedia ].

At first glance our image of the week may look like an ordinary stoney beach…but if you look more closely you will see that this beach is not, in fact, covered in stones or pebbles but balls of ice! We have written posts about many different weird and wonderful ice formations and phenomena (e.g. hair ice or ice tsunamis) here at the EGU Cryosphere blog and here is another one to add to the l ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Climate Change and the Cryosphere

November 11, 2016
Image of the Week – Climate Change and the Cryosphere
Schematic summary of the dominant observed variations in the cryosphere. [Credit: fig 4.25 from IPCC (2013) ].

While the first week of COP22 – the climate talks in Marrakech – is coming to an end, the recent election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States casts doubt over the fate of the Paris Agreement and more generally the global fight against climate change. In this new political context, we must not forget about the scientific evidence of climate change! Our figure of the week, tod ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Inside a Patagonian Glacier

November 4, 2016
Image of the Week – Inside a Patagonian Glacier
Figure 1: A speleologist descending inside a glacier cave of the Grey Glacier [Credit: Tommaso Santagata/ La Venta]

Chilean Patagonia hosts many of the most inhospitable glaciers on the planet – in areas of extreme rainfall and strong winds. These glaciers are also home to some of the most spectacular glacier caves on Earth, with dazzlingly blue ice and huge vertical shafts (moulins). These caves give us access to the heart of the glaciers and provide an opportunity to study the microbiology and water drainage ...[Read More]

Image of The Week – Plumes of water melting Greenland’s tidewater glaciers

October 28, 2016

Loss of ice from The Greenland Ice Sheet currently contributes approximately 1 mm/year to global sea level (Enderlin et al., 2014). The most rapidly changing and fastest flowing parts of the ice sheet are tidewater glaciers, which transport ice from the interior of the ice sheet directly into the ocean. In order to better predict how Greenland will contribute to future sea level we need to know mo ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Listening to the Snow

October 21, 2016
Image of the Week — Listening to the Snow
E. Bagshaw (University of Cardiff, UK) listening for the bleep from a wireless sensor buried in the snow a few hundred metres away. [Credit N. B. Karlsson].

When working in the middle of an ice sheet, you rarely get to experience the amazing wildlife of the polar regions. So what are we doing hundreds of kilometres from the coast with an animal tracker device? We are listening to the snow of course! It is not crazy; It is what Image of the Week today is all about! Going Wireless In June 2016, Liz Bagshaw and I travelled to the EGRIP (East Greenland Ic ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – The Polar Hole!

October 14, 2016
Image of the Week – The Polar Hole!
Figure 1: Mean sea-ice thickness for November 2010 from CryoSat-2 satellite measurements. [Credit: The data processing of CryoSat-2 sea-ice thickness is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Funding: 50EE1008) and data of November 2010 are provided by meereisportal.de (Funding: REKLIM-2013-04) ].

Have you ever stumbled upon a satellite picture showing observations of the Arctic or Antarctic? You often see a circle where there is no data around the exact location of the geographic pole – as you can see in our Image of the Week. A few days ago, I wanted to explain this to one of my friends and turned to my favourite search engine for help. My search turned up a tremendous amount of sto ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — FRISP 2016

October 7, 2016
Image of the Week — FRISP 2016
Group picture of the FRISP 2016 meeting [Credit: Anna Wåhlin]

The Forum for Research into Ice Shelf Processes, aka FRISP, is an international meeting bringing together glaciologists and oceanographers. There are no parallel sessions; everyone attends everyone else’s talk and comment on their results, and the numerous breaks and long dinners encourage new and interdisciplinary collaborations. In fact, each year, a few presentations are the result of a previou ...[Read More]

Image of The Week – Prize Polar Pictures!

September 30, 2016
Image of The Week – Prize Polar Pictures!
Permafrost thawing and its impacts on reindeer breeding.. This figure was created by Noémie Ross - a young graphic designer and illustrator from Montréal, Canada., as part of the ‘A Frozen-Ground Cartoon’ project. It won 1st place at the 2016 Fall APECS International Polar week figure competition. Click here to enlarge the image.

Last week was the Fall APECS International Polar Week, designed to promote and celebrate the great collaborative science that goes on around the world to further our understanding of the polar regions. Part of this celebration was a figure competition, to find the most “eye-catching, informative and inspiring” figures that illustrate aspects of polar science. What better, we thought, t ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — ice tsunamis !

September 23, 2016
Image of the Week — ice tsunamis !
A pile-up ice shove at Brighton Beach, Winsconsin, in March 2009. [Credit: bigcityal via Wikimedia ]

“Tsunami“ is a word that became world famous after the so-called Christmas tsunami in 2004, when enormous waves hit the shores around the Indian Ocean with disastrous consequences for countries such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, Somalia and many others. But did you know that tsunamis can be icy? An ice tsunami is one of the many names associated with ice shoves (or ivu, shore ice override, i ...[Read More]