CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Interview

Introducing the new chief editors of the cryo blog

January 20, 2026
Introducing the new chief editors of the cryo blog
Fig. 1: Incoming and outgoing chief editors. From left to right: Leah Muhle, Mack Baysinger, Loeka Jongejans, Maria Scheel, Lina Madaj and Emma Pearce. [Credits: the chief editors]

New year, new team! We have some changes in our editorial team and would like to introduce our new chief editors to you today – please say hi to Mack and Leah! Mack and Leah will be taking over the role as chief editors from Maria Scheel, Lina Madaj, Emma Pearce and Loeka Jongejans. You might have read their names before as authors or editors on some of our very recent posts. From January on ...[Read More]

Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 5

October 10, 2025
Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 5
Figure 1: The Zugzpitze mountain in Garmish, Germany. Here, our interviewee (Prof. Micahel Krautblatter) has spent countless hours of his PhD thesis research, and continues to visit the mountain in his reasearch as a senior researcher at the Technical University of Munich [Credit: Wikipedia, user Octagon]

This miniseries features the tradition of ‘PhD hat’ making in German research institutes and universities. For those of you unfamiliar with this idea (as I once was), this is one of the final milestones a graduate student has before they are officially a “Dr.”. Upon the successful defense of a thesis, the labmates of the PhD student craft a graduation hat from a mishmash of scrap cardboard and mem ...[Read More]

Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 4

June 27, 2025
Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 4
Figure 1 : Dorothea stands in front of a freshly excavated snow pit (near Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard) and gets ready to carry out an experiment as part of the data collection for her PhD. [Credit: Guy Hillyard]

This miniseries features the tradition of ‘PhD hat’ making in German research institutes and universities. For those of you unfamiliar with this idea (as I once was), this is one of the final milestones a graduate student has before they are officially a “Dr.”. Upon the successful defense of a thesis, the labmates of the PhD student craft a graduation hat from a mishmash of scrap cardboard and mem ...[Read More]

Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 3

May 4, 2025
Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 3
Figure 1: Izabella and Ramesh on the day they submitted their PhD thesis in Golm, Germany [Credit: Izabella Baisheva]

This miniseries features the tradition of ‘PhD hat’ making in German research institutes and universities. For those of you unfamiliar with this idea (as I once was), this is one of the final milestones a graduate student has before they are officially a “Dr.”. Upon the successful defense of a thesis, the labmates of the PhD student craft a graduation hat from a mishmash of scrap cardboard and mem ...[Read More]

Feeling (un)frozen lands: What we can learn from research on ecological grief

and April 4, 2025
Light shines through the edge of melting ice on a rock.
Melting snow. [Credit: Steven Gibbons, distributed by imaggeo.egu.eu]

Retreating glaciers, shrinking sea ice or thawing permafrost – many of you might have witnessed formerly familiar landscapes being transformed by climate change over the last years, maybe even beyond recognition. And perhaps these undeniable changes have left you feeling sad, angry or anxious about the future, fearing what lies ahead. But did you know there is an entire academic field out there re ...[Read More]

Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 2

March 21, 2025
A group of people standing around a person holding a decorated hat in their hand.
Figure 1. Tina and her colleagues investigating the PhD Hat, on the day of her PhD defense [Credit: Tommi Odenthal]

This miniseries features the tradition of ‘PhD hat’ making in German research institutes and universities. For those of you unfamiliar with this idea (as I once was), this is one of the final milestones a graduate student has before they are officially a “Dr.”. Upon the successful defense of a thesis, the labmates of the PhD student craft a graduation hat from a mishmash of scrap cardboard and mem ...[Read More]

Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 1

February 21, 2025
Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 1
Figure 1: Torben at the moment he received his PhD hat from his peers, at his defense in 2024 at the University of Potsdam. [Credit: Mack Baysinger]

This miniseries features the tradition of ‘PhD hat’ making in German research institutes and universities. For those of you unfamiliar with this idea (as I once was), this is one of the final milestones a graduate student has before they are officially a “Dr.”. Upon the successful defense of a thesis, the peers of the PhD student craft a graduation hat from a mishmash of scrap cardboard and memora ...[Read More]

Happy birthday to the Cryoblog!

December 6, 2024
Collage of four people with the heading
Here are the four interviewed former chief editors from left to right: Giovanni Baccolo, Sophie Berger, Clara Burgard and Nanna Karlsson (Credit: Maria Scheel).

  The EGU Cryosphere Blog is now 10 years old: Happy Birthday! It all started in December 2014 with this blog post from Nanna Karlsson, and now counts 452 blog posts across 25 blog categories, including winning three Best EGU blog posts (2016, 2019 and 2021). 881 different (hash)tags were used in our blog posts, with way more counts on Antarctica and climate than the Arctic. Since the start, ...[Read More]

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

April 28, 2023
A women on the left in front of a glacier face and a women on the right on front of a city landscape.
Your new EGU Cryo ECS representatives for 2023 - 2025: left: Ann-Sofie Zinck, right: Lu Zhou.

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]

3 Reasons to engage in early career networks

March 24, 2023
3 Reasons to engage in early career networks

There are several early career groups, which are affiliated with cryosphere-based research in one way or another. APECS (Association of Polar Early Career Scientists) is an international network that is present during many occasions and events in the world of polar research. Have you ever wondered why busy early career researchers (ECRs) use their time also for volunteering in such groups? Today, ...[Read More]