CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Regular Author

Image of the week – How hard can it be to melt a pile of ice?!

February 2, 2018
Image of the week – How hard can it be to melt a pile of ice?!
Intriguing pile of ice in Gothenburg [Credit: C. Heuzé]

Snow, sub-zero temperatures for several days, and then back to long grey days of near-constant rain. A normal winter week in Gothenburg, south-west Sweden. Yet as I walk home in the evening, I can’t help but notice that piles of ice have survived. Using the equations that I normally need to investigate the demise of Greenland glaciers, I want to know: how hard can it be to melt this pile of ice by ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Ice caps on Mars?!

January 19, 2018
Image of the Week – Ice caps on Mars?!

Much like our Planet Earth, Mars has polar ice caps too, one for each pole: the Martian North Polar Ice Cap (shown on our image of the week) and the Southern Polar Ice Cap. Yet, their composition and structure reveals these ice caps are quite different from those of Planet Earth… Mars refresher   As a refresher, here are some Mars facts: Mars is the 4th planet from the sun. Its equatorial dia ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Arctic changes in a warming climate

January 12, 2018
Image of the Week – Arctic changes in a warming climate
Fig. 1: Schematic representation of major changes in the Arctic regions caused by global warming [Credit: Fig. 1.2 of AMAP (2017), adapted from US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)].

The Arctic is changing rapidly and nothing indicates a slowdown of these changes in the current context. The Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA) report published by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) describes the present situation and the future evolution of the Arctic, the local and global implications, and mitigation and adaptation measures. The report is base ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Of comparing oranges and apples in the sea-ice context

October 27, 2017
Image of the Week – Of comparing oranges and apples in the sea-ice context
Fig. 1: Model-to-observation comparison of sea-ice variables might best be conducted at a middle-ground "location" (along the x axis) somewhere in between what the models compute (left) and what satellites observe at the top of the atmosphere (right). Obs Oper = Observation Operators, SIC = sea-ice concentration, ISF = ice surface fraction [Credit: Lavergne, 2017 ].

In the last fifty years, models and observations have enabled us to better understand sea-ice processes. On the one hand, global climate models have been developed, accounting for the sea-ice component in the climate system. On the other hand, satellite instruments have been developed to monitor the “real” sea-ice evolution. These satellite observations are often used to evaluate climate models. H ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Think ‘tank’: oceanography in a rotating pool

October 20, 2017

To study how the ocean behaves in the glacial fjords of Antarctica and Greenland, we normally have to go there on big icebreaker campaigns. Or we rely on modelling results, especially so to determine what happens when the wind or ocean properties change. But there is also a third option that we tend to forget about: we can recreate the ocean in a lab. This is exactly what our Bergen-Gothenburg tea ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – ROVing in the deep…

September 15, 2017

Robotics has revolutionised ocean observation, allowing for regular high resolution measurements even in remote locations or harsh conditions. But the ice-covered regions remain undersampled, especially the ice-ocean interface, as it is still too risky and complex to pilot instruments in this area. This is why it is exactly the area of interest of the paper from which our Image of the week is take ...[Read More]

Image of the week – Micro-organisms on Ice!

August 11, 2017
Image of the week – Micro-organisms on Ice!
Figure 1: Investigating micro-organisms on Perito Moreno. Left – Sampling on the glacier surface inside a cryoconite hole. Right – Scientists from the University Bicocca of Milan at work performing analysis in the temporary laboratory set up in Buscaini Refugee (shelter) [Credit: Alessio Romeo – La Venta Esplorazioni Geografiche]

The cold icy surface of a glacier doesn’t seem like an environment where life should exist, but if you look closely you may be surprised! Glaciers are not only locations studied by glaciologists and physical scientists, but are also of great interest to microbiologists and ecologists. In fact, understanding the interaction between ice and microbiology is essential to fully understand the gla ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – A new way to compute ice dynamic changes

August 4, 2017

Up to now, ice sheet mass changes due to ice dynamics have been computed from satellite observations that suffer from sparse coverage in time and space. A new method allows us to compute these changes on much wider temporal and spatial scales. But how does this method work? Let us discover the different steps by having a look at Enderby Land in East Antarctica, for which ice velocities are shown i ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – The birth of a sea-ice dragon!

June 30, 2017
Image of the Week – The birth of a sea-ice dragon!
Fig. 1: Dragon-skin ice observation in Terra Nova Bay by the Nathan B Palmer research team in April 2017. [Credit: IMAS ].

Dragon-skin ice may sound like the name of an episode of the Game of Thrones fantasy franchise. However, this fantasy name hides a rare and bizarre type of ice formation that you can see in our Image of the Week. It has been recently observed by the “Polynyas, ice production and seasonal evolution in the Ross Sea” (PIPERS) research team in Antarctica. This bizarre phenomenon caused by ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Ice lollies falling from the sky

June 2, 2017

You have more than probably eaten many lollipops as a kid (and you might still enjoy them). The good thing is that you do not necessarily need to go to the candy shop to get them but you can simply wait for them to fall from the sky and eat them for free. Disclaimer: this kind of lollies might be slightly different from what you expect… Are lollies really falling from the sky? Eight years ag ...[Read More]