Cryospheric Sciences

Did you know…about regenerated glaciers?

Giovanni Baccolo October 2, 2020

Fig. 1 The Eastern Fellaria glacier, in the Bernina massif (Central Alps). Its lower sector is a beautiful example of a regenerated glacier. Photo credit: Riccardo Scotti.

Ice caps, valley glaciers, cirque glaciers, piedmont glaciers, ice sheets… I’m guessing that if you are a glaciology enthusiast, you have already heard about these types of glaciers. But you probably don’t know anything about regenerated glaciers, am I right? Well, you are in the right place! Let’s find out more about this little-known glacier type. Classifying glaciers Glaciers are classified on ...[Read More]

Climate Change & Cryosphere – A brief history of A68, the world’s largest iceberg

Thomas Rackow & Daniela Jansen September 25, 2020

In July 2017, the world’s largest iceberg known as A68 calved from the Larsen C Ice Shelf, located in the western Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Since then, A68 has lost two chunks of ice, A68-B and A68-C, but still remains a giant after more than 3 years. How did it feel to be the greatest, A68? Being the greatest With a length of 175 km and being about 50 km wide, this giant iceberg also appropriately ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – What darkens snow and ice?

Biagio Di Mauro September 18, 2020

“Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow”. Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1 (W. Shakespeare) Snow and ice are not always as pristine as one may think. If you have ever walked on a glacier or on a snowfield during summer, you might have already noticed that. In fact, both snow and ice are often darkened by impurities. In this blog post, you will learn about the main processes leading to ice and snow darkeni ...[Read More]

Climatic drivers of permafrost mounds in North American peatlands

Richard Fewster September 11, 2020

Figure 1. Palsas (permafrost mounds) at Stordalen Mire, Abisko, Sweden. Photo credit: Graeme Swindles.

Permafrost, or perennially frozen, peatlands are among the world’s largest terrestrial carbon stores and are particularly threatened by warming climates. Understanding how modern climate controls the distribution of permafrost peatlands is crucial for making confident predictions of their past and future extents. What are permafrost peatlands? Peatlands are wetlands that develop where cold, wet co ...[Read More]

Climate Change & Cryosphere – How the Chalaati Glacier (Georgian Caucasus) changed since the Little Ice Age

Levan Tielidze September 4, 2020

Chalaati Glacier is one of the largest glaciers in the Greater Caucasus and has undergone expansive mass loss. In this week’s blog post, Levan Tielidze tells us about Chalaati Glacier variations in the past centuries. His recent study was conducted based on surface exposure dating technique, dendrochronology (tree ring analysis), lichenometry, and satellite imagery. They found out that the Chalaat ...[Read More]

Climate Change & Cryosphere – Glacier retreat poses new challenges in the Central Andes

David Farías-Barahona and Alvaro Ayala August 28, 2020

Glaciers on the slopes of San Jose Volcano, Maipo River Basin [Credit: Thomas Schatte].

When you hear of Chilean glaciers, you probably think about the large glaciers of Patagonia. However, glaciers can be found further north in Chile as well (see this previous post). While the melting of the Patagonian glaciers mainly affects the global human population by contributing to sea level rise, the retreat of glaciers in central Chile affects the local human population directly in terms of ...[Read More]

Exploring the hidden plumbing of glaciers with Cryoegg

Mike Prior-Jones July 17, 2020

Plumbing is something we take for granted: the pipes that bring us water to wash and drink, and the pipes that take the waste water away again. We see the taps and basins in our kitchen and bathroom – but the pipes are hidden away under the floor or inside the walls – and we mostly ignore them until there’s a leak or a blockage! It turns out that glaciers have plumbing too – and ...[Read More]

The future of Arctic sea ice

David Docquier July 10, 2020

Figure 1: Sketch that shows the presence (in white, ‘ice covered’) and absence (in blue, ‘ice free’, i.e. less than 1 million km2 of sea ice) of Arctic sea ice for different levels of warming (X axis) and the different months of the year (Y axis), based on the extrapolation of observations. The estimated warming in 2018 is marked with ‘today’. Figure credit: Fig. 1 of Notz and Stroeve (2018).

The illustration above shows a sketch of the evolution of Arctic sea ice for different levels of warming and the different months of the year, based on the simple extrapolation of observations. A new study, in which I was involved, uses the latest available global climate models and shows that the Arctic Ocean could become practically ice free at the end of the summer for the first time before 205 ...[Read More]

Image of the week – The curious case of “glacier mice”

Scott Hotaling July 3, 2020

Did you know that glacier mice can be found at the surface of some glaciers? They’re not the tiny rodent you might be imagining, but actually little balls of moss, which appear to be full of mysteries still to be uncovered… What is a “glacier mouse”? On glaciers around the world, mostly at high-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, little balls of moss develop and move around the ice. Origi ...[Read More]

Careers outside of academia

Jenny Turton June 26, 2020

Is it time to step into your new career? Photo credit: Maria Tsekhmistrenko, Imaggeo

You’ve just finished your PhD or postdoc… now what? Perhaps you’re thinking of a non-academic career, but don’t know where to start, or which skills you need? Up to 70% of scientists move into non-academic careers after graduation (The Royal Society, 2010). But finding useful information and advice is hard. In today’s blog, we summarise the EGU Webinar ‘Careers outside of academia’ which took plac ...[Read More]