A 10km-long, 4-km-wide and 350m-high cavity has recently been discovered under one of the fastest-flowing glaciers in Antarctica using different airborne and satellite techniques (see this press release and this study). This enormous cavity previously contained 14 billion tons of ice and formed between 2011 and 2016. This indicates that the bottom of the big glaciers on Earth can melt faster tha ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Cryo Connect presents: The top 50 media-covered cryosphere papers of 2018
Discover which cryospheric research articles were most successful in attracting media attention in 2018 according to the Altmetric score. Cryo Connect and Altmetric Scientists are generally aware of each others’ studies. But when a scientific study generates media interest, its impact can be boosted beyond the scientific community. The media can push the essence of scientific study to the broader ...[Read More]
A brief guide to Navigating EGU 2019!
Are you going to the EGU General Assembly in Vienna next week? If so, read on for a quick guide to navigating the week: Where to start, what to see and how to meet people and enjoy yourself! After all, the meeting is as much about the opportunities to meet scientists from all over the world as it is about the science itself. How on Earth do I know what is going on?! The EGU General Assembly (GA) i ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – 5th Snow Science Winter School
From February 17th to 23rd, 21 graduate students and postdoctorate researchers from around the world made their way to Hailuoto, a small island on the coast of Finland, to spend a week learning about snow on sea-ice for the 5th Snow Science Winter School. The course, jointly organized by the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landsca ...[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]
Image of the Week – The solid Earth: softer than you might think!
Global sea level is rising and will continue to do so over the next century, as has once again been shown in the recent IPCC special report on 1.5°C. But did you know that, in some places of our planet, local sea level is actually falling, and this due to rising of the continent itself?! Where is this happening? In places where huge ice sheets used to cover the land surface during the last ...[Read More]
Bridging the crevasse: working toward gender equity in the cryosphere
Today is International Women’s Day. As three early career glaciologists, we set out to investigate the state of gender diversity in the cryospheric sciences. Is there a better day for this than the day of recognition of the fight for women’s rights across the globe? “The extreme nature of high alpine and polar environments made the rhetoric of mountaineering and glaciology heroic and masculine, wh ...[Read More]
The hidden part of the cryosphere – Ice in caves
Fig. 1: Downloading meteorological parameters in a cave of the southeastern Alps [Credit: Renato R. Colucci (selfie)].
The cryosphere can be found in various places in many forms and shapes… in the atmosphere, on land and sea. A lesser known part of the cryosphere is hidden deep in the dark, in the cold-karstic areas of the planet: Ice caves! The ongoing climate change affecting ice all over the world is now rapidly melting these hidden ice masses as well. We therefore need to hurry up and try to collect as ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – When “Ice, Ice Baby” puts rocks “Under Pressure”
Bowie and Queen said it first, and Vanilla Ice brought it back. But now, I’ve set out to quantify it: Pressure. Rocks in glacial landscapes can experience many different kinds of pressure (forces), from sources like regional tectonics or even the weight of the glacier itself. Our hypothesis is that smaller-scale pressures, caused by the formation of ice in small bedrock cracks (frost-weathering), ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Seven weeks in Antarctica [and how to study its surface mass balance]
After only two months of PhD at the Laboratoire de Glaciologie of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium), I had the chance to participate in an ice core drilling campaign in the Princess Ragnhild coastal region, East Antarctica, during seven weeks in December 2018 – January 2019 for the Mass2Ant project. Our goal was to collect ice cores to better evaluate the evolution of the surf ...[Read More]