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]
Image of the Week – We walked the Talk to Everest
The 12 day “Walk the Talk” Field Conference and Community Consultation through Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal, discussed a wide range of research outputs with local communities, tourists, and officials. Topics covered glaciers, mountains, environmental and landscape change, Sherpa livelihoods, tourism, and natural hazards. The conference, organised by Himalayan Research Expeditions, was the first ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Delaying the flood with glacial geoengineering
As the climate is currently warming, many countries and cities are preparing to cope with one of its major impacts, namely sea-level rise. Up to now, the mitigation of climate change has mainly focused on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Large-scale geoengineering has also been proposed to remove carbon from the atmosphere or inject aerosols into the stratosphere to limit the rise in tem ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Why is ice so slippery?
Having spent most of my life in places where the temperature hardly ever falls below zero, my first winter in Sweden was painful. Especially for my bum, who met the ice quite unexpectedly. Reading the news this week, from reports of emergency services overwhelmed after so many people had slipped to a scientific study on how no shoes have a good enough grip, via advice on how to walk like a penguin ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – What’s Hot in the Cryosphere? A 2018 review
In 2018, NASA’s Operation IceBridge captured this image of a tabular iceberg off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, leading to a flurry of media excitement. In this blog post, we’ll look at some of the other big scientific discoveries of 2018 in the field of cryospheric sciences [Credit: NASA / Jeremy Harbeck, CC-BY 2.0].
Every year, humanity understands more and more about a remote and unforgiving component of the Earth system – the cryosphere. 2018 has been no exception, and in this blog post we’ll take a look at some of the biggest scientific findings of cryospheric science in 2018. We will then look forward to 2019 and beyond, to see what the future holds for these rapidly changing climate component ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Will Santa have to move because of Climate Change?
Because of global warming and polar amplification, temperature rises twice as fast at the North Pole than anywhere else on the planet. Could that be a problem for our beloved Santa Claus, who, according to the legend, lives there? It appears that Santa could very well have to move to one of its second residences before the end of this century. But even if he moves to another place, the smooth runn ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Permafrost features disappearing from subarctic peatlands
Remnants of palsa, most of which has already collapsed into surrounding pond [Credit: Mariana Verdonen].
Some of the most remarkable, marginal features of permafrost – palsas – are degrading and disappearing metre by metre from North European peatlands, and are driven close to extinction by the climate change. What are these permafrost features? A palsa is a peat mound with an icy core, which stays frozen throughout summer due to the insulating property of dry peat. These mounds can rise up to 10 met ...[Read More]