Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the Week – Climbing Everest and highlighting science in the mountains

Melanie Windridge September 14, 2018

Fig. 1: The view of Mount Everest and Khumbu Glacier from below Kala Patthar. The coloured tents of Base Camp can be seen stretched out alongside the glacier [Credit: Melanie Windridge].

Dr Melanie Windridge, a physicist and mountaineer, successfully summited Mount Everest earlier this year and has been working on an outreach programme to encourage young people’s interest in science and technology. Read about her summit climb, extreme temperatures, and the science supporting high-altitude mountaineering in our Image of the Week. It’s bigger than it looks! Experiencing the majesty ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – The shape of (frozen sea) water

Adam Bateson September 7, 2018

Polar sea ice exists as isolated units of ice that we describe as floes. These floes do not have a constant shape (see here for instance); they can vary from almost circular to being jagged and rectangular. However, sea ice models currently assume that all floes have the same shape. Much focus has been paid to the size of floes recently, but do we also need to reconsider how floe shape is t ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Stuck in the ice: could it have been predicted?

François Massonnet July 27, 2018

Figure 1: The RRS James Clark Ross stuck in the middle of Antarctic sea ice [Credit: British Antarctic Survey].

Expeditions in the Southern Ocean are invaluable opportunities to learn more about this fascinating but remote region of the world. However, sending vessels to navigate the hostile Antarctic waters is an expensive endeavor, not only financially but also from a human perspective. When vessels are forced to turn back due to hazardous conditions or, even worse, become stuck in the ice (as shown in ou ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – The future of Antarctic ice shelves

Kaitlin Naughten July 20, 2018

Climate change will increase ice shelf melting around Antarctica. That’s the not-very-surprising conclusion of a recent modelling study, resulting from a collaboration between Australian and German researchers. Here’s the less intuitive result: much of the projected melting is actually linked to a decrease in sea ice formation. Learn why in our Image of the Week… Different types ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Making waves: assessing supraglacial water storage for debris-covered glaciers

Scott Watson and Evan Miles July 13, 2018

A creeping flux of ice descends Everest, creating the dynamic environment of Khumbu Glacier. Ice and snow tumble, debris slumps, ice cliffs melt, englacial cavities collapse, ponds form and drain, all responding to a variable energy balance. Indeed, Khumbu Glacier is a debris-covered glacier, meaning it features a layer of sediment, rocks and house-sized boulders that covers the ice beneath. Recen ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Climate feedbacks demystified in polar regions

David Docquier July 6, 2018

Over the recent decades, the Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the whole globe. This stronger warming, called “Arctic Amplification“, especially occurs in the Arctic because ice, ocean and atmosphere interact strongly, sometimes amplifying the warming, sometimes reducing it. These interactions are called “feedbacks” and are illustrated in our Image of the Week. Let’s ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Inspiring Girls!

Emma C. Smith June 29, 2018

Figure 1: Participants of the 2018 Inspiring Girls Instructor Workshop, hosted by Girls on Ice Switzerland [Credit: Mother of Kathrin Naegeli]

What, you may ask, are this group of 22 women doing standing around a fire-pit and what does this have to do with the EGU Cryosphere blog? This group of scientists, artists, teachers, and coaches gathered 2 weeks ago in Switzerland to learn how to become instructors on an Inspiring Girls Expedition. But what, you may ask again, is an Inspiring Girls Expedition? Well read on to find out more… ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Quantifying Antarctica’s ice loss

Céline Heuzé June 22, 2018

It is this time of the year, where any news outlet is full of tips on how to lose weight rapidly to become beach-body ready. According to the media avalanche following the publication of the ice sheet mass balance inter-comparison exercise (IMBIE) team’s Nature paper, Antarctica is the biggest loser out there. In this Image of the Week, we explain how the international team managed to weight Anta ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Orange is the new white

Simon Gascoin, Marie Dumont and Ghislain Picard June 15, 2018

On 22 March 2018, large amounts of Saharan dust were blown off the Libyan coast to be further deposited in the Mediterranean, turning the usually white snow-capped Mountains of Turkey, Romania and even Caucasus into Martian landscapes. As many people were struck by this peculiar color of the snow, they started documenting this event on social media using the “#orangesnow hashtag”. Instagram and t ...[Read More]

What’s on at POLAR18?

Emma C. Smith June 13, 2018

Next Tuesday (19th June) the POLAR18 Open Science Conference kicks off in Davos, Switzerland. We have put together a quick guide about events that might be of interest to you during the week! Conferences are about the science, of course, but the social side is just as important 🙂 What is POLAR18? The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that the POLAR18 conference is, in fact, a collection of di ...[Read More]