CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the Week – Receiving messages from the deep

March 10, 2023
Image of the Week – Receiving messages from the deep
‘Walter’ eyes us up as he takes a breather in one of our ocean access holes. [Natalie Robinson | NIWA]

The Weddell Seal pops his head up through the hole in the floor of the shipping container… for the fourth time today. The shipping container is one of several making up our field camp on sea ice, 40 km from Scott Base – situated on Ross Island, in the south-western Ross Sea. Today I talk about the sub-ice platelet layer, which provides the base for a rich marine environment. Generating super ...[Read More]

For Dummies: Radar altimetry for measuring ice sheet elevation changes

March 3, 2023
For Dummies: Radar altimetry for measuring ice sheet elevation changes
Greenland and Antarctica surface elevation changes from CryoSat-2. Credit: ESA, Inès Otosaka.

Does measuring the surface of the ice sheets provide more than superficial knowledge of their current status? Read further to find out why the answer is definitely yes! Measuring surface elevation changes actually tells us where Greenland and Antarctica are thinning or thickening and how much they contribute to sea level rise. Scientists have been doing this for the past three decades, so keep on ...[Read More]

Arctic Frontiers Emerging Leaders

February 24, 2023
Arctic Frontiers Emerging Leaders
Kabelvåg, Lofoten Islands, Arctic Norway [Credit: Jenny Arthur]

Here on the Cryoblog we often talk about the impacts of climate change in the Cryosphere. So now for something completely different: how does this fit into sustainable development in the Arctic? Here, I take you on a journey through the Arctic in a round-up of the recent Arctic Frontiers Emerging Leaders program, a unique early-career and mentoring program bringing together academic, industry, ind ...[Read More]

Enigmatic Climatic Event: Antarctic Cold Reversal

February 17, 2023
Enigmatic Climatic Event: Antarctic Cold Reversal
Figure 1. Dated glacier moraines from New Zealand from the period of Antarctic Cold Reversal (ka signifies thousand calendar years ago). Blue colour symbolizes the reconstructed glacier 12,600 thousand years ago. While line indicate reconstructed snowline or equilibrium line altitude (ELA). [Credit: Tielidze et al., 2023].

In this week’s blog, Levan Tielidze tells us about the insight into the response of mountain glaciers to the Antarctic Cold Reversal (ACR) event in New Zealand to better understand the climatic history of the Southern Hemisphere during the last deglaciation. The ACR was a cold period occurred in the Southern Hemisphere during the transition from the last glacial period to the current interglacial ...[Read More]

Perspective on Listening to Permafrost

February 10, 2023
Perspective on Listening to Permafrost
The Bayelva site (Svalbard, Ny-Ålesund) during polar night (January 28, 2022). Picture by Esther Horvath, Alfred Wegener Institute (Creative Commons Licence CC-BY 4.0)

> Reflections from an ongoing art-science research project Common Grounds < How to visualize thousands of thousands (> 20,000,000) of data points collected in the Arctic atmosphere and subsurface at a permafrost observatory over 25 years? How to tell the story of permafrost, ground that is permanently frozen and an important part of the cryosphere, that is currently warming and thawing at ...[Read More]

The Polar Night Week and the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System

February 3, 2023
The Polar Night Week and the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System
Moonrise over the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) during the 2023 Polar night Week. Credit: S. Aparicio.

In the early days of 2023, nearly 100 researchers gathered in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, one of the last permanently inhabited places before reaching the North Pole (see my previous blogpost about Svalbard). The Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) held its fifth Polar Night Week. SIOS is an international partnership of research institutions that study the environment and climate ...[Read More]

Image of the week – The gaze of the ice cap

January 27, 2023
Image of the week – The gaze of the ice cap
Slowly approaching an ice cap in northern Greenland. Credits: Giovanni Baccolo.

We are getting used to perceiving glaciers more and more distant and disconnected from our mountains. With each passing year, it is more difficult to observe them, reach them or climb them. They are becoming an exotic element of the Alpine imagination. When our gaze rests on a mountain glacier, with its crevasses and large moraines, we are filled with the fascination of someone observing a new nat ...[Read More]

Image of the week – Birds in the Arctic

January 20, 2023
Image of the week – Birds in the Arctic
Northern Gannet in flight in the Lofoten, Norway. Photo credit: L. Jongejans

I am a hobby ornithologist and love watching birds. It is fun and relaxing to search the trees or fields for feathered friends. One has to be aware of their surroundings, which can make birding even meditative. Here, I will tell you more about Arctic breeding birds, their population declines and I present to you three birds of the many I saw on my very first trips to the Arctic. Arctic breeding bi ...[Read More]

Did you know that thawing permafrost is impacting Arctic livelihoods already today?

January 13, 2023
Did you know that thawing permafrost is impacting Arctic livelihoods already today?
Figure 1: View from the helicopter on three houses outside Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada, June 2022. The town can be seen in the background in the upper right corner. [Credit: Lina Madaj]

Would you like to join me on a little trip up North today? We will be visiting a small community in the Canadian high Arctic – a community built on permafrost ground. This sounds pretty cool in the first place, but brings along quite a few challenges that most of us probably do not have to think about. Let me introduce you to Tuktoyaktuk, the community that is endangered to fall into the sea ...[Read More]

End-of-the-year special: this year’s Cryoblog

December 16, 2022
End-of-the-year special: this year’s Cryoblog
Created with FreeWordCloudGenerator.com

So this is the last post in 2022 for our blog. We have decided that this time, the topic will not be another exciting story about the science of ice and cold in their various forms. This time we are talking about the blog itself, so a kind of meta-post to take stock and understand a little better how our blog works, what it is about, and who our main authors are. To this purpose, we asked all the ...[Read More]