CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Cryospheric Sciences

The intriguing order of cold terrains

October 6, 2022
The intriguing order of cold terrains
Beautiful stone circles forming a stone net in the Kronprins Christian Land (Northern Greenland) [Credit: Giovanni Baccolo].

Do you know what the periglacial environment is? Well, the word periglacial refers to those environments which are somehow sculpted by seasonal freeze and thaw cycles. The alternation of freezing and thawing conditions can change the landscape, creating some spectacular landforms. Stone circles are certainly among the most mysterious and fascinating. Come and discover them! Some definitions Glacia ...[Read More]

phase-sensitive Radio Echo Sounder, a.k.a. pRES, For Dummies

September 30, 2022
phase-sensitive Radio Echo Sounder, a.k.a. pRES, For Dummies
Figure 1. pRES with four antennas mounted behind an autonomous ice rover to collect polarimetric radar data over the Ekström ice shelf - Antarctica (ReMeltRadar2021-22). Photo credit: Reza Ershadi.

Greetings! My name is Reza. I’m (still) A PhD candidate in Geophysics and Glaciology at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Today, I will tell you all about a device named pRES, a radar system designed to study ice. Well, pRES and I have had an immense love/hate relationship during the last four years. It is one of the main tools I have used during my PhD, working in the Alps and Antarctica. I ...[Read More]

Winds and Antarctic sea-ice cover: what is the role of human activities?

September 23, 2022
Winds and Antarctic sea-ice cover: what is the role of human activities?
Sea ice, i.e. frozen ice, at the surface of the ocean © flickr.com.

We may not often think about it, but climate in Antarctica can be very different depending on where we are exactly (do not expect palm trees though!). Winds play a big role in shaping these differences, which are reflected – among other things! – on sea ice. But how are these winds related to the large-scale atmospheric circulation, and are we having an impact on them? Dear readers, pl ...[Read More]

Why the 2022 Italian snow drought matters to you

September 16, 2022
Why the 2022 Italian snow drought matters to you
2022 was a particularly poor snow season across the Italian Alps, with estimated anomalies in Snow Water Equivalent compared to the last 12 years well below -75% at places. Photo credit: S3M Italy by CIMA Research Foundation, background layer is from the ESRI Satellite Theme.

June 2022: I was discussing the ongoing drought with my family over lunch, when my dad pointed to me and summarized things as follows: “You know, less snow in winter means less water in summer!” I almost choked … what? Not only was it the first time I realized my family had been listening to my scientific anecdotes for years, but I also had concrete evidence now that snow was entering public ...[Read More]

Did you know that snow is hot?

September 9, 2022
Did you know that snow is hot?
Figure 1: MicroCT images of fresh snow on melting sea ice during the late summer phase of the MOSAiC expedition a) and snow at the same location six hours later (b). The large structures at the bottom of a) show the melting sea ice surface, also known as the surface scattering layer. [Credit: Ruzica Dadic]

When I was a student, Martin told me matter-of-factly that snow is hot. I probably looked as baffled as I felt (and you are probably doing the same). Were we talking about the same thing? Continue reading to discover why snow is hot! Discovering that snow is hot So why is snow hot? Most snow under Earth’s environmental conditions has a homologous temperature Th close to 1. The homologous temperatu ...[Read More]

Cryo Adventures – Installing a weather station on the Greenland Ice Sheet

September 2, 2022
Cryo Adventures – Installing a weather station on the Greenland Ice Sheet
Putting the final touches on the “old” weather station (right) and newly setup GC-Net station (center) at NEEM before leaving them for a year of measurements. Photo credit: Anja Rutishauser.

Soaking up the sun and recharging batteries on a peaceful and quiet summer day, or fighting to stay upright during extreme snow storms in the middle of winter, while continuously recording valuable air temperature, pressure, wind-speed and so much more – such is the life of an automatic weather station on the Greenland ice sheet. Even though they are so remote, sitting by themselves surround ...[Read More]

Cryo History – Extent of South Georgia Glaciation during the Last Glacial Maximum

July 22, 2022
Cryo History – Extent of South Georgia Glaciation during the Last Glacial Maximum
Figure 1: The different hypotheses for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ice extent in South Georgia. Black line = big ice hypothesis (Graham et al., 2017); purple line = little-big ice hypothesis (Barnes et al., 2016); red line = little ice hypothesis (Hodgson et al., 2014).

There has been considerable disagreement amongst researchers concerning the extent of South Georgia’s ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The sub-Antarctic islands (those below the polar front) may have been completely glaciated during previous glacials, and the last largest extent of the South Georgia ice sheet was during the LGM, about 21,000 years ago. But glaciologists don’t agree ...[Read More]

A new glacier chronology from New Zealand

July 15, 2022
A new glacier chronology from New Zealand
Figure 1. An example of a dated moraine landform from the Southern Alps. Yellow dots indicate the location of the samples. The black ages are from boulders while the blue ages are from bedrock. The dimension of each age is a thousand years old. The red initials indicate sample names (Credit: Tielidze et al., 2022).

In this week’s blog, Levan Tielidze tells us about the new glacier history from the Southern Alps of New Zealand, an important piece of information to better understand the climatic history of Earth during the Quaternary, the current geologic period. Quaternary glaciations Geochronological dating of glacial moraines is useful for determining the extent and timing of past glaciation and for reconst ...[Read More]

Lights out: cryosphere instruments perfectly placed to study solar eclipse

July 8, 2022
Lights out: cryosphere instruments perfectly placed to study solar eclipse
The view from the path of totality in West Antarctica during the eclipse. Photo credit: Jesse Norquay, accessed from https://antarcticsun.usap.gov/science/4712/

On 04 December 2021, only a handful of people in Antarctica were fortunate enough to experience a total eclipse. As well as spectacular views—including a brief window of totality that darkened the midnight sun for 2 minutes—this phenomenon is known to affect the flow of energy between the Northern and Southern hemispheres of the ionosphere. Because eclipses in Antarctica only happen once every ~20 ...[Read More]

Summer 2022: A perfect storm for Alpine glaciers

July 1, 2022
Summer 2022: A perfect storm for Alpine glaciers
The Kleinfleiss glacier in the Hohe Tauern region of the Eastern Alps. Credits: https://www.foto-webcam.eu/.

The summer of 2022 is shaping up to be a perfect storm for Alpine glaciers. By a strange coincidence, all the factors that could adversely affect glacial dynamics seem to have come into agreement. Let’s find out why. What controls the behavior of Alpine glaciers? Snow, temperature, weather conditions and the properties of snow and ice. These are the most important factors governing the life ...[Read More]