Cryospheric Sciences

Discover the CordillerICE project!

Gaston Bidou, Domitille Dufour, Emma Denise and Maud Bernat November 18, 2022

Meet the team! Left to right: Emma, Maud, Gaston, Domitille. Picture taken in an ice cave near the Glacier de la Selle, France. Photo credit: Bastien Levy.

In high-school, I learned in a textbook that glaciers are melting. My teacher said that what was written in that textbook was right, and that was it. There was no proof, no explanation, no scientist’s testimony. All of that, I discovered much later during my studies in the geosciences. Yet as the global temperatures keep rising, and our politicians apply rigorously the “keep calm and carry on” mod ...[Read More]

Highlighted Paper – Welcome to the microbial BBQ in Arctic Sea ice

Stefan "Zwiebel" Thiele November 10, 2022

Figure 1: The brown spots are sea ice algae (aka vegan BBQ patties) in the Arctic sea ice, can you see them? [Credit: Stefan Thiele]

There, what is this, spoke the sea ice algae. Is this the first light of dawn? Is it finally this time of the year again? Spring…the best time of the year…the BBQ season? And in the little brine pockets all around the sea ice, the bacterial and archaeal community stirred alive. BBQ? Did somebody mention BBQ? Let’s have some vegan burgers! And so spring began inside of the Arctic sea ic ...[Read More]

A little guide to find your way through the Cryo-Jungle?

EGU Cryoblog November 4, 2022

Are you starting your studies in cryospheric sciences, or are coming into our field from another subject? If so, you may have unsuspectingly waded into a (very thick) soup of acronyms! Don’t fret–here is your “one stop shop” that tells you where to look for more information! Early Career Organisations Unless you’re fortunate enough to be working in a polar-oriented institute (some of our previous ...[Read More]

Hidden beneath the surface – what can we learn from an ice sheet’s internal stratigraphy?

Julien Bodart, Marie Cavitte and Johannes Sutter October 28, 2022

The ski-equipped Polar-6 Basler aircraft from the Alfred-Wegener Institute (AWI) flying an ice-penetrating radar from Rothera research base. The radar antennas are visible under the wings. Photo credit: Michael Fischer, AWI.

Hidden beneath the surface of ice sheets lies an intricate structure carrying a unique fingerprint of past ice flow and climate conditions. Disentangling the drivers of an ice sheet’s enigmatic stratigraphy could theoretically unravel the ice sheet’s past evolution and provide a much clearer picture of things to come in the future. One way to detect this mysterious stratigraphy is to use ice-penet ...[Read More]

The Global Arctic, a personal perspective on interdisciplinary research

Ugo Nanni October 21, 2022

A not so common vision of the Arctic. The small yellow/red star shows the location of Svalbard, where the summer school took place. This is the triptychial projection of the world. Figure credit: Map modified from Grieger, B. (2019). https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201834841.

Around the summer solstice of 2022, a small group of twenty young researchers met in Svalbard, a small island lost between Norway and the North Pole. The Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research wanted to bring us together around the theme of “The Global Arctic“. The scope of this summer school was to “produce a better understanding of the significance of the concept of Gl ...[Read More]

Did you know the differences between Arctic and Antarctic sea ice?

Hayat Nasirova & David Docquier October 14, 2022

Figure 1: Satellite observations of (top) Arctic and (bottom) Antarctic sea-ice concentration in (left) March 2020 and (right) September 2020. [Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, https://nsidc.org/home].

If you look at the maps in Figure 1, you will quickly see that sea ice is present in both polar regions (Arctic at the top, Antarctic at the bottom). Despite this apparent similarity, some differences exist between Arctic (in the Northern Hemisphere) and Antarctic (in the Southern Hemisphere) sea ice. We provide a brief explanation of two key differences in this post. Geography The first main diff ...[Read More]

The intriguing order of cold terrains

Giovanni Baccolo October 6, 2022

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

Reza Ershadi September 30, 2022

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?

Quentin Dalaiden & Bianca Mezzina September 23, 2022

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

Francesco Avanzi September 16, 2022

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]