Cryospheric Sciences

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]

Did you know that snow is hot?

Ruzica Dadic & Martin Schneebeli September 9, 2022

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

Anja Rutishauser September 2, 2022

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

Jack Wilkin July 22, 2022

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

Levan Tielidze July 15, 2022

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

Michael Hartinger, Pippa Whitehouse, Mervyn Freeman, Terry Wilson, Shane Coyle, Shunrong Zhang July 8, 2022

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

Giovanni Baccolo and Lander Van Tricht July 1, 2022

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]

The Cryosphere meets the Twittersphere

Emma Pearce June 24, 2022

Twitter is a place that can be full of an overwhelming amount of information, and often it becomes difficult to hear about new information amongst the noise of all the tweeting. To help our fellow cryo-enthusiasts learn more about equality, diversity and accessibility within the cryosphere, we’re highlighting a few twitter accounts that we think everyone should follow! Gender equality: @womeninPol ...[Read More]

Cryo Adventures – Droning on glaciers and ice caps in Kyrgyzstan

Lander Van Tricht June 17, 2022

The Grigoriev ice cap, seen from drone perspective at about 1 km distance and at 4800 m a.s.l. [Credit: Lander Van Tricht]

Drones are not only a cool toy to play with. They are also a useful instrument to monitor and study glaciers and ice caps. By taking thousands of images flying above the ice, we can make 3D models of ice masses at centimetre resolution. Using drones, we can now survey small to medium sized glaciers and ice caps in unprecedented detail. In recent years, we have conducted several surveys on glaciers ...[Read More]

What are Snow Mechanics and why should we care?

Adrian McCallum June 10, 2022

Airbus A319 aircraft on Australian Antarctic Division's Wilkins ice runway. Photo credit: Australian Antarctic Division (@AusAntarctic #AusAntarctic).

Every time we walk, ski, drive or build upon snow, we’re relying upon the theory of Snow Mechanics; but what is that and why should we care? Mechanics is the engineering terminology used to describe “the branch of applied mathematics dealing with motion and forces producing motion” (Oxford Languages) or more simply, the study of motion, in our case the motion of snow. What causes snow to move? Ge ...[Read More]