If you didn't find what you was looking for try searching again.
This is it! The new European horizon 2020 project on Oldest Ice has been launched and the teams are already heading out to the field, but what does “Old Ice” really mean? Where can we find it and why should we even care? This is what we (Marie, Olivier and Brice) will try to explain somewhat. Why do we care about old ice, ice cores and past climate? Unravelling past climate and how it responded to ...[Read More]
Looking out over the sea on a quiet day with no wind, the word “flat” would certainly pop up in your mind to describe the sea surface. However, this serene view of a flat sea surface is far from accurate at the global scale. The apparent simplicity behind the concept of sea level hides more complex science that we hope to explain in a simple manner in today’s “For Dummies” post, which will g ...[Read More]
“Tsunami“ is a word that became world famous after the so-called Christmas tsunami in 2004, when enormous waves hit the shores around the Indian Ocean with disastrous consequences for countries such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, Somalia and many others. But did you know that tsunamis can be icy? An ice tsunami is one of the many names associated with ice shoves (or ivu, shore ice override, i ...[Read More]
Who would think that one of the world’s most active volcano shelters the southernmost persistent ice mass in Europe!? Yes, you can find ice inside Mount Etna! Located at an altitude of about 2,040 m above sea level, the Ice Cave (Grotta del Gelo) is well known among Mt Etna’s volcanic caves due to the presence of columns of ice on its walls and floor which occupy about the 30% of the ...[Read More]
Ice streams discharge approximately 90% of the Antarctic ice onto ice shelves , and ultimately into the sea into the sea (Bamber et al., 2000; Rignot et al., 2011). Whilst flow-speed changes on annual timescales are frequently discussed, we consider here what happens on much shorter timescales! Previous studies have shown that ice streams can respond to ocean tides at distances up to 100km inland ...[Read More]
The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition (RSSSE) is a free public event 4-10th July 2016 in London. This is a yearly event that is made up of 22 exhibits, selected in a competitive process, featuring cutting edge science and research undertaken right now across the UK. The scientists will be on their stands ready to share discoveries, show you amazing technologies and with hands-on interactive ...[Read More]
The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough water to raise sea level by 7.36 meters (Bamber, et. al. 2013) and much of this moves from the interior of the continent into the oceans via Jakobshavn Isbræ – Greenland’s fastest flowing outlet glacier. An ancient river basin hidden beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, discovered by researchers at the University of Bristol, may help explain the loca ...[Read More]
MISI is a term that is often thrown into dicussions and papers which talk about the contribution of Antarctica to sea-level rise but what does it actually mean and why do we care about it? MISI stands for Marine Ice Sheet Instability. In this article, we are going to attempt to explain this term to you and also show you why it is so important. Background The Antarctic Ice Sheet represents the larg ...[Read More]
When you go down to the woods today you’re in for a big surprise….. hair ice! Did you know that there is a type of ice called hair ice? It is shaped like fine, silky hairs and looks like white candy floss. It grows on the rotten branches of broad-leaf trees during humid winter nights when the air temperature drops slightly below 0°C. A 100-year-old theory states that hair ice a ...[Read More]
Sea level rise Sea-level rise is one of the main impacts of the current global warming and its rate has dramatically increased in the last decades (the current rate is about 3 mm per year). Even if greenhouse gas emissions were stopped today, sea level would continue to rise due to the slow Earth climate system response (IPCC, 2013, chap. 13). It is therefore a considerable threat for popul ...[Read More]
