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]
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Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – How ocean tides affect ice flow
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]
Cryospheric Sciences
Ice on fire at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition
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]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Canyons Under The Greenland Ice Sheet!
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]
Cryospheric Sciences
Marine Ice Sheet Instability “For Dummies”
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]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Mushrooms at zero degrees = hair ice?!
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]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Storing water in Antarctica to delay sea-level rise
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]
Cryospheric Sciences
When Cryospheric Research Transforms Lives
My name is Kathi Unglert, and I’m reporting from the EGU 2016 General Assembly as part of the EGU student reporter programme. Below is my second contribution to the Cryosphere Blog – this time about how cryosphere research can have a real impact on people’s lives. Antoni Lewkowicz – he’s famous, according to a comment I overheard in Tuesday’s PICO session on applied geophysics in cryosphere ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week — Happy ValentICE’s day
On the eve of 14 February, love and little hearts are everywhere, even trapped in lake ice! The EGU Cryosphere blog team wishes you a happy Valentine’s Day 🙂 Behind this nice picture, there is also science This picture was taken during a laboratory experiment that aimed to reproduce the bubbles observed in Arctic lake ice in the winter. In this shot, we can see two types of gas bubbles in th ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week: Icequakes! Stick-Slip motion under Western Greenland
The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough fresh water to raise global sea level by around 6 m, therefore it is very important to understand how the ice moves from the interior of the ice sheet towards the oceans. Processes that happen at the base of the ice sheet, where the ice meets the bed, are known to be a key control on how the ice moves. Geophysical techniques, such as recording tiny icequakes ...[Read More]