The latest climate models show that Arctic precipitation is changing more rapidly than previously projected with an earlier transition to a rainfall-dominated precipitation. This rapid change in precipitation will have huge implications for the Arctic ecosystem as well as those who live within the region. Arctic precipitation change, why is it so important? The rapid …[Read More]
When we think of lightning, it is often accompanied by warm summer nights, tropical storms and a sticky feeling when we try to sleep. However, lightning also happens in the cold Arctic, and is even increasing in frequency. But how and why? And why does that matter? What is lightning? Lightning is caused by a …[Read More]
It is scary how fast the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting and how much freshwater it is discharging to the coastal areas around Greenland. This freshening is having a serious impact to coastal marine primary production, which is the foundation of the Arctic marine food web. Now, because of increased melting and freshwater discharge, we …[Read More]
It’s no secret that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, but why? Polar Amplification (often called Arctic Amplification) is the mechanism at play. In this week’s blog, we find out about its origins and why it happens. Early Discoveries In 1969, Russian scientist Mikhail Budyko and US scientist William Sellers …[Read More]
It is a pleasure for the EGU Cryoblog team to present a new post category: Cryo-institutes around the world! There are many institutes working on cryosphere-related research spread around the world. The aim of this new category is to highlight the cool research that is carried out at these institutes, showing off our multi-faceted cryo-related …[Read More]
Getting data from the Arctic is often difficult and expensive – instead, stand on the shoulders of giants and investigate over 6000 datasets preserved for future download and reuse in the Arctic Data Center! Read on for more information about the Arctic Data Center and the data contained therein. The Arctic Data Center is the …[Read More]
![Lost in transl[ice]tion…](https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/cr/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2020/10/MainFigure-1024x427.webp)
Three years have passed since sea-ice scientists from both climate modeling and remote sensing backgrounds met for an international workshop in Hamburg. The goal was to discuss how to further improve our understanding of sea ice and reduce uncertainties in climate models and observations (see this previous post). One suggestion was to work on observation …[Read More]
The illustration above shows a sketch of the evolution of Arctic sea ice for different levels of warming and the different months of the year, based on the simple extrapolation of observations. A new study, in which I was involved, uses the latest available global climate models and shows that the Arctic Ocean could become …[Read More]
At the beginning of March, just over a month ago, sea ice in the Arctic reached its annual maximum extent. As currently all media attention is focused on other news, you might have missed that, once again, this maximum fell below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum extent. When reading headlines about such sea-ice facts, …[Read More]
In October 2019, the research icebreaker ‘Polarstern’ was moored to an ice floe for its year-long journey through the Arctic Ocean. Come with us on a slightly shorter journey and learn how MOSAiC participants from the supporting cruise educate the future generation of polar scientists! What is the MOSAiC expedition? The MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory …[Read More]
