Cryospheric Sciences

Did you know: Soot is a melting agent for glaciers in Peru and China

Wilmer Sánchez Rodríguez July 25, 2025

Figure 1: Collecting snow samples from the Puruogangri Ice Cap on the Tibetan Plateau, China. [Credit: Stanislav Kutuzov]

Mountain glaciers are melting rapidly due to global warming. This process is being intensified by increasingly extreme natural events, such as forest fires and air pollution from human activities. One of the main culprits is a tiny but powerful pollutant called black carbon (commonly known as soot) which darkens the surface of the snow and makes it met faster under the sun. But how much of this po ...[Read More]

Crossing borders – Glacier fieldwork at Sulitjelma/Salajekna

Silje Waaler November 22, 2024

Postdoc Sarah Tingey filtering samples from the portal of Sulitjelma all wrapped up to avoid the chilling katabatic winds from the glacier. [Credit: Silje Waaler]

The time I first set foot at the university, I didn’t expect that two weeks later I would be looking at a backpack more than half my size, turning my back to the shelter of our rental car and walking almost 100 km in the Norwegian Arctic. Howling winds, heavy backpacks, daunting bridges, and endless beauty – that’s how I would describe my first experience with glacier fieldwork. I, Silje Waa ...[Read More]

Image of the week – The gaze of the ice cap

Giovanni Baccolo January 27, 2023

Slowly approaching an ice cap in northern Greenland. Credits: Giovanni Baccolo.

We are getting used to perceiving glaciers more and more distant and disconnected from our mountains. With each passing year, it is more difficult to observe them, reach them or climb them. They are becoming an exotic element of the Alpine imagination. When our gaze rests on a mountain glacier, with its crevasses and large moraines, we are filled with the fascination of someone observing a new nat ...[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]

A place called home?

Katrin Lindbäck February 18, 2022

Black-legged kittiwakes in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard. Photo credit: Geir Wing Gabrielsen/Norwegian Polar Institute.

Welcome to Kongsfjorden in Svalbard. The front of the glaciers terminating into the sea is an ecological hotspot, home to many marine animals, like kittiwakes, who love to hunt here. They feed on small fish and shrimp, which at marine-terminating glacier fronts are brought to the surface by upwelling glacial meltwater. Retreating glaciers lose their contact with the ocean As the planet warms these ...[Read More]

CryoAdventures – Three months in Nuuk, the world’s northernmost capital!

Jenny Arthur December 10, 2021

Northern lights over Nuuk [credit: Jenny Arthur]

I have just returned from nearly three months in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, where I was doing my PhD placement at Asiaq Greenland Survey. Read on to find out what science I got up to… everything from mapping mountain glacier snowline change to avalanches! How do you map glacier snowline evolution? During my PhD research placement, I was working at Asiaq Greenland Survey in their Hydrolo ...[Read More]

Did you know about the weathering crust? Five things you never knew about glacier surfaces

Ian Stevens August 20, 2021

The weathered surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Photo credit: Ian Stevens

To the untrained eye, the melting surface of glaciers and ice sheets can look a little boring. It’s bright in some places, dark in others, and there are lots of things to fall over and (hopefully not) get your feet wet in. However, a huge range of processes are occurring both upon and just underneath the ice surface, in a 50-ish cm thick layer of ice called the weathering crust (or the “crust” for ...[Read More]

Did you know that glacier mass loss affects water resources?

Larissa van der Laan March 5, 2021

The picture above shows a typical Kyrgyz summer yurt camp, located in the valley of Altyn-Arashan, Kyrgyzstan. The stream you see flowing through comes from the glacier-fed lake of Ala-Kul, the gorgeous turquoise water featured below. The families who live there during summer have done so for generations, and travel up with their herds of horses and cows. The stream provides the water they need fo ...[Read More]

Subglacial Hydrology For Dummies – Water, water everywhere…

Samuel Cook February 19, 2021

Glaciers are mostly made of water. Sometimes, perhaps more than we’d like, some of that water makes a break for it by melting, the inconstant molecule… It might pootle around on the surface of the glacier a bit and get a lot of remote sensers very excited, but it’s what it does once it gets to the base of the glacier that really matters for the behaviour and flow of the ice. So, in 2000 word ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – What darkens snow and ice?

Biagio Di Mauro September 18, 2020

“Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow”. Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1 (W. Shakespeare) Snow and ice are not always as pristine as one may think. If you have ever walked on a glacier or on a snowfield during summer, you might have already noticed that. In fact, both snow and ice are often darkened by impurities. In this blog post, you will learn about the main processes leading to ice and snow darkeni ...[Read More]