CR
Cryospheric Sciences

glaciers

We are back – with 4 Arctic fieldwork stories!

September 1, 2023
We are back – with 4 Arctic fieldwork stories!
Walking to a glacier in NE Greenland. Photo credit: Maria Scheel

You might have missed our weekly blog posts, but we are back! This week’s post highlights four field work campaigns our cryo community conducted. Join us on a journey to Greenland, Svalbard and Alaska to learn about methane emissions, glacier flows, tundra fires and ice microbes. Chasing methane in Greenland The subglacial environment of the Greenland Ice Sheet is a relatively new discovered ...[Read More]

CryoNews – The WMO is making the cryosphere a global priority

June 9, 2023
A plane and several researchers on the ice in Antarctica.
The collection and sharing of climate data especially from Antarctic is now more than ever supported by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). (Photo credit: Andrew Elvidge, distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

To us, the cryosphere has always been a priority. It is our field of interest, research, maybe passion, it is the stuff that gets us excited. Now, the cryosphere also became a priority to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). In today’s post we cover a recent news item introducing this very decision made during WMO’s recent congress. Read along to find out  why they emphasize the importance ...[Read More]

End-of-the-year special: this year’s Cryoblog

December 16, 2022
End-of-the-year special: this year’s Cryoblog
Created with FreeWordCloudGenerator.com

So this is the last post in 2022 for our blog. We have decided that this time, the topic will not be another exciting story about the science of ice and cold in their various forms. This time we are talking about the blog itself, so a kind of meta-post to take stock and understand a little better how our blog works, what it is about, and who our main authors are. To this purpose, we asked all the ...[Read More]

The Global Arctic, a personal perspective on interdisciplinary research

October 21, 2022
The Global Arctic, a personal perspective on interdisciplinary research
A not so common vision of the Arctic. The small yellow/red star shows the location of Svalbard, where the summer school took place. This is the triptychial projection of the world. Figure credit: Map modified from Grieger, B. (2019). https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201834841.

Around the summer solstice of 2022, a small group of twenty young researchers met in Svalbard, a small island lost between Norway and the North Pole. The Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research wanted to bring us together around the theme of “The Global Arctic“. The scope of this summer school was to “produce a better understanding of the significance of the concept of Gl ...[Read More]

Summer 2022: A perfect storm for Alpine glaciers

July 1, 2022
Summer 2022: A perfect storm for Alpine glaciers
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]

Ice-hot news: A cryo-summary of the new IPCC assessment report!

May 13, 2022
Ice-hot news: A cryo-summary of the new IPCC assessment report!
Figure 1: An illustration of the Vernagtferner glacier in Austria, under the influence of climate change. Painting by Larissa van der Laan, based on historical photographs compiled by Markus Weber.

We have waited eight years for it, and it is finally out: the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a.k.a. « IPCC AR6 »)! And it is more than 10,000 pages long across Working Groups! Fortunately, a synthesis report integrating the findings of all three working groups should be released in Autumn 2022. However, we, at the EGU Cryosphere Blog, thought it might be us ...[Read More]

Women of Cryo VI: Women and Glaciers in the Chilean Andes (Part II)

April 15, 2022
Women of Cryo VI: Women and Glaciers in the Chilean Andes (Part II)

In Chile, gender imbalance in science mirrors the international context, even though the Americas have been recognised as a region where women’s representation in science has increased, compared to other countries (UNESCO 2015 statistics and this study). However, Chile still has one of the lowest ratios of women participating in STEM (33.1%), followed by Mexico and Peru, as shown in this study. In ...[Read More]

Do you know about OGGM-Edu? An open-source educational platform about glaciers and glacier modelling

March 12, 2021

Are you teaching about glaciers and looking for fun educational activities for your students? Are you planning a workshop about glacier modelling and want to make it interactive, with a low entry level? Are you interested in learning about glaciers and glacier modelling, and looking for a simple way to get started? On top of that, do you want to do all of the above without installing anything on y ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Icebergs increase heat flux to glacier

January 15, 2021
Image of the Week – Icebergs increase heat flux to glacier
Iceberg in Sermilik Fjord. Figure credit: Donald Slater.

Icebergs are ubiquitous in Greenland’s fjords, melting and releasing freshwater as they float towards the open ocean. The amount of freshwater released from these icebergs can be vast – the equivalent of around 50,000 Olympic swimming pools per day in some fjords. New research reveals that this freshwater causes fjord currents to speed-up, which can actually increase the amount of heat delivered t ...[Read More]

Running a live stream of proglacial processes

November 4, 2020
Running a live stream of proglacial processes
Sampling in the glacier-fed stream near the field camp. Photo: Floreana Miesen

In Switzerland, nothing is really remote, but some places are more so than others. Dense infrastructure networks typically provide convenient access to research sites in the Alps where it is difficult to feel far away from home. However, this is not always the case… For us, our home for the summer is a bit different. We work at 2400 m above sea level in Southern Switzerland, in a narrow vall ...[Read More]