Cryospheric Sciences

Ice-Hot News : The “Oldest Ice” quest has begun

Oldest Ice PhD Students November 14, 2016

There is million-year old ice somewhere deep under the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet! [Credit: Brice Van Liefferinge]

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]

Image of the Week – Climate Change and the Cryosphere

Sophie Berger November 11, 2016

Schematic summary of the dominant observed variations in the cryosphere. [Credit: fig 4.25 from IPCC (2013) ].

While the first week of COP22 – the climate talks in Marrakech – is coming to an end, the recent election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States casts doubt over the fate of the Paris Agreement and more generally the global fight against climate change. In this new political context, we must not forget about the scientific evidence of climate change! Our figure of the week, tod ...[Read More]

Sea Level “For Dummies”

Lionel Favier October 19, 2016

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]

Image of the Week – The Polar Hole!

Clara Burgard October 14, 2016

Figure 1: Mean sea-ice thickness for November 2010 from CryoSat-2 satellite measurements. [Credit: The data processing of CryoSat-2 sea-ice thickness is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Funding: 50EE1008) and data of November 2010 are provided by meereisportal.de (Funding: REKLIM-2013-04) ].

Have you ever stumbled upon a satellite picture showing observations of the Arctic or Antarctic? You often see a circle where there is no data around the exact location of the geographic pole – as you can see in our Image of the Week. A few days ago, I wanted to explain this to one of my friends and turned to my favourite search engine for help. My search turned up a tremendous amount of sto ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Where do people stay in the “coolest” place on earth?

Sophie Berger August 19, 2016

The 82 research stations in the Antarctic. The world map below shows which countries are operating a station in Antarctica. Source: COMNAP Antarctic Facilities (Updated February 2014) - [Credit: Sophie Berger]. Click here here to enlarge the image.

What word would you use to characterise the Antarctic ? White? Windy? Remote? Empty? Inhospitable? Wild? Preserved? While all of these are true it may surprise you to find out that the Antarctic is occupied by humans all year round with almost half of its 82 research stations operating 365.25 days a year! Just a few hours before the launch of the biennial Antarctic meeting held by the Science Comm ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – How ocean tides affect ice flow

Teresa Kyrke-Smith July 8, 2016

(a) Shaded relief map of Rutford Ice Stream (West Antarctica) and surrounding area. Red box indicates the region shown in b. (b) Horizontal velocity where colors indicate speed, arrows show flow direction, and grayscale background is horizontal speed from Rignot et al. (2011). (c) Detrended along-flow displacements measured with GPS stations beginning December 2003. Locations of stations are indicated in (b). ( Credit : Brent Minchew )

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]

Marine Ice Sheet Instability “For Dummies”

David Docquier June 22, 2016

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]

Image of The Week – Ballooning on the Ice

Nanna B. Karlsson June 17, 2016

One man and his balloon. Field leader Prof. J. P. Steffensen (Centre for Ice and Climate, University of Copenhagen) in front of one of the balloons used in camp. Credit: S. Kipfstuhl.

A curious experiment is taking place in Greenland. An experiment involving very large balloons and – of course – a lot of snow. Read on to discover why balloons are an environmentally friendly tool when constructing an ice core drill camp. Last year, a small team traversed 400km from northwest Greenland to the EastGRIP site (read more about the traverse here). This year another strenuous task is w ...[Read More]

An Antarctic Road Trip

Nanna B. Karlsson June 8, 2016

Arriving at our first drill site with our sledge containing drill equipment, survival box and of course our lunch. Credit: N. B. Karlsson

Working in the Arctic and Antarctic presents its own challenges. It is perhaps easy to imagine how a station situated close to the coast is resupplied: during the summer, one or more ships will arrive bringing fuel, food and equipment, but what about stations inland? Flying in supplies by aircraft is expensive and, in the case of large quantities of fuel, unsustainable. Besides, many stations are ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Historical aerial imagery of Greenland

Mette Bendixen May 27, 2016

Aerial photo of the Zackenberg delta in North-East Greenland taken in 1932. (Credit: Danish Geodata Agency)

A few month ago, we were taking you on a trip back to Antarctic fieldwork 50 years ago, today we go back to Greenland during 1930s! When geopolitics serves cryospheric sciences The Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague awarded Danish sovereignty over Greenland in 1933 and besides geopolitical interests, Denmark had a keen interest in searching for natural resources and new opportun ...[Read More]