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Cryospheric Sciences

siberia

Cryosphere Caps: PhD hats and the researchers that wear them – Episode 2

March 21, 2025
A group of people standing around a person holding a decorated hat in their hand.
Figure 1. Tina and her colleagues investigating the PhD Hat, on the day of her PhD defense [Credit: Tommi Odenthal]

This miniseries features the tradition of ‘PhD hat’ making in German research institutes and universities. For those of you unfamiliar with this idea (as I once was), this is one of the final milestones a graduate student has before they are officially a “Dr.”. Upon the successful defense of a thesis, the labmates of the PhD student craft a graduation hat from a mishmash of scrap cardboard and mem ...[Read More]

Did you know… about worms surviving in permafrost for at least 46000 years?

September 29, 2023
Did you know… about worms surviving in permafrost for at least 46000 years?
Fig. 1 Shatilovich and colleagues discovered some (rather unexpectedly) still surviving eukaryotes, such as amoeba and this roundworm (nematode) in the long-term survival state called cryptobiosis (adapted from Shatilovich et al. 2023).

Lately permafrost makes the news more and more because of its enormous carbon stocks and its vulnerability to climate change. While permafrost greenhouse gas budget calculations are complex and harbour an ever-growing research community, its microbial ecology is still on the rise. A recent star are tiny roundworms that survived frozen in permafrost for 46’000 years. Take a short dip into this new ...[Read More]

Fostering connections with frozen landscapes

May 12, 2023
Fostering connections with frozen landscapes
Acetone transfer print of a photograph of the Siberian lowland tundra landscape.

Whether they are natural occurrences or experimentally induced, permafrost and Arctic ecosystems are responding fundamentally to recent climate extremes. Good writing and statistics material for us scientists, but bad news on pretty much every other level. Are we effectively communicating how fundamental these changes are? And can we use our personal experiences, stories and artwork to support us ...[Read More]