numerical modelling

Remarkable Regions – The Réunion Hotspot

Editorial team 1 August 7, 2019

Image Credit: modified by Anne Glerum after NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens.

This week we again turn our attention to a Remarkable Region that deserves a spot in the scientific limelight. Postdoctoral researcher Eva Bredow of Kiel University shares with us her long history with Réunion Island. At first glance, Réunion is a relatively small tropical island, located between Madagascar and Mauritius, and from my personal experience, most Germans have never even heard of it. T ...[Read More]

Searching for future directions in tectonic modelling

Editorial Team 3 August 2, 2019

Searching for future directions in tectonic modelling. Boundary images by domdomegg - Own work, CC BY 4.0, in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics.

Geoscientists frequently use forward geodynamic simulations to test hypotheses derived from geophysical and geologic observations. While numerical simulations of lithospheric deformation have lead to key advances in our understanding of tectonic processes, in many cases it remains difficult to ascertain whether numerical models reproduce observations for the correct underlying regions. This week, ...[Read More]

It doesn’t work! (Asking questions about scientific software)

Editorial team 1 July 3, 2019

Numerical modelling is not always a walk in the park. In fact, many of us occasionally encounter problems that we cannot directly solve ourselves, and thus rely on help from others. In this month’s Wit & Wisdom post, Patrick Sanan, postdoctoral researcher at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics group at ETH Zurich, will talk about asking the right questions about scientific software. As an experienc ...[Read More]

Production and recycling of Archean continental crust

Anna Gülcher / Lucía Pérez Díaz June 19, 2019

Beautiful swirly mantle. What kind of secrets are hidden here?

Continents are essential for the development and survival of life on Earth. However, as surprising as it may sound, there did not exist a planetary scale numerical model to show the formation of the oldest continents until the recent study ‘Growing primordial continental crust self-consistently in global mantle convection models‘ in Gondwana Research by Jain et al., 2019. Hot off the p ...[Read More]