Yu-Seok has depleted his streaming service queue, thrown all of the stocked board games off the table, and eagerly seeks new ways to squander his energy after a long workday of couch-surfing underneath his laptop: What should a scientist do as a pastime? Dear Yu-Seok, Where can you find the time? And the energy? Aren’t we all simply working continuously? I go to extremes to even find the energy an ...[Read More]
Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences
NPG Paper Highlight: “Baroclinic and barotropic instabilities in planetary atmospheres: energetics, equilibration and adjustment”
Today’s our blog hosts a review article by the 2016 EGU Richardson medallist Peter Read, together with Daniel Kennedy, Neil Lewis, Hélène Scolan, Fachreddin Tabataba-Vakili, YixiongWang, Susie Wright, and Roland Young for the special issue of NPG celebrating 100 years of IUGG (https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/27/147/2020/npg-27-147-2020.html). One of the great achievements of the past 100 ...[Read More]
Geodynamics
Understanding intraplate earthquakes
One of the basic tenets of plate tectonics states that deformation occurs along plate boundaries while plate interiors remain almost undeformed. Intraplate earthquakes defy this principle and hence are quite enigmatic. In this week’s News and Views, Prof. Attreyee Ghosh from the Centre for Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, tries to explain the reasons behind intraplate ea ...[Read More]
Natural Hazards
DE BELLO VULCANICO 40-year scientific effort of ‘predicting the unpredictable’ since the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens
Volcanoes arouse emotions in the soul of men: at the same time, they are fascinating and frighten the population that lives on their slopes when they erupt (Fig. 1). Volcanoes can strike without warning and wreak horrific destruction and death. As such, in the ancient time, volcanoes discharging explosive eruptions have been interpreted as the wrath of gods that destroys and annihilates all around ...[Read More]
Soil System Sciences
#Black in Soil Science
Inspired by the recent #Black in Geoscience blog post on the EGU Geodynamics Division blog, we decided to highlight Black soil scientists in a separate blog post! As we already mentioned on Twitter, our Soil System Sciences Division Outreach team is busy thinking about what we can do about the lack of diversity, esp. for Black soil scientists in our scientific community. Specifically, how can we i ...[Read More]
Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology
#MINERALMONDAY: Bismuth
It’s not so common for us to think about pure metals as minerals, or even crystals, but just like pinocchio could be a real boy, pure metals can be minerals too. This is because, if the metal cools down from a melt very slowly, layers of metal atoms can add onto previously solidified atoms, forming a defined lattice of atoms, and ta-dahh, it’s a single crystal! This is different from m ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the week – The curious case of “glacier mice”
Did you know that glacier mice can be found at the surface of some glaciers? They’re not the tiny rodent you might be imagining, but actually little balls of moss, which appear to be full of mysteries still to be uncovered… What is a “glacier mouse”? On glaciers around the world, mostly at high-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, little balls of moss develop and move around the ice. Origi ...[Read More]
Tectonics and Structural Geology
Mind your head: The Imposter Syndrome
This Mind Your Head blog post is a follow-up from one of the talks during the online short course on mental health that aired during the last EGU General Assembly. Imposter syndrome is about the feeling of being afraid to be found to be an imposter. Note that I do not claim to be an expert; in the following, I simply list a few tricks that help me, and people I have talked to, to find their way i ...[Read More]
Geodynamics
The Sassy Scientist – Dress Code Delirium
Unsettled by a well-nigh void wardrobe, Giuseppe bethinks himself of his scholarly stature and posits to moot that his foibles and idiosyncrasies are promulgated through a predilection for plebeian raiments: What should a scientist dress like? Dear Giuseppe, Firstly, heave thine integral collection of aforementioned raiments atop a scorching blaze and instill upon thyself the manner they evanesce. ...[Read More]
Geodynamics
Journey to the centre of the manuscript
During the working day, Matthew Kemp is a seismology PhD student at the University of Oxford. In his spare time, however, he writes and performs musicals about science as part of the duo Geologise Theatre, using stories to explain complex scientific concepts to a variety of audiences – from dinosaur extinction to climate change. In this week’s post, he discusses how classical story-tel ...[Read More]