EGU Blogs

Divisions

SSS
Soil System Sciences

Early Career Scientist representative: how to become one in a few easy steps!

March 4, 2020
Early Career Scientist representative: how to become one in a few easy steps!

Early career scientist representatives are a crucial link between the EGU and the early career scientist community. They are vital in providing feedback from students and early career researchers so that we can take action to improve our early-career scientist’s activities at the EGU General Assembly and maintain our support for early-career scientists throughout the year. The ECS website br ...[Read More]

Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology

Five hundred miles from civilisation: Exploring active volcanism in the South Sandwich Islands

March 4, 2020
Five hundred miles from civilisation: Exploring active volcanism in the South Sandwich Islands

By Emma Liu – Lecturer in Earth Science, University College London. For more adventures, follow Emma on Twitter! It’s a strange feeling to realise that your closest human neighbours are on the international space station…! We were five hundred miles away from the nearest civilisation and all I could see in every direction was miles and miles of open ocean. There are so few true wilderness en ...[Read More]

SSP
Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Palaeontology

Adaptation and inheritance in the geosciences

February 28, 2020

Every year, the Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Paleontology Division awards one scientist for their outstanding contribution to stratigraphy, sedimentology or paleontology with the Lamarck medal in recognition of the scientific achievements of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Bazentin-le-Petit, 1-02-1744 – Paris, 18-12-1829). It was the 11 May 1800 when Jean Baptiste Lamarck presented a lecture at the Musé ...[Read More]

CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Boom and bust beneath the ice

February 28, 2020
Boom and bust beneath the ice

Beneath the frozen surface of the Southern Ocean, live some of the most spectacular creatures on earth. These creatures are spectacular not only in appearance, but also in their ability to survive in such an extreme environment as Antarctica. Here, temperatures deviate only slightly from 0°C, and food is scarce during the winter months. How do these diverse creatures live in these conditions and w ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

The Sassy Scientist – Stochastic Sequels

February 28, 2020
The Sassy Scientist – Stochastic Sequels

Tuckered from simply contemplating the infinite myriad of possibilities arising behind the dandy phantasmagoria at the pristine horizon which is a doctorate, Maite considers: Should I start a postdoc directly after my PhD? Dear Maite, I would. If you want to stay in science, that is. Consider yourself a prospector initiating the exploration of an unsullied landscape. A wonderful scenery of excitin ...[Read More]

SM
Seismology

Ten years after the 2010 Maule earthquake: how science and ancestral knowledge build-up resilient societies

February 27, 2020
Ten years after the 2010 Maule earthquake: how science and ancestral knowledge build-up resilient societies

  At 3:34 a.m. (local time) on February 27, 2010, a magnitude Mw 8.8 earthquake occurred in Central Chile and extended over around 500 km along the Maule and Bio Bio regions, a convergent zone between the Nazca and South America plates (Figure 1a). The occurrence of this large earthquake in the context of active subduction zones, as Central Chile, was expected by many Chilean and European res ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

Postdoc: Europe vs. United States

February 26, 2020
Postdoc: Europe vs. United States

Being a postdoc provides you with an extended training period after receiving your PhD. It is the pathway towards becoming an independent scientist; therefore, it is important to undertake your postdoc in a place where career development is enhanced and supported.  Let’s start with a basic yet crucial question: why should I move to another continent? The United States remains the most popular coun ...[Read More]

CL
Climate: Past, Present & Future

Dead Sea – lively stories of the past

February 25, 2020
Dead Sea – lively stories of the past

The Dead Sea is dead. Nothing can live there except for specialized microbes. The water with a salinity multiple times higher than seawater prevents a colonization by higher life forms. However, it does not prevent the input of organic material that can tell us stories about the past. A unique sediment record The Dead Sea, located at the lowest elevation on Earth – currently about 430 m below sea ...[Read More]

NH
Natural Hazards

How satellites measuring soil moisture provide a new understanding of rainfall patterns

February 24, 2020
How satellites measuring soil moisture provide a new understanding of rainfall patterns

Soil moisture and rainfall are the two fundamental variables in the water and energy cycle and their knowledge in many applications is crucial. For instance, for predicting the occurrence and the magnitude of flood and landslide events the knowledge of the initial soil moisture condition and of rainfall amount is mandatory. In the last decade, some authors have proposed a completely new approach, ...[Read More]

CR
Cryospheric Sciences

The foot of a glaciated mammoth? No… A glacier!

February 21, 2020
The foot of a glaciated mammoth? No… A glacier!

Ice is a viscous fluid: it flows but slowly, reaching up to 100 m/yr for the fastest flowing ice. That’s 0.00001 km/hr, so you’d never see it with the naked eye. But what influences the morphology of the glaciers is the shape of the topography that lies underneath them. Elephant Foot Glacier, shown above, aptly named for its shape, is a textbook-example of a piedmont glacier. These types of glacie ...[Read More]