Numerical modelling is not always a walk in the park. In fact, it resembles a heroic quest more often than not. In this month’s Wit & Wisdom post, Cedric Thieulot, assistant professor at the Mantle dynamics & theoretical geophysics group at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, tells the story of his heroic quest to save the princess from the dragon clear a code from bugs and shows ...[Read More]
We all know that easy access to data speeds up doing research. In this post, we will discuss how open GIS data can stimulate innovative ways of doing research in the field of geodesy and geosciences, considering first the benefits and challenges of open data. Geodesy can benefit greatly from the open data movement and from open Geographic Information System (GIS) data. The reasons for this are two ...[Read More]
The first week of the Climate Change summit in Bonn (COP 23 for those in the know) has been marked by Syria’s decision to sign the Paris Accord, the international agreement that aims at tackling climate change. This decision means that the United States would become the only country outside the agreement if it were to complete the withdrawal process vowed by President Trump. In this context ...[Read More]
During the EGU Election Autumn 2017, all EGU members are asked to give their vote for the next EGU Union President, General Secretary and the Division Presidents until 30 November 2017. The Geomorphology division is in the luxurious situation of having three candidates for division presidency, all of which gathered experience as active members of the EGU GM division structure. In order to get to k ...[Read More]
Much of the Antarctic continent is fringed by ice shelves. An ice shelf is the floating extension of a terrestrial ice mass and, as such, is an important ‘middleman’ that regulates the delivery of ice from land into the ocean: for much of Antarctica, ice that passes from land into the sea does so via ice shelves. I’ve been conducting geophysical experiments on ice for over a decade, using mostly s ...[Read More]
As the leaves are falling; the sun is going down before you leave the office; and the stores are stacking up on Christmas decorations, it’s time to face the facts: it’s almost AGU! It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but just in case. Don’t worry, there is still time to reread your abstract to see what you’re supposed to be presenting, figure out how to do that in the se ...[Read More]
When I ask school children or people who only know about sea ice from remote references in the newspapers: ‘How thick do you think is the Arctic sea ice?’, I often get surprising answers: ’10 meters? No, it must be thicker – 100 meters!’. It seems like sea ice, often depicted as a uniform white cover around the North Pole and as a key element in accelerated warming of the Polar Regions, imposes a ...[Read More]
The Geodynamics 101 series serves to showcase the diversity of research topics and methods in the geodynamics community in an understandable manner. We welcome all researchers – PhD students to Professors – to introduce their area of expertise in a lighthearted, entertaining manner and touch upon some of the outstanding questions and problems related to their fields. This month Vojtěch Patočka fro ...[Read More]
The Sun is a complex, dynamic ball of plasma which influences our lives. Studying the Sun is challenging because each of its layers have different composition, physics and wavelengths of emssion. Moving outwards from the photosphere (visible surface of the Sun), we have the chromosphere and the corona (hottest outermost layer). The solar plasma is in constant motion much like fiercely boiling wate ...[Read More]
A cold seep is an area of the ocean seafloor where hydrogen sulfide, methane and other hydrocarbon-rich fluid seepage occurs. These parts of the ocean floor still remain a large mystery for scientists, in particular for the occurence of hydrothermal vents. In between these vents, microbes live that play a role in the local and global carbon budget. However their exact role remains largerly unknown ...[Read More]
