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]
Cryospheric Sciences
Back to the Front – Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Aftermath of Iceberg A68!
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]
Geodynamics
One month to AGU!
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]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Sea-ice dynamics for beginners
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]
Geodynamics
The jelly sandwich lithosphere: elastic bread, the jelly, and gummy bears
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]
Solar-Terrestrial Sciences
Eyes on the Sun
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]
Biogeosciences
Understanding the role of microbes in cold seep habitats
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]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Of comparing oranges and apples in the sea-ice context
In the last fifty years, models and observations have enabled us to better understand sea-ice processes. On the one hand, global climate models have been developed, accounting for the sea-ice component in the climate system. On the other hand, satellite instruments have been developed to monitor the “real” sea-ice evolution. These satellite observations are often used to evaluate climate models. H ...[Read More]
Geomorphology
Time to travel – the ERASMUS program turns 30 this year
The mobility program of the European Union, named after Erasmus of Rotterdam who studied in different places all over Europe, turns 30 this year. I wanted to take this opportunity to promote this great possibility for gathering international experience and getting insights into the teaching and research skills of our European colleagues. The ERASMUS program, named ERASMUS+ since 2014, is most famo ...[Read More]
Geodynamics
Going with the toroidal mantle flow
Subduction zones host one of the most complex and fascinating tectonic systems on the planet. Numerical models by Király and colleagues recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters reveal that the strength of the toroidal flow depends on the mantle viscosity and the magnitude of the slab pull force while the characteristic size of the toroidal cells mainly depends on the size of the c ...[Read More]