The EGU Cryosphere blog has reported on several studies of Antarctic sea ice (for example, here and here) made from high-tech satellites, but these records only extend back to the 1970s, when the satellite records began. Is it possible to work out what sea ice conditions were like before this time? The short answer is YES…or this would be a very boring blog post! Read on to find out how hero ...[Read More]
Every 8 weeks we turn our attention to a Remarkable Region that deserves a spot in the scientific limelight. To kick off this series, Anne Glerum introduces us to the eastern Mediterranean, which has been a natural laboratory for generations of scientists. The name of our Remarkable Region is quite descriptive: it designates the region around and including the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea ...[Read More]
The next solar eclipse is upon us. On August 21 the moon will pass between the Sun and an observer’s point of view in America and block out daylight, creating an eerie gloom in the sky. The transit of the moon between the Earth and Sun occurs about every 18 months, but for your particular city it can take several hundreds of years before a new eclipse occurs. The figure below shows the paths of al ...[Read More]
The cold icy surface of a glacier doesn’t seem like an environment where life should exist, but if you look closely you may be surprised! Glaciers are not only locations studied by glaciologists and physical scientists, but are also of great interest to microbiologists and ecologists. In fact, understanding the interaction between ice and microbiology is essential to fully understand the gla ...[Read More]
The Geodynamics 101 series serves to show the diversity of topics and methods in the geodynamics community in an understandable manner for every geodynamicist. PhD’s, postdocs, full professors, and everyone in between can introduce their field of expertise in a lighthearted, entertaining manner and touch on some of the outstanding questions and problems related to their method of choice. Thi ...[Read More]
Up to now, ice sheet mass changes due to ice dynamics have been computed from satellite observations that suffer from sparse coverage in time and space. A new method allows us to compute these changes on much wider temporal and spatial scales. But how does this method work? Let us discover the different steps by having a look at Enderby Land in East Antarctica, for which ice velocities are shown i ...[Read More]
This week Adina Pusok, postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, USA, discusses what it is like to be an Early Career Scientist within the EGU Geodynamics division. The terms “Early Career Scientist” (ECS) or “Young Scientist” (YS) are now so widely used in the scientific community, th ...[Read More]
Applied mathematics is often seen as an obscure field, which the general public has no hope of ever understanding. In the context of climate science, this is far from the truth. In fact, many mathematical concepts and ideas applied to the study of the climate system stem from intuitive arguments. While their implementation can be very complex, understanding the basic ideas behind them does not req ...[Read More]
How water travels through and beneath the interior of debris-covered glaciers is poorly understood, partly because it can be difficult to access these glaciers at all, never mind explore their interiors. In this Image of the Week, find out how these aspects can be investigated by drilling holes all the way through the ice… Hydrological features of debris-covered glaciers Debris-covered glaciers ca ...[Read More]
Like everyone else, in the beginning I was skeptical of the newly introduced presentation format at the EGU – the PICO sessions. PICO stands for Presenting Interactive Content. Half talk, half poster – this is a new design that demands a completely new and unfamiliar preparation of the presenter, and yes admittedly at first this meant additional work. However, already during the creation of my fir ...[Read More]
