This week’s image looks like something out of a science fiction movie, but sometimes what we find on Earth is even more strange than what we can imagine! Where the heat of volcanoes meets the icy cold of glaciers strange and wonderful landscapes are formed. The Kamchatka Peninsula, in the far East of Russia, has the highest concentration of active volcanoes on Earth. Its climate is cold due ...[Read More]
Portraying ice sheets and shelves to the general public can be tricky. They are in remote locations, meaning the majority of people will never have seen them. They also change over timescales that are often hard to represent without showing dramatic images of more unusual events such as the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf. However, an app launched in the summer at the SCAR (Scientific Committe ...[Read More]
In 1904, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius suggested that the burning of fossil fuels to satiate our hunger for energy would increase the percentage of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which would change the Earth’s temperature. Regular measurements of atmospheric CO2, started in the late 1950’s at remote locations such as Mauna Loa in Hawaii and the South Pole, confirmed his hypothesis ...[Read More]
The Italian Young Geomorphologists represented by Irene Bollati (front row, green jacket) and Francesca Vergari invite you to join their event in June 2017. Group shot taken during the fieldtrip in Sardinia at the 6th Young Geomorphologists’ Day in 2015 IMPORTANT NOTICE! All those who tried to subscribe to the VII Young Geomorphologists Day 2017, should re-send all the documentation to the mail ad ...[Read More]
Who would have guessed that such a beautiful picture could get you interviewed for the national news?! Certainly not me! And yet, the photo of this englacial lake (a lake trapped within the ice in Antarctica), or rather science behind it, managed to capture the media attention and brought me, one of the happy co-author of this study, on the Belgian television… But what do we see on the pic ...[Read More]
One of the most time-consuming and stressful parts of any Antarctic research project is simply making a map. Whether it’s plotting your own data points, lines, or images; making the perfect “Figure 1” for your next paper, or replying to a collaborator who says “Just show me a map!,” it seems that quick and effective map-making is a skill that we take for granted. However, finding good map data and ...[Read More]
During the last glacial period (~110,000-12,500 years ago) the Laurentide Ice Sheet (North America) experienced rapid, episodic, mass loss events – known as Heinrich events. These events are particularly curious as they occurred during the colder portions of the last glacial period, when we would intuitively expect large-scale mass loss during warmer times. In order to understand mass loss m ...[Read More]
– by Susanne Buiter TS Division President – EGU is launching a mentoring programme at its 2017 General Assembly for novice conference attendees, students, and early career scientists. The programme aims to facilitate new connections that may lead to long-term professional relationships within the Earth, planetary and space science communities. We anticipate the programme to be a rewar ...[Read More]
We are pleased to propose you a new Paper of the Month written by Dr. Derek Keir on volcano seismology. Derek’s PhD thesis was on the “Seismicity of the Ethiopian rift” and conducted at Royal Holloway University of London under the supervision of Prof. Cindy Ebinger and Prof. Graham Stuart of the University of Leeds. Towards the end his PhD studies, the Dabbahu rifting episode started (September 2 ...[Read More]
“Positive feedback” is a term that regularly pops up when talking about climate change. It does not mean good news, but rather that climate change causes a phenomenon which it turns exacerbates climate change. The image of this week shows a beautiful melt pond in the Arctic sea ice, which is an example of such positive feedback. What is a melt pond? The Arctic sea ice is typically non-smooth, and ...[Read More]
