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 …[Read More]
Division blogs
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Drilling into a Himalayan glacier
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 …[Read More]
Earth and Space Science Informatics
PICO in the picture
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 …[Read More]
Geodynamics
Karaoke, geodynamics, and a bit of history
Let me just talk to you about what I have been doing with my free time recently: I discovered a feature from Google Books named Ngram viewer which allows you to make graphs that show how words or phrases have occurred in a selection of books (e.g., English) over the selected years. I have of …[Read More]
Solar-Terrestrial Sciences
Capturing a Whole Total Eclipse of the Sun: Megamovie
by Hugh S Hudson (U. of Glasgow and UC Berkeley) Normally solar eclipses give an observer only a fleeting moment (minutes at most) to enjoy the solar corona. We aim to amplify that considerably in the August 21 eclipse across North America. The plan is simple: Megamovie will capture everybody’s images, especially those from a …[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Fifty shades of snow
When I think of snow, I tend to either think about the bright white ski slopes in the mountains or the large white areas in the Arctic. However, natural phenomena can lead to colorful snow. Our Image of the Week shows snow can be green! Snow can also turn orange, pinkish, grey and even yellow… …[Read More]
Geodynamics
Don’t be a hero – unless you have to
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 …[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Summer is fieldwork season at EastGRIP!
As the days get very long, summer is a popular season for conducting fieldwork at high latitudes. At the North East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS), the East Greenland Ice-core Project (EastGRIP) is ongoing. Several scientists are busy drilling an ice core through the ice sheet to the very bottom, in continuation to previous years (see …[Read More]
Geodynamics
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Romeo and Juliet famously had some identification problems: they met, fell in love, and only afterwards realised that they were arch enemies, which *spoiler* resulted in their disastrous fate. Oops. Of course, this could happen to anybody. However, we do not want this to happen to you! We want you to know who we, the …[Read More]
Tectonics and Structural Geology
Minds over Methods: Block modeling of Anatolia
How can we use GPS velocities to learn more about present-day plate motions and regional deformation? In this edition of Minds over Methods, one of our own blogmasters Mehmet Köküm shares his former work with you! For his master thesis at Indiana University, he used block modeling to better understand the plate motion and slip …[Read More]