Climate

Imaggeo on Mondays: Viñales Valley

Laura Roberts-Artal September 4, 2017

Vinales Valley . Credit: Alexis Merlaud (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu).

From last week’s unusual desert landscape to this week’s lush valley in Cuba… The picture shows the Vinales Valley, a karstic depression with mogotes in western Cuba. Karst is the general term for landscapes formed when limestone is disolved by carbonic acid, in rain water. This leads, in particular, to the formation of an underground network of caves and rivers. In the tropics, ...[Read More]

August GeoRoundUp: the best of the Earth sciences from around the web

Laura Roberts-Artal September 1, 2017

The International Space Station orbited over Hurricane Harvey and photographed the storm bearing down on the Texas coast. Credit: NASA.

Drawing inspiration from popular stories on our social media channels, as well as unique and quirky research news, this monthly column aims to bring you the best of the Earth and planetary sciences from around the web. Major Stories On August 25th Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the southern coast of the U.S.A, bringing record breaking rainfall, widespread flooding and a natural disaster on a ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Low tide at Alexandra Fjord

Martin Brummell August 28, 2017

Low tide at Alexandra Fjord . Credit: Martin Brummell (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu).

Today’s post takes us to the far northern reaches of our planet, to a desert like nothing you’ve seen before. This picture is a view to the north across Alexandra Fjord, on the east coast of Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian High Arctic, with Sphynx island in the middle of the fjord. The south shore of Alexandra Fjord includes a polar oasis, an area of tundra vegetation and relatively mild climati ...[Read More]

GeoSciences Column: When could humans last walk, on land, between Asia & America?

Laura Roberts-Artal August 25, 2017

Map showing the Chukchi Sea, north of the Bering Strait and Sea, between Russia and the United States. Credit: NormanEinstein, distributed via Wikimedia Commons.

Though now submerged under 53 m of ocean waters, there once was a land bridge which connected North America with Asia, allowing the passage of species, including early humans, between the two continents. A new study, published in the EGU’s open access journal Climate of the Past, explores when the land bridge was last inundated, cutting off the link between the two landmasses. The Bering Strait, a ...[Read More]