In this month’s Geosciences column, Mona Behl discusses a recent paper on the effects of anthropogenically-induced climate change on the planet’s oceans. A recent study led by scientists at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, suggests that observed changes in ocean salinity are inconsistent with natural climate variations and can be attributed to human ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Blue haze
In this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays, brought to you by the photographer himself, Lukas Hörtnagl (University of Innsbruck, Austria) tells us about the ‘blue haze’ or ‘tule fog’ of California’s Sequoia National Park. I was visiting the United States to attend the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2011 and decided to stay four more weeks to visit some of the National Parks in C ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Flowers in the Atacama
The Atacama desert in Chile is one of the driest regions in the world. Rain has never been recorded in parts of the desert and the average rainfall is typically one milimetre per year or less (for comparison, the average annual precipitation in Munich, where the EGU Executive Office is located, is over 960 millimetres). However, every five years or so, rare bouts of local rainfall are triggered by ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Trees of time
The Namib-Nauklufy National Park in Namibia is a stunning ecoregion that encompasses part of the Namib Desert and the Nauklufy mountain range. With an area of almost 50,000 square kilometres, the park covers a wide range of landscapes, including gravel plains, tall sand dunes, and an ephemeral river. The park also includes one of the main visitor attractions of Namibia, the Sossusvlei, a large dry ...[Read More]