GeoLog

Cryospheric Sciences

Imaggeo on Mondays: Spying on the Arctic

This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by the photographer himself, Fabien Darrouzet who captured the beautiful glacial landscape during a summer expedition to the Arctic.  This picture was taken in Svalbard (78° lat.) in June 2012. I was there for one week in order to observe the transit of the planet Venus in …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Alas, allases are abound!

The Lena River flows throughout Russia from its source in the Baikal Mountains out into the Arctic Ocean, where the delta’s landscape is dominated by ice-rich Yedoma and thermokarst lakes. Thermokarst lakes have been identified as a source of carbon release to the atmosphere and Yedoma-like lake sediments are known to release more methane than …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Stirring up a sandstorm

These are the outwash plains for the Icelandic volcano, Katla: An outwash plain (or sandur) is a broad, shallowly sloping region ahead of a glacial front. They are made up of material that has been deposited by glacial meltwater, released either by geothermal heating or a subglacial eruption. The extensive volcanism and abundance of ice-capped volcanoes …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Storm in Mount Waddington

This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by the photographer herself, Marion Bisiaux (now at Stendhal University, Grenoble, France), who tells us about her exciting field trip to the British Columbia’s Coast Range. This picture was taken during the Waddington Range Ice Core Project in which I participated during my PhD at the …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Melting ice

The speed and extent of Greenland’s ice sheet melt dominated the media over the summer, and for good reason. Dramatic satellite images showed that, in just a few days, 97% of the island’s ice sheet surface thawed, melting over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Usually, …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: The power of ice

There has been a lot of talk about Greenland lately in the context of global climate change. And for good reason. Over 80% of its total surface is covered by ice, the volume of which exceeds 2,850,000 km3 or enough to raise global sea levels by a staggering 7 m if fully melted. The Greenland …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Ephemeral winter wonderland

Today’s text is brought to you by the author of this impressive picture, Patrick Klenk (Heidelberg University, Germany). This photograph is part of a series of images which I took in Death Valley National Park on a brisk December morning in 2011. In this case, we were close to Aguereberry Point, a mountain viewpoint located …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Glimpse of heaven

The text of this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays comes from the photographer herself, Madlen Gebler, who tells us the tragic story behind this stunning picture. This picture was taken on the 2nd of March 2008 on board the research vessel Polarstern during the expedition ANT XXIV-3. After a four-week cruise we arrived in Atka Bay, …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Arctic iceberg

The text of this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays comes from the photographer himself, Phillip Blaen (University of Birmingham), who took the picture while on fieldwork for his PhD studies. Phillip researches the impacts of climate change on the hydrology and ecology of Artic rivers. Last year, I was working in a small research village called …[Read More]

Geosciences Column: Predicting glacial lake outburst floods

In this month’s Geosciences Column, Amanda Gläser-Bligh writes about SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellites and how they can be used to map glacier lakes and mitigate related flood hazards. Glaciers are a natural storage system and provide a perennial source of fresh water to the surrounding low-lying areas, which can be used for drinking water, irrigation, …[Read More]