Welcome to GeoTalk, Caitlyn and John! Could you please briefly introduce yourselves to our readers? John Hillier (Interim Division President): I have a very mixed research background. I started off in marine geophysics and then I moved to glacial geomorphology. At the end of that I worked for an insurance company as a catastrophe modeller, …[Read More]
Imagine standing in the middle of an eighty-year-old Norway spruce forest in Central Europe. The canopy overhead forms a dark, emerald tomb that locks away decades of atmospheric carbon. For years, climate models and European policy frameworks treated mature forests like this as permanent carbon fortresses, heavy-duty biological vaults absorbing roughly 0.2 petagrams of carbon …[Read More]
Aberfan is located in the South Wales Valleys and developed as a coal mining village during the industrial revolution in the mid-1800s. The village is much like any of the other villages scattered across the region – rows on rows of small terrace houses, nestled into the sides and bottom of steep, glacially eroded valleys. …[Read More]
Using stable isotopes to uncover a hidden step in Earth’s water cycle The Indian summer monsoon transforms South Asia’s landscape. Rivers swell, reservoirs replenish, crops receive life-sustaining water, and millions await relief after months of intense heat. But what happens to a raindrop between the cloud and the ground? Not every raindrop reaches the surface …[Read More]
If we look at Mars today, we’ll see a cold, dusty desert, but peel back the surface geology, and the planet tells quite a different story! Networked river valleys, ancient deltaic fans, carved impact crater lakes, and potential palaeoshorelines all point to a warm and active past during the Noachian and early Hesperian epochs, circa …[Read More]
Hello Luigi! Thank you for agreeing to this GeoTalk interview. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your background to our readers? Hi Simon and the EGU community! I’m a postdoc researcher in applied geophysics at the University of Naples Federico II. My research focuses on developing advanced potential field modelling and inversion techniques to image …[Read More]
When I joined the European Geosciences Union in 2024 as a media professional, my primary mandate felt straightforward: democratising scientific understanding and building durable, trustworthy bridges that connect scientists, researchers, journalists, and public communicators. Now, in my third year at EGU, I find myself looking out over our scientific community with a mixture of reverence …[Read More]
“Plants carry traces of past weather. Reading them may help us navigate a hotter, drier world.” Wenli Zhao As global warming intensifies drought frequency, understanding how ecosystems store and deplete water is critical for anticipating vegetation stress. This blog walks us through a novel groundbreaking study published on EGU journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences …[Read More]
On the evening of August 21, 1986, an unusual stillness blanketed the green highlands of northwestern Cameroon. The local villagers in Nyos, Cha, and Subum were preparing for bed, totally unaware that the crater lake nearby had reached its breaking point. Without warning, a wave of gas burst from the lake and spilled over the …[Read More]
When you picture the western Mediterranean, you likely imagine sun-drenched beaches, terracotta roofs, and bright blue skies. But has it always been this sunny? A groundbreaking study published in the journal Research provides a definitive answer: it has not. By pulling back the curtain – or rather, the cloud cover – on a thousand years of …[Read More]
