Wherever you are in the world’s oceans, you can identify particular bodies of water (provided you have the right equipment) by how salty they are. You can get a feel for how productive that part of the ocean is by measuring a few chemical components in the water column. And, year on year, you will see a recurring pattern in how things like temperature, salinity and oxygen content vary with depth. ...[Read More]
Climate: Past, Present & Future
Geosciences Column: Using tall trees to tot up tropical carbon
Forests in the tropics account for about half the above-ground carbon on Earth and as the trees grow older they are capable of storing more and more. In fact, their carbon-storing potential is so large that they are increasingly being viewed as a means of mitigating climate change. Take, for example, the United Nations effort to reduce degradation and deforestation by assigning value to forest car ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: How sea urchins can help mitigate climate change
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays stars the humble sea urchin – a creature suffering from the effects of climate change, but one that could also provide a way to sequester some of the CO2 responsible… Carbon dioxide and water react to form carbonic acid – a mixture of bicarbonate and hydrogen ions. Sea urchins bag the bicarbonate to grow bigger, stronger shells, or ‘tests’, but without a catalyst, th ...[Read More]
Geoscience under the tree
In a festive-themed post, EGU Media and Communications Manager Bárbara Ferreira selects a plethora of geoscience-inspired Christmas presents, which you could give to your favourite researcher. Please note that, with the exception of the last one, the items listed below are not necessarily recommended or endorsed by the EGU. For me Christmas is more about eating large amounts of food and celebratin ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: How to forge a fjord
The West Norwegian Fjords are the reference point for fjords around the world. One such fjord is Geiranger, which features in this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays. The geological setting of Geirangerfjord – and its climate – has earned the area a spot on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. During the last ice age, much of northern Europe was glaciated; covered by a large ice sheet known as the Fennoscandian I ...[Read More]
GeoTalk: Flo Bullough from Four Degrees
This week in GeoTalk, we’re talking to Flo Bullough – Policy Assistant at the Geological Society who writes about both climate and policy at Four Degrees… Hi Flo, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into science communication? I would say that science communication is something I have always done in my academic studies without having labelled it as such. I deliberately cho ...[Read More]
Assessing transatlantic cooperation on energy security and climate change
At the first flagship Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy (ELEEP) Network conference, participants dug deep to identify key areas in energy and environment where transatlantic cooperation could be most effective. ELEEP member and former EGU Science Communication Fellow Edvard Glücksman reports back from Washington DC. Finding solutions through cooperation is not necessarily the par ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Arid lands and ancient lakes
Palaeoclimatologist Annett Junginger takes us to one of the hottest and driest places on Earth in this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays… The picture was taken in 2010 during the third in six expeditions to the remote Suguta Valley in the northern Kenya Rift. This unbelievably beautiful place is located just south of Lake Turkana and is one of the hottest and driest places in equatorial Africa. Temperatur ...[Read More]
The new EGU blog series on Education: GeoEd
Welcome to GeoEd, the new column on GeoLog dedicated to education in the geosciences! This is a series of posts written by the EGU Educational Fellow, Jane Robb that will cover the new and ongoing education initiatives across the EGU, as well as individual posts under the broad global pedagogical theme of education for sustainable development. GeoEd posts are aimed at formal and informal educators ...[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Climate-impact studies and their importance in a world of climatic uncertainty
A new hydrological climate-impact study by Nina Köplin and colleagues, in the European Geosciences Union journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, investigates the impacts of climate change on forest expansion and glacier retreat in Switzerland. This study raises important questions as to whether or not land cover changes should be considered as climate change impacts on hydrological systems, N ...[Read More]