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 Story With June being the month when the world’s oceans are celebrated with World Ocean Day (8th June) and the month when the UN’s Ocean Conference took place, it seemed apt t ...[Read More]
The interior of this ice cave at the Erebus glacier tongue is cathedral-like. Imagine standing in the cold interior, icy blue stalactites dangling from the cave roof; the sense of awe is overwhelming. Mt. Erbus is the world’s southernmost active volcano on Ross Island, in Antarctica. Winding its way down its lower slopes is Erebus glacier. Projecting out from the coast, a jagged and thin tongue ma ...[Read More]
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 Story In the last couple of weeks of May, the news world was abuzz with the possibility of Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Though the announcement actually ...[Read More]
This image was taken during the Arctic Ocean 2016(AO16) expedition that ventured to the central regions of the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. It shows a pressure ridge, or ice ridge, as viewed from onboard the deck of the icebreaker Oden. It was quite striking that the ice ridge resembled an image of a spine – sea ice being a defining characteristic of the broader Arctic environment and b ...[Read More]
Take some ice, mix in some rock, snow and maybe a little mud and the result is a rock glacier. Unlike ice glaciers (the ones we are most familiar with), rock glaciers have very little ice at the surface. Looking at today’s featured image, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Morenas Coloradas rock glacier wasn’t a glacier at all. But appearances can be misleading; as Jan Blöthe (a researcher at the ...[Read More]
This month’s GeoRoundUp is a slight deviation from the norm. Instead of drawing inspiration from popular stories on our social media channels and unique or quirky research featured in the news, we’ve rounded up some of the stories which came out of researcher presented at our General Assembly (which took place last week in Vienna). The traditional format for the column will return in May! Major st ...[Read More]
In 2008 the NEEM Deep Ice Core Project was initiated by 14 partner countries in Northwestern Greenland (camp position 77.45°N 51.06°W) with the aim to drill from the very top of the Greenland ice cap to its base; obtaining ice from as far back as the last interglacial period- the Eemian – some 130,000 years old. At the start of the 2008 field season, the NEEM camp consisted of a single hea ...[Read More]
Nestled among the high peaks of the Karakoram, in a difficult to reach region of China, lies Kyagar Glacier. It’s trident-like shape climbs from 4800 to 7000 meters above sea level and is made up of three upper glacier tributaries which converge to form an 8 km long glacier tongue. Until recently, it’s remoteness meant that studying its behaviour relied heavily on the acquisition of data by satel ...[Read More]
One of the main perks of being a geoscientist is that, often, research takes scientists all around the globe to conduct their work. While fieldwork can be hard and challenging it also offers the opportunity to see stunning landscapes and experiencing unusual phenomenon. Aboard the Akademik Tryoshnikov research vessel, while cruising the Kara Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia) Tatiana ...[Read More]
The high peaks of the Alps are always awe inspiring, but this midnight shot, captured by Alessandro Lechmann, a PhD student at the Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of Bern, further enhance their fragile beauty. With a warming climate threatening snow availability to even the highest peaks, it has never been more important to appreciate the importance of the glaciers which drape t ...[Read More]