The image captures an atmospheric extreme event, a so-called sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) that occurred on Feb. 12, 2018. It is visualized through potential vorticity above the North Pole at the 10hPa level (~30km) above the Earth’s surface and consists of a split of the winter polar vortex into two separate vortices that interact with each other. Although the events are not predictable more ...[Read More]
When it is dark over Ny Ålesund, Svalbard, a bright green laser beam can be seen quite often, shooting from the AWIPEV Arctic Research Base observatory towards the sky. This beam belongs to “KARLi” the Koldewey Aerosol Raman Lidar, run by the Alfred Wegener Institute for more than 25 years, which contributes to long-term, atmospheric aerosol measurement records. With this system ...[Read More]
Taken shortly after our departure from Ny-Ålesund after our first “Lost Meteorites” field trial in Greenland testing new equipment that can be used to discover ‘missing’ iron meteorites in Antarctica, the return flight gave incredible views of the surrounding landscape. This photo was taken looking down to the icy waters of Kongsfjorden on the west coast of Svalbard and the ...[Read More]
Moisture coming from the ground is freezing at the entrances of small ground pockets, shaping wonderful natural ice crystals, during a very cold and dry winter in Poland in 2019. Description by Katarzyna Walczak, after the description on imaggeo.egu.eu. Imaggeo is the EGU’s online open access geosciences image repository. All geoscientists (and others) can submit their photographs and video ...[Read More]
The coating by the ice and the icicles are created through the interplay of wave action and the simultaneous freezing of the water around the exposed tree roots. The reason for the exposed tree roots is increased bank erosion due to a rather unusual circumstance. The combination of the lake not yet being frozen in early winter, and strong winter storms, make it very easy for the waves to erode the ...[Read More]
Photo of the air chemistry observatory of the German Neumayer III Antarctic station during Polar Day 2017. Located in a clean air sector south of the station, the observatory’s main purpose is to record continuous, year-round data records of relevant particulate and gaseous trace components of the troposphere. As one of only few stations located in the very clean troposphere of Antarctica, i ...[Read More]
Hello Stéphane and Tommaso, thank you for speaking with us today – could you briefly introduce yourselves? Stéphane Vannitsem Okay, so my name is Stéphane Vannitsem, and I am a researcher at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, in Brussels, and I’ve recently become head of the Meteorological and Climatological Information Service. I’m also a lecturer at the Free Univers ...[Read More]
On the 1st December 1959 the Antarctic Treaty was signed by 12 nations, setting aside nearly 10% of the Earth “forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes… in the interests of all mankind.” In the years that followed more and more countries signed the agreement, until today when the agreement has been signed by 54 countries around the globe. In 2010, the Foundation for ...[Read More]
This photograph highlights the oxidized surface of diorite boulders, which fall from the ice at the base of the Mullins Glacier in Beacon Valley, Antarctica when the ice moves directly from a solid state into a gas state, without becoming a liquid in between (a process called sublimation). The particular features (morphology) of the varnish and the desert pavement of this unique environment are re ...[Read More]
There is no shortage of increasingly uphill challenges in the current research landscape, especially for Early Career researchers: discouragingly long-standing science questions; minimal freedom for developing methodologies; invariably ambivalent proposal reviews; an academic grading scheme based mainly on publication productivity and impact; and enforced competition for few permanent research pos ...[Read More]