The nighttrain from Shanghai to Beijing is a comfortable affair. The train is new and clean. My travel partner and I can charge our phones and relax on soft beds. The railway is almost frictionless, and overall the experience is similar to any ride in the West. But outside, as the vehicle roars through the …[Read More]
The Gower Peninsula in South Wales, United Kingdom, is a spectacular site to view a sunset. However, to geologists, the shore is also a prime spot to find artifacts from Earth’s ancient and recent past. “The limestone coastline is dotted with caves that are rich in Quaternary flora and fauna,” said Mike Smith a visiting …[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 stories Signs of water 55 million kilometres away Last week scientists announced that they have found …[Read More]
This photograph shows landforms on Coraholmen Island in Ekmanfjorden, one of the fjords found in the Norwegian archipelago, Svalbard. These geomorphic features were formed by Sefströmbreen, a tidewater glacier, when it surged in the 1880s. Although all glaciers flow, some glaciers undergo cyclic changes in their flow. This is called surging, and glaciers that surge are called …[Read More]
The EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF), the largest interdisciplinary science meeting in Europe, was held earlier this month in Toulouse, France and attracted scientists and policymakers from across the globe. Held every second year, ESOF provides an interface between science, policy and society. This year was my first ESOF. I attended as the EGU Policy Officer …[Read More]
Jasper National Park is the largest national park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, spanning across nearly 11,000 square kilometres of Canadian wilderness. The park is known for its rugged landscape, extensive trails, and abundance of deer, bighorn sheep, wolves, mountain lions and bears. This region is also very susceptible to blazing wildfires, a result of …[Read More]
Geotalk is a regular feature highlighting early career researchers and their work. In this interview we speak to Matthias Vanmaercke, an associate professor at the University of Liège in Belgium who studies soil erosion and land degradation across Europe and Africa. At the EGU General Assembly he received the 2018 Soil System Sciences Division Outstanding …[Read More]
NASA scientists have revealed surprising new information about Jupiter’s magnetic field from data gathered by their space probe, Juno. Unlike earth’s magnetic field, which is symmetrical in the North and South Poles, Jupiter’s magnetic field has startlingly different magnetic signatures at the two poles. The information has been collected as part of the Juno program, …[Read More]
In the middle of the Apennines lays the Gran Sasso d’Italia mountain chain, a picturesque collection of mountains situated in the heart of Italy. Featured here is one of the chain’s peaks, called the Corno Grande, meaning ‘Big Horn,’ coloured with a faint reddish light of a late-winter sunset. Sitting at 2,912 metres, this summit …[Read More]
Where in the world can you find some of Earth’s oldest ice? That is the question a team of French and US scientists aimed to answer. They recently identified spots in East Antarctica that likely have the right conditions to harbor ice that formed 1.5 million years ago. Scientists hope that obtaining and analysing an …[Read More]
