Earlier this month Jens Weiser set off aboard a research vessel fondly known as the Floating University to find out more about the oceans off southern Africa. After several weeks at sea, Weiser has some exciting findings to report back from FS Meteor as he and 14 other young scientists explore the region’s biology and geology… A certain routine has developed over the last week here on board. The t ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: A feast of pancakes
The thought of pancake ice always makes me a little hungry – I just can’t help thinking about stacks of syrup-drowned pancakes, or crepes covered wish sugar and doused with lemon juice – but the science of pancake ice is quite a tempting topic too! Pancake ice occurs in areas where ice formation is repeatedly disturbed by water movement. In the Southern Ocean, the water extremely open and the swel ...[Read More]
Dense rocks rise higher because isostasy says so
From space, the Brandberg Igneous Complex looks like a coffee-coloured birthmark set upon the bony complexion of the Namibian desert. Perfectly circular, its peaks soar in a ring of mighty topography, its massive granite cliffs etched with the muscular definition of spheroidal weathering. Its bulk seems to rise out of the barren landscape, driven upward by some unseen force. In fact, granite intru ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Carving polar canyons
This week Ian Joughin, a research scientist from the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, takes us on the polar express to put glacial processes into perspective and find out what makes a moulin… This canyon formed when a melt lake on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet overflowed and created a stream that extended out toward a crevasse field. This outflow stream filled a creva ...[Read More]
‘Coaland’ – fossil fuel addiction, renewables envy and Poland’s energy future
The Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy (ELEEP) Network brings together young professionals from Europe and North America with the aim of fostering transatlantic relations. As Warsaw prepared to host last month’s UN climate convention (COP19), ELEEP members, including former EGU Science Communications Fellow Edvard Glücksman, sat down for coffee with one of the early pioneers of Po ...[Read More]
Seawater, fish larvae and sediments – a snapshot of an ecosystem off South Africa
Earlier this month Jens Weiser set out from southern Africa to find out more about the region’s biology and geology. Back aboard FS Meteor, he’s searching for layers of lagoonal muds to see what the climate was like here in the late Quaternary… After quite a lot of transit, we arrived at our first big station off Durban on Wednesday afternoon. On our way here we used the time to introduce ourselve ...[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: Hot and cold – how ash influences glacial landscapes
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Joanna Nield, a lecturer in physical geography at the University of Southampton. Nield explains how volcanic eruptions can impact glaciers and how ash fall can both accelerate and slow down glacial melt… This photo was taken at Fjallsjökull, Iceland in July 2011, shortly after the eruption of Grímsvötn volcano (21 – 30 May 2011). The Gríms ...[Read More]
…Ever thought about joining a research cruise?
Over the next month Jens Weiser, a masters student at the University of Bremen, will be reporting from a research cruise off southern Africa. This week he’s setting the scene and setting seaward with 14 other young scientists in a bid to understand more about the region’s biology and geology… When I started my Masters programme, Marine Geosciences, at the University of Bremen one and a half years ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Flying over flysch
In this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays, Ian Watkinson transports us to the Sulaiman Mountain Range and shows why it’s always worth bringing a camera in your hand luggage… This image is the view from the window of a plane crossing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border close to Zhob. I took it just before the weather closed in on a clear crossing of the Indus valley foreland and the entire Sulaiman Mountain ...[Read More]