Europe’s biggest geoscience conference, EGU24, is only one month away! Each year, the EGU General Assembly brings together over 17,000 researchers, scientists, academics and journalists to discuss and share the latest developments in planetary exploration, Earth observation, polar science, climate change, natural hazards, and much more. And it is held at the Austria Centre Vienna (ACV) which is bi ...[Read More]
This week – on 24 January – the world observed the International Day of Education. At EGU, it felt like the perfect time for us to explore the intersection of science and art, and how they can be used in creative ways to educate and inform people regardless of their age and background. I spoke to Heike Jane Zimmermann who is an illustrator and sculptor with a particular passion for eco ...[Read More]
The wind, funnelled downwards by the surrounding skyscrapers, whipped along Wagramer Strasse, as early morning traffic thundered by. Past the Orthodox Church and then slightly uphill to the Kaisermühlen VIC underground station, where a stream of one-way traffic was already in full force, everybody proudly displaying their blue lanyards and most carrying the large black poster tubes that are so in ...[Read More]
By Andrea L. Popp, Anouk Beniest, Anita Di Chiara, Derya Gürer, Elenora van Rijsingen, Mengze Li and Simone Pieber. The geoscience community has long been recognized as one of the least diverse scientific fields. However, the extent to which this homogeneity affects workplace climate, particularly for under-represented groups, remains unclear (Berhe et al., 2022; Popp et al., 2019). Documented ins ...[Read More]
A few weeks ago, at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly EGU23, a group of researchers from different disciplines briefed the media about the impact of war on the oceans, sands, and people. Among them, Florian Ulrich Jehn’s presentation stood out for its rather unlikely proposition: that seaweed appeared to be a promising candidate as a resilient food solution in nuclear winter. I ...[Read More]
Try typing the phrase ‘period in geosciences’ into Google. You’ll get something like ‘divisions of geological time’, and how we divide ancient earth time into eras, periods and epochs. We learn about this in the first year and again in every subsequent year of geological training. We are both geochronologists, so this is a topic we are deeply familiar with. But we are also both women. To us, and e ...[Read More]
Science tells us: more is more, and less is less. As geoscientists, we therefore intuitively conceive paragraphs of text as a lot of information, and a generous selection of colours as strongly eye-catching. But text-filled, rainbow-coloured poster presentations communicate neither effectively nor in an accessible manner. After working for months or even years on a geoscience project, we have a lo ...[Read More]
Changes in Arctic climate variability and extremes may have significant impacts for migratory birds, according to a study presented at EGU23 by Nomikos Skyllas, a PhD student from the University of Groningen. Many species cross continents during their seasonal migration patterns, travelling from as far as Africa and South America to northern regions such as Siberia and the Canadian Arctic. If you’ ...[Read More]
For this year’s Photo Contest, EGU received hundreds of amazing images capturing a broad spectrum of the geosciences. After the selection committee whittled the field down to 10 finalists, you have been voting for your favourites throughout EGU23’s week-long conference, both on-site in Vienna at the EGU Booth, and online. After an enthusiastic response from voters, we are now ready -and very ...[Read More]
Until recently, scientists assumed lightning had a homogeneous distribution of energy inside its channel. But researchers like Damien Bestard, a PhD student with the Sorbonne Université have found that the composition of each bolt is quite variable. Bestard presented his findings at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly EGU23 on Monday (April 24). As part of his research, Bestard measure ...[Read More]