Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are caused when masses of meltwater are released from behind a glacier moraine. Moraines are piles of unconsolidated debris that have either eroded from the glacier valley or have been deposited by melting glaciers. When they fail, a huge volume of water can be released, threatening populations further down the …[Read More]
Geoscientific Methods
GeoTalk: Yagmur Derin on posters and precipitation
This week in GeoTalk, we’re talking to Yagmur Derin, a masters student from Middle East Technical University, Turkey. She tells us about the intersecting fields of hydrology, climate science and remote sensing, and what it’s like to take the plunge and present your first poster at an international conference. Firstly, can you introduce yourself and …[Read More]
Momentous discoveries in oceanography
Earlier this month, one of our network bloggers, Matt Herod, put out a call for posts on momentous discoveries in geology as part of a well-known geoscience blog carnival, The Accretionary Wedge. With so many geoscience disciplines to choose from, and an immense wealth of exciting discoveries across the Earth sciences, choosing just one momentous …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Surface spirals
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is no ordinary image; it’s a snapshot of surface ocean speeds and the extent of ice cover in the North Atlantic. It was produced using a high resolution model of ocean eddies – high resolution here means that details are simplified into grids 3 km across, or one 20th of …[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Stitching the seafloor together
You’re standing on a mountain peak, with a fabulous field site before you. Wanting to capture the moment, you take out your iPhone, snap a dozen pictures and your mobile stitches them together beautifully – a nice record to show your colleagues back in the office. Unfortunately, not all field sites are so easy to …[Read More]
Geosciences Column: Dating a bivalve
Just as the rings on a tree can be used to determine its age, the bands on a bivalve’s shell can tell us the how long it’s been around for. Warm, food-filled waters lead to greater growth in the summer and low plankton abundance (the principle food source for filter-feeding molluscs) leads to limited growth …[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Getting a handle on Greenland’s glaciers
The picture below shows several small glaciers surrounding the Greenland ice sheet, in Tassilaq, near Kulusuk, East Greenland. The dark lines are glacial moraines, responsible for the transport of rock material from mountains towards sea. The photographer, Romain Schläppy, highlights that “an important scientific topic consists to place the recent and ongoing Greenland warming in …[Read More]
Muon musings – how penetrating particles could let us peer beneath Mars’ surface
Muons are penetrating particles generated by cosmic rays. Muon radiography – or muography – is the large-scale equivalent of using x-rays to generate images. Except, instead of using x-rays to take a closer look at your broken arm, we can use showers of muons to take a look inside large geological structures – we’re talking …[Read More]
GeoCinema Online: Making Measurements
Making measurements from the space and looking to the skies has hugely enhanced our understanding of the Earth, it’s surface processes and its movement in space. This short episode of GeoCinema Online takes you through some of the great technological developments in the Earth and planetary sciences! Looking Down a Well: A Brief History of …[Read More]
Reaching up High – Aerosol Concentrations at EGU 2013
For those with a keen eye, you may have spotted a red balloon soaring high above the EGU Centre this week. The little white box attached underneath is the Light Optical Aerosol Counter (LOAC), a device that has been measuring the aerosols it the air around the conference. Aerosols are air borne particles that can …[Read More]