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]
Imaggeo
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]
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]
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]
Imaggeo on Mondays: All kinds of exposure
This photo was taken by Grant Wilson at Arches National Park, Utah, USA. The park is home to more than 2,000 sandstone arches, exposed by years of weathering and the removal of softer rock. They are part of the Entrada Sandstone formation, which was deposited during the Jurassic. “The arches form as ice accumulated in fissures expands and breaks the rock forming fins. Wind and water eroded the fin ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: How to forge a fjord
The West Norwegian Fjords are the reference point for fjords around the world. One such fjord is Geiranger, which features in this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays. The geological setting of Geirangerfjord – and its climate – has earned the area a spot on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. During the last ice age, much of northern Europe was glaciated; covered by a large ice sheet known as the Fennoscandian I ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: That spot there? It’s 143,000 kilometres across
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays highlights an amazing view of the night sky at new moon. Christian Klepp took this photo while at Waterton Glacier in the Rocky Mountains – it’s an incredible feat of determination to spend the night beside a glacial lake in the Rockies, let alone to capture such a photo! The centre of the Milky Way lies just over the horizon, shrouded by clouds of interstellar dust. ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Hiking and horseshoes
The Grand Canyon is filled with fantastic geological features like this one – Horseshoe Bend – a horseshoe-shaped meander of the Colorado River. Hiking through this wonderful landscape is a joy for geoscientists and photographers alike, so no matter where your destination is, you’re bound to get distracted by an outstanding outcrop or spectacular view. Grand Canyon National Park is home to some of ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Hekla’s history
Iceland is well known for its extensive volcanism. Situated amid the northernmost part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the spreading centre is a hub of volcanic activity, from Krafla in the north to the young volcanic island of Surtsey in the south. Hekla is one of the country’s most active volcanoes – both in terms of erupted material and eruption frequency, and lies at the heart of a 40 kilomet ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: The name’s Bond. Hydrogen bond.
The O in H2O attracts electrons towards it, a property known as electronegativity. And because oxygen attracts electrons towards it, it is ever so slightly positive. Likewise, the hydrogen atoms in a water molecule are ever so slightly negative. The difference in charge across a water molecule is what holds water together as the slightly positive hydrogen atoms are attracted towards the slightly n ...[Read More]