In this month’s GeoEd post, Sam Illingworth explores the pitfalls of being a scientist in the public eye. Following the recent acquittal of 6 geoscientists on manslaughter charges after ‘failing’ to predict the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, is it time we thought about improving how risk is communicated to the wider public? At the beginning of November of this year, six Italian scientists were acquitte ...[Read More]
From the rifting of the African continent, to mighty waterfalls in Slovenia, through to a bird’s eye view of the Glarus Thurst in the Alps, images from Imaggeo, the EGU’s open access geosciences image repository, they have given us some stunning views of the geoscience of Planet Earth and beyond. In this post we have curated some of our favourites, including header images from across our social me ...[Read More]
When the public think about natural hazards, space weather is not the first thing to come to mind. Yet, though uncommon, extreme space weather events can have an economic impact similar to that of large floods or earthquakes. Although there have been efforts across various sectors of society to communicate this topic, many people are still quite confused about it, having only a limited understandi ...[Read More]
What and when Imagine a talent show where contestants get voted off depending on their skills in their area of choice. Then imagine that this talent show is populated by scientists with school students voting them off based on the scientist’s ability to communicate their research well. This is the basis of a recent EGU educational initiative that launched earlier in 2014, and that will return in 2 ...[Read More]
This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays image is brought to you by Florian Heinlein, a meteorologist by training now working on his PhD modelling water transport in agricultural plants. This image was taken even before he started his bachelor’s degree and studying the Earth’s atmosphere and climate change was still a pipeline dream. This picture was taken during a holiday trip through the Baltics in July 2 ...[Read More]
In this month’s GeoEd column, Sam Illingworth tells us about the growing use of Citizen Science within research as a means of acquiring data. Whilst the practice is novel and offers exciting opportunities as to volumes of data collected Sam highlights the importance of appropriately crediting the work of the willing volunteers. Citizen Science is a phrase that is currently de rigour in scientific ...[Read More]
Welcome to the new home of the EGU Blogs! Today we are proudly launching a new webpage which now houses all the EGU blogs in one place. We have redesigned the website to give the blogs a more modern layout and have implemented a fully responsive page design. This means the new blogs website adapts to the visitor’s screen size and looks good on any device (smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktops) ...[Read More]
In a true feat of endurance, self-discovery and resilience, Solmaz Mohadjer and Josy Strunden, geology students at the University of Tübingen (Germany), cycled 800 km in the Pamir Mountains as part of a trip to raise awareness about autism in Tajikistan. ““We cycled through one of the most tectonically active regions on the planet, passing by mountain communities that welcomed us warmly as well as ...[Read More]
“Access to knowledge is a basic human right.” Yet sadly as scientists we are often forced to operate in a framework in which this is not always the case. This week sees the celebration of the eighth Open Access Week, and whilst there have undoubtedly been many achievements by the Open Access (OA) movement since 2009, there is still a long way to go before mankind’s basic human right to knowledge i ...[Read More]
Field work is not without its trials and tribulations, getting there, for instance can be an adventure in itself. Once you arrive you can expect long days, sandwiches for lunch and frustration at losing your way or equipment not working as you expect it to. Despite all of that, one of the primary draws of the geosciences is being able to spend time in the great outdoors. In the fourth instalment o ...[Read More]