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 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]
I’m a Geoscientist – Get me out of here! Apply to take part in our 2014 launch event!
Imagine a talent show where contestants get voted off dependant 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 the EGU’s new educational initiative to launch in June 2014. The EGU have entered into a collaboration wit ...[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]
GeoEd: Teaching geoscience creatively
Why should teaching geoscience students about societal or economic issues such as population, poverty and health be important? It’s not just because it is relevant contextual knowledge for the modern day geoscientist, but it is also essential for helping give students in primary, secondary or undergraduate education the ‘real life’ application and context they need to understand and enjoy a subjec ...[Read More]
Sending GIFT to Africa: A new collaboration between the EGU, UNESCO and ESA
For the past ten years, the EGU’s Geosciences Information for Teachers (GIFT) workshops – spreading first hand scientific research to teachers of primary and secondary schools – have been hugely successful in shortening the time that research takes to disseminate from scientist to textbook to teacher and offering usable practical activities for the classroom. GIFT workshops are usually held at the ...[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]
GeoTalk: Flo Bullough from Four Degrees
This week in GeoTalk, we’re talking to Flo Bullough – Policy Assistant at the Geological Society who writes about both climate and policy at Four Degrees… Hi Flo, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into science communication? I would say that science communication is something I have always done in my academic studies without having labelled it as such. I deliberately cho ...[Read More]