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]
The best of Imaggeo in 2014: in pictures.
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 Astronomy Gets Closer to Home: Why space weather outreach is important and how to give it impact
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]
Connecting Earth scientists and school students – Apply to take part in I’m a Geoscientist!
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]
GeoEd: Citizen Geoscience
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]
Launching the new EGU Blogs!
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]
GeoEd: Under review
In this month’s GeoEd column, Sam Illingworth tells us about how teaching undergraduate students about peer review can help eliminate bad practice. To anybody other than a researcher, the words peer review might seem like a fancy new age management technique, but to scientists it is either the last bastion of defence against the dark arts or an unnecessary evil that purports to ruin our grea ...[Read More]
GeoCinema Online: Our changing Climate
Welcome to the third instalment of Geocinema! The focus this week is on climate change and how it impacts on local communities. Sit back, relax and make sure you’ve got a big bucket of popcorn on the go, as this post features a selection of short documentaries as well as trailers of feature length films. Documenting the effects of the warming conditions on the surface of our planet is the primary ...[Read More]
GeoTalk: Meet Anna Rabitti, winner of I’m a Geoscientist, Get me out of here!
Earlier this year we ran the first ever I’m a Geoscientist, Get me out of here! event, an online chat-based game show in which school kids vote for their favourite geoscience communicators. In this week’s GeoTalk, Sara Mynott talks to Anna Rabitti, an oceanography PhD student and winner of this year’s I’m a Geoscientist… First, for those who haven’t been following I’m a Geoscientist, can y ...[Read More]
GeoEd: The Future’s Bright
What got you hooked to science in the first place? More importantly, what or who persuaded you that making science your career was, not only worth considering, but should be actively pursed? I’m sure, I am preaching to the converted; we all think science is not only cool, but a worthwhile and rewarding career path; so why is it that we can’t enthuse the younger generations that it is the case too? ...[Read More]