Satellites are keeping tabs on the state of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, and have observed considerable declines in ice extent in many areas since records began, but what do we know of past sea ice extent? Ice cores keep an excellent record of climate change, but until recently, ice cores have not been used to quantify patterns in past sea ice extent because few reliable compounds are preserved i ...[Read More]
A sky-high view on pollution in the Himalayas: the journey
After being awarded the EGU’s science journalism fellowship, Jane Qiu took to the Himalayas to shadow scientists studying air pollution at the Pyramid Observatory some 5000 metres above sea level. The journey to work is by no means an easy one… For Angela Marinoni and Paolo Bonasoni, climate scientists at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate in Bologna, Italy, and Maxime Hervo, a Ph.D ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Great faults and faultless geotourism
Road cuttings provide a great window into the wonders of what’s beneath the Earth’s surface. In this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays Bahram Sadry takes us through a beautiful fault between Tabriz and Tehran, Iran… These incredible rock outcroppings along Zanjan-Tabriz highway (the northwest of Iran), are unlike any other outcrop in the world. They are a group of faults and fractures, brecciation and gra ...[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 discovery was no easy task. Much of my background i ...[Read More]
Applications for the 2014 GIFT workshop are open!
Every year, the EGU Committee on Education organises a workshop that spreads first-hand scientific information to teachers. The theme of this year’s Geosciences Information For Teachers (GIFT) workshop is Our Changing Planet and it will be taking place on April 27–30 2014 at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. The workshop will explore some of the recent complex changes of our environment ...[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 a degree. Three kilometres may sound like a pretty large area, but in oceanographic modelling, thi ...[Read More]
New Educational Fellow at the EGU Office
Hello, I am Jane, the new Education Officer at the EGU. My role here is to help develop and implement the EGU’s educational strategy and initiatives for formal and informal education as well as working on exciting new education-related collaborations for the EGU. I earned my BSc (Hons) Geology from the University of Edinburgh then went on to gain an MRes in Heritage Science from University College ...[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 capture – especially when you need to do a little science with the images. Seafloor p ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Capturing the aurora
The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are created as charged particles interact with the Earth’s atmosphere. These electrons are part of the solar wind and as they pass through the Earth’s magnetic shield (the magnetosphere); the charged particles collide with those in our atmosphere, emitting light. In the southern hemisphere this phenomenon is known as the aurora australis, but both are caus ...[Read More]
Letting the methane genie out of the bottle
Greenhouse gas levels and globally averaged surface temperatures are both on the rise. Whilst slow increases in temperatures are not easily perceived as threatening, and might even be welcomed by some, climate change can also include fast and sudden changes. These sudden changes could have disastrous effect on not only us humans, but also life on this planet more generally. When it comes to places ...[Read More]