While spooky season is officially in the rearview mirror, it’s not too late to talk about ghosts, is it? Not the bedsheet-wearing, candy-hunting ones that may have haunted our doorsteps last week, but a much older, more elusive kind: the geochemical phantoms of Earth’s first living organisms. Nearly thirty years ago, a team of geologists …[Read More]
Imagine standing in the middle of an eighty-year-old Norway spruce forest in Central Europe. The canopy overhead forms a dark, emerald tomb that locks away decades of atmospheric carbon. For years, climate models and European policy frameworks treated mature forests like this as permanent carbon fortresses, heavy-duty biological vaults absorbing roughly 0.2 petagrams of carbon …[Read More]
When I was thirteen years old, my family and I almost lost our lives due to a carbon monoxide (CO) leak. I never stopped thinking about that incident even though it happened over twenty years ago. Not only because it was a premature realisation of my own mortality, but also because of how sneaky it …[Read More]
Working from home during the pandemic has allowed many of us to look back on past experiences and to long for the days when our work in marine science took us to amazing places all around the world. Pride month is another great opportunity for reflection and to consider how things have changed for us …[Read More]
Although more commonly associated with the west coast of the United States, if you visit Cabezón de la Sal in Spain you may come across a stand of giant redwood trees or Sequoia. Around 800 trees were brought to Spain in the 1940s, so are still very young, but even at their young age they …[Read More]
From Monday to Thursday during the week of #shareEGU20, the Early Career Scientists in our various Divisions are going to host a series of evening networking events. Find out more by clicking on the ‘Networking’ session search in the EGU Programme. If you are wondering if these events are for you, check out the Division …[Read More]
2020 is being described by many as a tipping point: the year that humanity as a species must take concrete and measurable action to prevent catastrophic climate change. But even if we do manage to slow carbon emissions from 2020 onwards, how would the planet deal with all the carbon dioxide we have produced so …[Read More]
A dramatic evening sky puts the frame to a photo taken during the Brazilian Antarctic expedition to James Ross Island in 2016. Brazilian palaeontologists and soil scientists together with German soil scientists spent over 40 days on the island to search for fossils and sample soils at various locations of the northern part of the …[Read More]
This magnificent pattern is the result of hundreds and hundreds of years of evolution. In this structured minerotrophic peatland in Northern Quebec (Canada), which can also be called a string fen or aapa mire, the green peat ridges (or strings) alternate with water-filled hollows (or flarks). Often flarks are replaced by ponds, which vary in …[Read More]
In a world where carbon dioxide levels are rapidly rising, how do you study the long-term effect of carbon emissions? To answer this question, some scientists have turned to Mammoth Mountain, a volcano in California that’s been releasing carbon dioxide for years. Recently, a team of researchers found that this volcanic ecosystem could give clues …[Read More]
