This was taken during a study, undertaken by me and my colleagues, on the sea ice of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. We designed the project to document how supercooled water carrying suspended ice crystals flows along its pathway towards the open ocean. Ultimately, this work aims to assess the Ross Ice Shelf’s contribution of local melt to the long-term trend of increased sea ice cover around Antarcti ...[Read More]
The picture was taken during the 2015 research cruise HE441 in the southern German Bight, North Sea. It features the research vessel Heincke, on a remarkably calm and warm spring day, forming a seemingly steady wake. The roughly 55 metre long FS Heincke, owned by the German federal government and operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute, provides a great platform for local studies of the North Sea ...[Read More]
The occurrence of sporadic permafrost in the Alps often needs challenging fieldwork in order to be investigated. Here in the high altitude karstic plateau of Mt. Canin-Kanin (2587 m asl) in the Julian Alps (southeastern European Alps) several permanent ice deposits have been recently investigated highlighting how also in such more resilient environments global warming is acting rapidly. Important ...[Read More]
Tristan da Cunha is a remote volcanic island in the south Atlantic Ocean. In fact, it is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world. Tristan is still volcanically active; the last time it erupted was in 1961. After the eruption, which luckily did not have any casualties, the whole population of around 260 people evacuated the island for some time, but they all returned back to the island b ...[Read More]
This photograph was taken at the campsite near lake Mỳvatn during a field trip to Iceland. Every year a group of students from Wageningen University travels from the Netherlands to Iceland for a weeklong excursion as part of a course on catchment hydrology. The aim of the trip is to provide students with real life examples of the processes they learned during their lectures. After a rainy morning ...[Read More]
Pictured here are climate scientists processing ice core samples in the East Greenland Ice-core Project (EastGRIP) science trench 10 m under the surface of the Greenland ice cap. The trenches of this ice core camp require minimum building materials, utilising giant inflatable balloons that are dug in and covered with snow. The snow is left to compact for a few days, thereafter leaving back an arch ...[Read More]
The heights we go to for science… This photograph shows a member of our team preparing to abseil down a cliff in the Charyn Canyon, in the Ili River basin of southeast Kazakhstan. The Charyn River and its tributaries, a branch of the Ili River north of the Tien Shan Mountains, have cut canyons up to 300 metres deep, carving through rocks of different geologic ages, some as old as 540 million years ...[Read More]
If you are pre-registered for the 2018 General Assembly (Vienna, 8 -13 April), you can take part in our annual photo competition! Winners receive a free registration to next year’s General Assembly! But hurry, there are only a few days left to enter! Every year we hold a photo competition and exhibit in association with our open access image repository, Imaggeo, and our annual General Assembly. Th ...[Read More]
Today’s post takes us to the far northern reaches of our planet, to a desert like nothing you’ve seen before. This picture is a view to the north across Alexandra Fjord, on the east coast of Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian High Arctic, with Sphynx island in the middle of the fjord. The south shore of Alexandra Fjord includes a polar oasis, an area of tundra vegetation and relatively mild climati ...[Read More]
In 2008 the NEEM Deep Ice Core Project was initiated by 14 partner countries in Northwestern Greenland (camp position 77.45°N 51.06°W) with the aim to drill from the very top of the Greenland ice cap to its base; obtaining ice from as far back as the last interglacial period- the Eemian – some 130,000 years old. At the start of the 2008 field season, the NEEM camp consisted of a single hea ...[Read More]