glaciers

GeoTalk: Meet glacial hauntologist, Elizabeth Case (you read that right, a glacial hauntologist!)

Simon Clark October 10, 2025

Elizabeth Case

Welcome to GeoTalk, Elizabeth! Could you introduce yourself and your background? I’m a genderfluid glaciologist living between previously glaciated, currently glaciated, and flood-prone landscapes. I am a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. I did my bachelor’s in physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and my Ph.D. in glacial geophysics at Co ...[Read More]

A chunk of ice the size of Amsterdam: how the calving of Greenland’s glaciers has changed since the 2010 Petermann Glacier event

Alka Tripathy-Lang August 4, 2023

In this image taken on August 16, 2010, the ice island continues its migration down the fjord. NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team and the United States Geological Survey, via NASA Earth Observatory

Thirteen years ago, a roughly 251 km2 chunk of ice (or 97 miles2) broke off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier. This Amsterdam-sized piece of ice was the largest to calve in the Arctic since 1962. The massive iceberg traversed the Nares Strait, which lies between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and Greenland, and into the northern part of Baffin Bay—the northwestern-most arm of the Atlantic Ocean, before eve ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: meet Francesco Avanzi, researcher in meltwater security!

Simon Clark December 15, 2022

Francesco Avanzi

Hi Francesco. Thanks for agreeing to this interview! To break the ice, could you tell our readers a bit about yourself and your research? Hey Simon! I’m an Italian hydrologist and earned a PhD at Politecnico di Milano with a dissertation on how snowmelt contributes to seasonal runoff. I then did a postdoc at UC Berkeley, California, where I collaborated with a major US hydropower company to improv ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: Meet Larissa van der Laan, glaciologist and science-artist!

Simon Clark December 15, 2021

Hi Larissa, thankyou for spending time with us today! To break the ice, could you tell us a little about yourself and your research? Ha, I see what you did there. I’m Larissa, she/her, 29, and a PhD candidate at the Institute of Hydrology and Water Resources Management in Hannover, Germany. I’ve been fascinated by snow and ice since I was little, writing my first ever school report and ...[Read More]