GeoLog

meltwater

Imaggeo on Mondays: Hot and cold – how ash influences glacial landscapes

This week’s Imaggeo on Mondays is brought to you by Joanna Nield, a lecturer in physical geography at the University of Southampton. Nield explains how volcanic eruptions can impact glaciers and how ash fall can both accelerate and slow down glacial melt… This photo was taken at Fjallsjökull, Iceland in July 2011, shortly after the eruption of Grímsvötn volcano (21 – 30 May 2011).  The Gríms ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: How to forge a fjord

The West Norwegian Fjords are the reference point for fjords around the world. One such fjord is Geiranger, which features in this week’s Imaggeo on Mondays. The geological setting of Geirangerfjord – and its climate – has earned the area a spot on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. During the last ice age, much of northern Europe was glaciated; covered by a large ice sheet known as the Fennoscandian I ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Monitoring the melt

Automatic weather stations (AWS) play a prominent role in making meteorological measurements in remote areas. These measurements can feed into climate models; providing better projections for rainfall, temperature and more. This peculiarly perched piece of equipment is just such a weather station: Out in the Swiss Alps, this AWS is making measurements of temperature, precipitation, wind speed, rel ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Getting a handle on Greenland’s glaciers

The picture below shows several small glaciers surrounding the Greenland ice sheet, in Tassilaq, near Kulusuk, East Greenland. The dark lines are glacial moraines, responsible for the transport of rock material from mountains towards sea. The photographer, Romain Schläppy, highlights that “an important scientific topic consists to place the recent and ongoing Greenland warming in the broader conte ...[Read More]