Detail of a photo: Large angular boulder beside a shallow pebbly stream in a grassy mountain valley, below steep forested slopes and rocky peaks under a dramatic blue sky, in heavily processed colours.
EGU Blogs

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Taking the pulse of an extreme landscape

Taking the pulse of an extreme landscape

Welcome to Taroko National Park. Would you like to borrow a safety helmet? In this precipitously steep landscape, covering one’s head is strongly encouraged. Rockfalls and landslides, triggered by frequent seismic activity and torrential rainfall, are mainstays in Taiwan’s preeminent national park. Evidence of this mass-wasting is everywhere: roadways are littered with fallen rocks, boulders …[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Rain on the Namib Desert

Imaggeo on Mondays: Rain on the Namib Desert

Pictured here is the arid Namib Desert on a not-so-arid day. The desert is known for its extremely dry conditions and abundance of sunshine, but this photo, taken by Christoph Schmidt, chair of geomorphology at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, gives us a rare glimpse of a rainy day. The Namib Desert spans about …[Read More]

SSP

Use of Ultraviolet Light in Plattenkalk Research

By Jack Wilkin. One of the techniques used to examine fossils in the laboratory is photography with the aid of UV light. Ultraviolet light causes minerals in the fossils to fluoresce creating a clearer contrast between the fossil and the surrounding matrix. Ultraviolet photography is a cost-effective laboratory technique that can be readily applied to …[Read More]

#EGU2020 Sessions in the spotlight: Earthquake swarms and complex seismic sequences driven by transient forcing in tectonic and volcanic regions

#EGU2020 Sessions in the spotlight: Earthquake swarms and complex seismic sequences driven by transient forcing in tectonic and volcanic regions

The abstract submission deadline for EGU 2020 is now 1 month away – so the clock is ticking to pick a session and submit an abstract! If you still haven’t chosen which session to submit to, we are here for you! Every few days, on this blog, a different session in the general GMPV section …[Read More]

CR

Cryo History – How airborne glaciologists measured the movement of glaciers before the satellite era

Cryo History – How airborne glaciologists measured the movement of glaciers before the satellite era

Recent work published in my department at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) focused on solid ice discharge into the ocean from the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1986 to 2017 (Mankoff et al. 2019). Solid ice discharge is the ice that is lost from a glacier as it flows towards the coast and …[Read More]

GD

The Sassy Scientist – Seeking Specials

The Sassy Scientist – Seeking Specials

Every week, The Sassy Scientist answers a question on geodynamics, related topics, academic life, the universe or anything in between with a healthy dose of sarcasm. Do you have a question for The Sassy Scientist? Submit your question here or leave a comment below. Feeling kind of special after her paper got published, Marie-Jeanne asked: How …[Read More]

CL

Dear “climate sceptic”, do you have a fire insurance? – Climate policy under uncertainty

Dear “climate sceptic”, do you have a fire insurance? – Climate policy under uncertainty

One often hears that ambitious climate policy might be premature while climate change is still “uncertain”. This sounds like a fair argument: The amount of global warming per doubling CO2 is not well constrained, and the amount of economic damage per degree of warming even less. But is this uncertainty a sound excuse to wait …[Read More]

GD

AGU19 – we’ll be back, soon!

AGU19 – we’ll be back, soon!

This week (9-13th December), the AGU19 Fall Meeting is back in the newly renovated Moscone Centre in central San Francisco. For the previous 2 years whilst the facelift has been happening, the Fall Meeting has been carted around to New Orleans and Washington, D.C. You can find more details of the week’s proceedings at the …[Read More]