EGU Blogs

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GeoLog

GeoPolicy: Europe’s Waste Policy – using Incinerator Bottom Ash and reducing landfill

January 29, 2021
GeoPolicy: Europe’s Waste Policy – using Incinerator Bottom Ash and reducing landfill

Although you may not realise it, waste and the circular economy is an important topic for many geoscientists. Our consumption drives the need for resources and sustainable resource extraction, while disposing and reducing this waste requires a wide range of expertise and impacts the environments in which many scientists undertake their research. On a more personal level, understanding what happens ...[Read More]

CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Did you know … that liquid water can be held within a glacier?

January 29, 2021
Did you know … that liquid water can be held within a glacier?

Hidden below the surface of some glaciers, liquid water can be found within what is called the firn layer – the upper layer of a glacier where snow compacts into glacier ice. Liquid water may persist there for up to many years, forming what scientists call “firn aquifers.” While observations of seasonal firn aquifers have existed since the mid to late 1900s in several mountain glaciers, recent stu ...[Read More]

SSP
Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Palaeontology

Geoscience for the Future with Dr Natasha Dowey

January 29, 2021
Geoscience for the Future with Dr Natasha Dowey

The Geosciences are at the forefront of the fight against climate change. It is Geoscientists who discovered it and explained it, and it is Geoscientists who work to understand it and its consequences. Geoscientists undoubtedly will be amongst those who will lead us to the solutions. However, it often seems that Geoscientists are solely associated with the extractive industries, a damaging false p ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

The Sassy Scientist – Sterling Subduction

January 29, 2021
The Sassy Scientist – Sterling Subduction

Fausto is very much preoccupied with subduction zones. The omphalos of his working life, or better yet, his paltry existence, he lacklusterly focuses on a single subduction zone. A proclivity for narrow-mindedness, surely. Yet there are ever so many to rejoice in. He thus warbles: What is your favourite subduction zone? Dear Fausto, I can only think of that one little special place deserving the p ...[Read More]

TS
Tectonics and Structural Geology

Janet Vida Watson (1 September 1923 – 29 March 1985): The woman who could translate the story of Precambrian rocks into a crystal-clear message

January 29, 2021
Janet Vida Watson (1 September 1923 – 29 March 1985): The woman who could translate the story of Precambrian rocks into a crystal-clear message

On a late summer day in September 1923, Janet Vida Watson was born. With a father working in palaeontology and a mother who did research in embryology until her marriage, Janet grew up with science all around her. She went to South Hampstead High School, known for its science teaching and continued her education in General Science at Reading University. She graduated in biology and geology in 1943 ...[Read More]

GeoLog

GeoRoundup: the highlights of EGU Journals published during January!

January 28, 2021
GeoRoundup: the highlights of EGU Journals published during January!

Each month we feature specific Divisions of EGU and during the monthly GeoRoundup we will be putting the journals that publish science from those Divisions at the top of the Highlights roundup. For January, the Divisions we are featuring are: Atmospheric Sciences (CR), and Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI). They are served by the journals: Geoscientific Model Development (GMD), Annales Ge ...[Read More]

GeoLog

120 years of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’

January 27, 2021
120 years of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’

120 years ago in 1901, Swedish meteorologist Nils Ekholm used the term ‘greenhouse’ to describe the heating effect that a planet’s atmosphere has on the surface temperature of the planet, the first time that this now much-used and abused metaphor was published. He wrote: “The atmosphere plays a very important part of a double character as to the temperature at the earth’s surface, of which the one ...[Read More]

AS
Atmospheric Sciences

The acidity of atmospheric particles and clouds

January 27, 2021
The acidity of atmospheric particles and clouds

Many of us learned about acidity, or pH, in high school chemistry. We learned that acids like HCl could dissociate into H+ and Cl- and the activity of those H+ ions defined the acidity. In the atmosphere, the same basic definition of acidity, or pH on the molality scale, applies to aqueous phases like suspended particles and cloud droplets. Atmospheric acidity regulates what kinetic reactions are ...[Read More]

GD
Geodynamics

Thermodynamics and Geodynamics: The perfect couple?

and January 27, 2021
till heat death do us part?

In preparation for Valentines day, Bob Myhill explores the potential for close partnership (and even love?) between the geodynamics and thermodynamics communities. Much of Earth and planetary science relies in some way on thermodynamics. This is not a surprise; the elegance1 of its premises makes thermodynamics a robust starting point for many investigations, and the number of thermodynamic applic ...[Read More]

TS
Tectonics and Structural Geology

Features from the Field: Shear Zones and Mylonites

, and January 25, 2021
Features from the Field: Shear Zones and Mylonites

The San Andreas Fault in California, the Alpine Fault in New Zealand, or the Main Frontal Thrust in the Himalayas are some of the most famous and largest fault zones that accommodate the relative displacement between two adjacent crustal blocks. Such faults, however, represent only the shallower expression of something much bigger: a crustal shear zone. In the first 10 kilometers or so of the crus ...[Read More]