Today’s guest post comes from Michelle Cain, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Almost a whole day’s worth of sessions on megacities – where to begin? I certainly couldn’t pick just one talk to write about, so here’s a mish-mash of the session in general and a few talks in particular. First things first: what is a megacity? Officially defined (by who, I d ...[Read More]
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GeoLog
Nature’s Quirin Schiermeier column on EGU Today (full version)
Thursday’s edition of EGU Today features an edited version of Quirin Schiermeier daily column. The full version is published here on GeoLog! In sheer numbers, the death toll from natural disasters – about 80,000 in an average year – is small compared to the millions who get killed each year in road accidents or die from avoidable diseases. But averages miss the point here. It is the very exc ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Portuguese wines at risk due to climate change?
Today’s guest post comes from Eline Vanuytrecht from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at KU Leuven, Belgium. New study explores the impact of climatic change on the suitability of agricultural land in Portugal for wine growing Wine is big business in Portugal. Viticulture or wine growing and the production of wine represent an important economic activity of the national agr ...[Read More]
GeoLog
On the Ground at GA2012: Water, water everywhere… including under the ice
Fresh from leading a team of UK geophysicists on a two-week campaign of seismic investigations in northern Sweden, Dr Adam Booth of Swansea University reports to us from the halls of the 2012 General Assembly in Vienna. Hi, from a very sunny Vienna! It’s my first day at the EGU General Assembly, and the whole city is under bright sunshine and blue skies. Over the next few days, I’ll be blogging ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: Green river
Thermokarsts occur when solid permafrost melts and soil gives way forming pitted, irregular lands surfaces. They are common in the Arctic, as well as the Himalayas and Swiss Alps. To study them, scientists trace the water using fluorescence dyes, temporarily creating water flows of exotic colours, like the bright green one in this Imaggeo photo. This photo was taken by Simon Gascoin, a researcher ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Geosciences Column: Promise and challenges of space elevators for tourism
From Star Trek to Arthur C. Clarke, machines that carry humans into space inside a cable-driven chamber – space elevators – have remained in the realm of science fiction. However, recently a Japanese construction company revealed it has aspirations to actually build such a device, claiming it could be operational as early as 2050. Despite assurances from its backers, the project remains scientific ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: Seeing double
On 6 September 2009, monsoon clouds had built up throughout the day over the Donggi Cona lake in central China. Janneke IJmker, now a researcher at Deltares in the Netherlands, was doing fieldwork there as part of her PhD at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. By dinner time, the sun shone on raindrops from the clouds producing a magnificent double rainbow over the lake, which IJmker captured with ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: Orange anvils
The anvils in this picture are not heavy steel or iron blocks but rather soft clouds coloured orange by the setting sun. The term is used to describe the upper part of a cumulonimbus or thunderstorm cloud that tends to spread out in an anvil shape as warm air bumps up against the bottom of the stratosphere (the atmospheric layer between 15-50 kilometres height). Katja Weigel, a researcher at the I ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Geosciences Column: Life in the aftermath of hydrothermal vents
Pioneering new study explores the structure and function of microbial communities at expired hydrothermal vent sites Undiscovered lifeforms abound in Earth’s most seemingly inhospitable environments, as demonstrated by the recent discovery of bacteria living deep underneath the seafloor. An equally extreme environment can be found in the vicinity of hydrothermal vents, where water is expelled from ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: El Tatio geyser field
Excursions following scientific conferences often give researchers a chance to observe geosciences phenomena in remote areas. That was the case for Simon Gascoin, from the Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère in Toulouse, France who got to photograph geysers in a Chilean desert after the EGU Alexander von Humboldt conference in Santiago de Chile in late 2008. “The picture shows the El T ...[Read More]