With rocks dating as far back as the Precambrian, mountain building events, violent volcanic eruptions and being covered, on and off, by shallow seas, Death Valley’s geological history is long and complex. Back in the Cenozoic (65 to 30 million years ago), following a turbulent period which saw the eruption of volcanoes (which in time would form the Sierra Nevada of California) and regional uplift ...[Read More]
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Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – The Sound of an Ice Age
New Year’s Eve is just around the corner and the last “image of the week” of 2016 will get you in the mood for a party. If your celebration needs a soundtrack with a suitably geeky touch then look no further. Here is the music for climate enthusiasts: The sound of the past 60,000 years of climate. Scientist Aslak Grinsted (Centre for Ice and Climate, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) has transfor ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week – Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…
Christmas is coming to town and in the Northern Hemisphere many of us are still dreaming of a white Christmas, “just like the ones we used to know”. But how likely is it that our dreams will come true? What is the definition of a White Christmas ? Usually Christmas can be defined as a “White Christmas” if the ground is covered by snow on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day depending on local tra ...[Read More]
WaterUnderground
Limits to global groundwater use
Post by WaterUnderground contributor Inge de Graaf. Inge is a postdoc fellow at Colorado School of Mines, in the USA. Groundwater is the world’s most important source of freshwater. It supplies 2 billion people with drinking water and is used for irrigation of the largest share of the world’s food supply. However, in many regions around the world, groundwater reserves are depleting as the re ...[Read More]
Planetary and Solar System Sciences
A water ocean inside Saturn’s moon Dione
Deep inside Saturn’s moon Dione lies a global ocean of liquid water, according to scientists of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. Such discovery places Dione as the third Saturn’s moon, beside Enceladus and Titan, to have a subsurface ocean. Previous models of planet interior, based on gravity and shape data of Cassini, predicted no ocean at all for Dione and a very thick ice crust for ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: Ice drilling
This week’s Imaggeo on Monday’s post, captured by Maksim Cherviakov, shows students from Saratov National Research University practicing a method to measure lake ice thickness. The students are using an ice auger to manually burrow through the ice. Afterwards, the ice depth is recorded using a tape measure. “We measure ice thickness every year on the lakes located in the floodplain of the Vo ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week — Allez Halley!
On the Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica, a never-observed-before migration has just begun. As the pale summer sun allows the slow ballet of the supply vessels to restart, men and machines alike must make the most of the short clement season. It is time. At last, the Halley VI research station is on the move! Halley, sixth of its name Since 1956, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has maintained a resea ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoTalk: Using satellites to unravel the secrets of our planet’s polar regions
Geotalk is a regular feature highlighting early career researchers and their work. In this interview we speak to Bert Wouters, a polar scientist at the University of Utrecht, and winner of one of the 2016 Arne Richter Awards for Outstanding Young Scientists. At a time when the polar regions are facing increasing challenges resulting from climate change, understanding how they might respond to them ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Ice Cores “For Dummies”
Ice cores are important tools for investigating past climate as they are effectively a continuous record of snowfall, which preserves historical information about climate conditions and atmospheric gas composition. In this new “For Dummies” post, we discuss the history and importance of ice-core science, and look at the way we can use ice core chemistry to reconstruct past climate. Ice sheets, arc ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoPolicy: A new vehicle emissions test to be introduced, say EU’s top scientists
Last year the European Commission appointed a panel of world leading scientists to advise on key science policy issues. In November, the panel issued their first recommendation report focusing on CO2 vehicle emissions. The month’s GeoPolicy post takes a closer look at this high-level advisory panel and the recommendations they have published. In 2015, the Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) w ...[Read More]