The Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy (ELEEP) Network brings together young professionals from Europe and North America with the aim of fostering transatlantic relations. As Warsaw prepared to host last month’s UN climate convention (COP19), ELEEP members, including former EGU Science Communications Fellow Edvard Glücksman, sat down for coffee with one of the early pioneers of Po ...[Read More]
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Polluting the Internet
AGU 2013 day 2: aerosol emissions, climate & the IPCC
My second day at the AGU 2013 Fall Meeting revolved around more short-lived climate forcers, which I wrote about yesterday and also a broader session on the results from the recent IPCC Working Group 1 report. The latter was an opportunity for the community to quiz some of the lead authors of the report on a variety of issues including observations of the climate system, aerosol and clouds (yippee ...[Read More]
Polluting the Internet
AGU 2013 day 1: Short-lived climate forcers
My first day at AGU 2013 revolved around sessions on short-live climate forcers, which are components in the atmosphere that have short lifetimes (compared to carbon dioxide for example) and generally warm the atmosphere. Reduction of these compounds, such as methane and black carbon, has been mooted as a way to reduce global mean temperatures in coming decades. This is summarised in the figure be ...[Read More]
GeoLog
The Geology of Skyrim: An unexpected journey
Back in January I did a talk at an event called Science Showoff, a comedy night based in London where scientists stand up in front of an audience in a pub and talk about funny stuff to do with their work. I talked about video games. Not any video game however, I talked about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s a fantasy role playing video game. It is a g ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: How chloritoid tells a story of colliding continents
Chloritoid is a metamorphic mineral commonly found inside phyllite rocks – which is shale (a type of mudstone containing clays, silts and muds) that has been metamorphosed several times. Confusingly, chloritoid does not actually contain the element chlorine but instead is an iron magnesium manganese alumino-silicate hydroxide. This particular specimen is from Lyon, France: In larger sized specimen ...[Read More]
Four Degrees
Momentous Discoveries in Geology – The World of Nano!
I first came across the intriguing world of nanoparticles when I saw an awe-inspiring talk by nano-extraordinaire Professor Michael Hochella from Virginia Tech at the Geological Society. He wove a fascinating tale about the world at nanoscale, the special properties, the infinite uses and the potential environmental impacts as well as outlining the need for caution, scrutiny and intensive research ...[Read More]
GeoLog
A sky-high view on pollution in the Himalayas: the journey
After being awarded the EGU’s science journalism fellowship, Jane Qiu took to the Himalayas to shadow scientists studying air pollution at the Pyramid Observatory some 5000 metres above sea level. The journey to work is by no means an easy one… For Angela Marinoni and Paolo Bonasoni, climate scientists at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate in Bologna, Italy, and Maxime Hervo, a Ph.D ...[Read More]
Soil System Sciences
What is soil structure?
Soil structure is the result of the spatial arrangement of the solid soil particles and their associated pore space. Aggregation mainly depends on the soil composition and texture, but is also strongly influenced by other factors such as biological activity, climate, geomorphic processes or the action of fire. Structure is a typical morphological soil property, which allows differentiating soil of ...[Read More]
Polluting the Internet
Sweeping soot out of the atmosphere
Efforts to slow the rate of global temperature rise in the 21st Century have for some time focussed on non-CO2 species or so-called ‘short-lived forcers’. As far as aerosols are concerned, black carbon (often referred to as soot) has been the main avenue to explore due to its capacity to warm the atmosphere by absorbing sunlight. Black carbon contrasts with most other aerosol species w ...[Read More]
Geology Jenga
How to Find Ghosts in Sediment Cores
Hi! And welcome to Geology Jenga and our very first blog post :)! As this is our first post, we have picked a topic that integrates elements of both our research interests. In this initial post, we aim to give a flavour of the science that will be covered on our blog in the future, provide an introduction to the techniques we employ in our PhD’s and hopefully provide some useful insight into how s ...[Read More]