In order to understand past climate change and to better project future changes, we need to understand how humans disturbed the radiative balance of our planet. Aerosols are one component of this disruption. The final report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) physical science basis concluded that aerosols dominate the uncertainty in the total anthropogenic radiative forcing. ...[Read More]
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GeoLog
Announcing the winners of the EGU Photo Contest 2014!
The selection committee received over 200 photos for this year’s EGU Photo Contest, covering fields across the geosciences. Participants have been voting for their favourites throughout the week and there are three clear winners. Congratulations to Trent Marwick, Velio Coviello and John Clemens – 2014’s fantastic photographers! Imaggeo is the EGU’s open access geosciences image repository. Photos ...[Read More]
An Atom's-Eye View of the Planet
Global warming increases risk of winter flooding
Britain’s warm, wet winter brought floods and misery to many living across southern England, with large parts of Somerset lying underwater for months. When in January rainfall was double the expected average over wide areas, many people made cautious links between such extreme weather and global climate change. There were nay-sayers at the time but it now seems that there is evidence for those lin ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Communicate Your Science Competition Winner Announced!
Congratulations to Louise Crochemore, the winner of the first ever Communicate Your Science Video Competition. Louise is a PhD student at the National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture France, and has been investigating how to manage water resources effectively. Here’s her video, Hydrological Drought Predictions for Reservoir Management: What’ ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoTalk: What can you learn from a human hair?
Jim Ehleringer is Director of the Stable Isotope Ratio Facility at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in the US. In the past few years he has been developing a method for deducing people’s diets and travel history from a sample of their hair. Here, he talks to the EGU press office about his research. Thanks for agreeing to chat, Jim. Can you tell me a bit about how your project started? This ...[Read More]
GeoLog
At the Assembly: Friday highlights
The conference is coming to a close and there’s still an abundance of great sessions to attend! Here’s our guide to getting the most out of the conference on its final day. Boost this information with features from EGU Today, the daily newsletter of the General Assembly – pick up a paper copy at the ACV entrance or download it here. Be sure to attend today’s Alexander von Humboldt Medal Lecture by ...[Read More]
GeoLog
It’s not my fault
A line on a map is important. In the Beverly Hills region of Los Angeles a series of mapped fault lines are now the cause of a major controversy. Communities have been alarmed, money has been lost and legal proceedings are ongoing. It started in 1992. James Dolan and Kerry Sieh, two earthquake geologists at the California Institute of Technology, published a map in a field trip guidebook about the ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
#EGU2014: Cleaning with Coffee
We’re drinking an enormous amount of coffee in Vienna this week, but the residues at the bottom of the cafetière usually end up in the bin. Kalliopo Fotopoulou, from the University of Patras in Greece, has found a way to transform that residue into something far more useful. Baking coffee residues in an oven changes them into a carbon rich “biochar”, which can be added to soils t ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Meltwater ponds halt new sea ice growth
Each September, battered by the relentless sun-filled days of summer, the smooth expanse of the Arctic Ocean reaches the climax of its annual transformation. Replacing the endless blanket of winter ice, a vast jigsaw puzzle stretches across the pole, a mosaic of soggy snow islands floating amid turquoise ponds of meltwater and inlets of dark blue sea. These meltwater ponds have been shown to drama ...[Read More]
Polluting the Internet
EGU 2014: Air pollution in the Anthropocene
One of the key strands of the EGU so far this year has been discussion of the proposed new geological time period known as the Anthropocene. This concept was first proposed by the ecologist Eugene Stoemer in the 1980’s, with Nobel Prize Winner and atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen bringing renewed attention to the term in the early 21st Century. It refers to the concept that the impact of hum ...[Read More]