Cryospheric Sciences

World Mental Health Day 2024 with a focus on workplace

Lina Madaj October 16, 2024

Maintaining mental wellness in academia is not always easy and steered by many external factors. Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay.

Friday the 10 October, was World Mental Health Day, a day that was founded by the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) in 1992. This year’s official theme focuses specifically on mental health in the work environment. So let’s take a look at what this means for the field of academia and the cryosphere specifically. With this post, we aim to not only raise awareness of the mental health crisis ...[Read More]

Friday the 13th – an unlucky day for sea ice?

Maria Scheel and Loeka Jongejans September 13, 2024

Thin, small sea ice floats on the dark waters.

Image credit Andrew Elvidge (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

On this September 13th, coinciding to be a “Friday 13th”, we wanted to scan the cryo-history for expeditions started, sunken ships that day, and mountain myths. And we did find that. But as autumn approaches in the Northern hemisphere, the spookiest story of all was this one: the unlucky timing of the Arctic sea ice in September. TGIF – but not for sea ice Although the median min ...[Read More]

Cryoscientist life stories: Experiences of an ‘office glaciologist’

Alex Bradley August 29, 2024

The view of a glacier from a scientific cruise to the Arctic. Alex has never visited the glaciers he models, but he gets to understand and see them in a different way. Image credit: Bryony Freer

Both glaciological research conducted in the field, and in the office, are vital — and ‘count’ as glaciology. Often, however, those of us who remain in our cozy offices can be forgotten, or thought to lead a ‘boring’ job. Alex Bradley, a modeller of glaciers, is here to remind you why the office glaciologist is fundamental to the Cryosphere, and why glaciology from a distance is key to the future. ...[Read More]

Dreaming & reading about fieldwork – summer blog break 2024

Maria Scheel July 29, 2024

A person is kneeling down at a brown pond, all covered in mosquito net, waterproof gear, kitchen gloves and a pancake flipping spatula.

Maria during an Arctic Microbiomes PhD Summer school in Nunavut, Canada. Yes, sometimes, kitchen utensils help you stay away from mosquitos and discover some amazing bacterial mats (you can find them in your non-Arctic ponds, as well! (Photo Credit: Pascal Paradis)

As we are starting into our annual blog summer break, we reflect on what summer can mean for polar researchers (including some fieldwork saudades). As an Arctic or Alpine cryo-scientist, chances are that you are somewhere in between vacation, fieldwork or trying to work through data while everyone else is free. If you, like us, did not have your vacation yet or do not have any fieldwork com ...[Read More]

Women of Cryo VII: Making Fieldwork More Inclusive

Florina Roana Schalamon, Maria Dance and Marjolein Gevers July 12, 2024

Women make up 50.8% of the world’s population, yet fewer than 30% of the world’s researchers are women. Of this percentage, women of colour comprise around 5%, with less than 1% represented in geoscience faculty positions. Women are published less, paid less, and do not progress as far in their careers as men. Even within our EGU community, women account for only one third of all members, and make ...[Read More]

Cryobook review: The Quickening

Leah Sophie Muhle July 8, 2024

Cover of The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush. Credits: https://milkweed.org/book/the-quickening]

Even before its publication, my partner stumbled over the book The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush on Twitter and send it to me. In this book, Rush describes her journey to Thwaites Glacier and – as I was very curious about it – I bought it immediately after its release. It is not only documentary work about the journey, but also a meditation on responsibility, motherhood and life in a world of chang ...[Read More]

Climate Change & Cryosphere – Can the smallest ice make the greatest impact?

Lucia Pérez-Serrano June 28, 2024

Figure 1: Aerial view of permafrost peatlands of the Siberian Arctic [Credits: Sergei Loiko]

The cryosphere comprises all the ice on Earth, from glaciers in Antarctica, icebergs floating in the ocean, to millimetric ice found in the soils. Soil can hold ice wedges and ice lenses, but there are small ice reservoirs that are usually overlooked: the pore ice. Pore ice is an unknown compartment whose role regarding matter degradation is yet to be determined… stay with us and you will see that ...[Read More]

Blue ice in Antarctica: small extent, big science

Veronica Tollenaar June 21, 2024

A figure with a map of Antarctica in the middle, and 8 zoomed in sections of it showing blue ice areas.

Figure 1: A new blue ice area map, based on deep learning. Credit: Tollenaar et al., 2024.

Kggk kggk kggk – the sound of crampons accompanies me. A thin layer of snow covers the slippery ice while I pull a sled. As I wipe my hand over the snow, underneath, a blue color glitters in the sun (Figure 2). In the last days it has been snowing in the White Desert (Antarctica). All blue ice we could see before is temporarily covered by a thin blanket, perfect to pull a sled. However, this snow ...[Read More]

Image of the week: The Song of Sastrugi

Emma Pearce June 14, 2024

Wavy ice feature in front of wide blue sky.

Sastrugi on the Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica (Credit Emma Pearce).

Sastrugi are significant features in glaciology, providing valuable insights into wind patterns, snow dynamics, and surface processes. So although at first sight they may be easy to walk over (quite literally), their patterns and features can tell us more than you might think, so next time take a moment to look and see the story they have to tell… The Song of Sastrugi The wind’s icy b ...[Read More]

Cryoscientist life stories – an interview with our incoming deputy division president, Daniel Farinotti

Larissa van der Laan May 31, 2024

Credit: Daniel Farinotti & Anita Raimondi (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

We would like to introduce Daniel Farinotti to you, our Cryosphere Division incoming deputy president, who will take over as division president from 2025-2027. For that, our Cryosphere Division outreach officer, Larissa van der Laan, interviewed Daniel at the EGU General Assembly in April 2024, to ask him a few questions about himself and his view of this exciting role within the EGU. Larissa: Hi ...[Read More]