EGU logo

European Geosciences Union

www.egu.eu

EGU

News

View all |
Landscape version (with claim) of the new EGU logo.

EGU Outreach Committee seeking new members

  • EGU news
  • 30 January 2020

The EGU Outreach Committee promotes the Earth, planetary and space sciences and the activities of the EGU among scientists, the public, policymakers and all other interested individuals and organisations. The Committee seeks 3–4 new members to help further its programme.

Read more

Boreal forest fire in Canada

Air pollution in New York City linked to wildfires hundreds of miles away

  • Press release
  • 21 January 2020

A new study published in the European Geosciences Union (EGU) journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics shows that air pollutants from the smoke of fires from as far as Canada and the southeastern U.S. traveled hundreds of miles and several days to reach Connecticut and New York City, where it caused significant increases in pollution concentrations.

Read more


Highlight articles

View all |
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences

The millennium-old hydrogeology textbook The Extraction of Hidden Waters by the Persian mathematician and engineer Abubakr Mohammad Karaji (953 CE–1029 CE)

We revisit and shed light on the textbook The Extraction of Hidden Waters by the Persian mathematician and engineer Abubakr Mohammad Karaji. Ground-breaking ideas and descriptions of hydrological and hydrogeological perceptions such as components of the hydrological cycle, groundwater quality and driving factors for groundwater flow were presented in the book. We speculate that Karaji’s book is the first of its kind to provide a construction and maintenance manual for an engineering project.

Read more

Biogeosciences

No nitrogen fixation in the Bay of Bengal?

Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) are ocean areas severely depleted in oxygen as a result of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Biologically, organic material is produced in the sea surface and exported to deeper waters, where it respires. In the Bay of Bengal (BoB), an OMZ is present, but there are traces of oxygen left. Our study now suggests that this is because one key process, nitrogen fixation, is absent in the BoB, thus preventing primary production and consecutive respiration.

Read more

The Cryosphere

Cryoconite: an efficient accumulator of radioactive fallout in glacialenvironments

Cryoconite is the sediment found on the surface of glaciers. The paper presents cryoconite as an environmental matrix able to accumulate natural and artificial radioactivity with unprecedented efficiency. Only samples from sites where nuclear accidents and explosions occurred present a stronger radioactive contamination. The peculiarities of glacial environments are responsible for this extreme feature, making cryoconite a useful tool tool for the monitoring of environmental radioactivity.

Read more

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques

Quantifying hail size distributions from the sky – application of drone aerial photogrammetry

Collecting measurements of hail size and shape is difficult due to the infrequent and dangerous nature of hailstorms. To improve upon this, a new technique called HailPixel is introduced for measuring hail using aerial imagery collected by a drone. A combination of machine learning and computer vision methods is used to extract the shape of thousands of hailstones from the aerial imagery. The improved statistics from the much larger HailPixel dataset show significant benefits.

Read more


Latest posts from EGU blogs

View more |

Adaptation and inheritance in the geosciences

Every year, the Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Paleontology Division awards one scientist for his outstanding contribution to stratigraphy, sedimentology or paleontology with the Lamarck medal in recognition of the scientific achievements of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Bazentin-le-Petit, 1-02-1744 – Paris, 18-12-1829). It was the 11 May 1800 when Jean Baptiste Lamarck presented a lecture at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in which he first outlined his newly developing ideas about evolution. Two key words appear in the pioneering work of Lamarck, Philosophie Zoologique, …

Read more

GeoPolicy: How to become a Seconded National Expert for the European Commission

GeoPolicy: How to become a Seconded National Expert for the European Commission

The European Seconded National Expert programme is a fantastic opportunity for scientists who are currently working in a national, regional or local public administration of an EU member state or an intergovernmental organisation to gain experience working within a European policy institution. In most cases, secondments are between six months and four years during which time the Seconded National Expert works for the EU institution that they applied for while being paid by their home institution. Secondments therefore provide EU …

Read more

Boom and bust beneath the ice

Boom and bust beneath the ice

Beneath the frozen surface of the Southern Ocean, live some of the most spectacular creatures on earth. These creatures are spectacular not only in appearance, but also in their ability to survive in such an extreme environment as Antarctica. Here, temperatures deviate only slightly from 0°C, and food is scarce during the winter months. How do these diverse creatures live in these conditions and what role do they each play in the ecosystem? Rothera research station Situated on an island …

Read more