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Toward a complete extinction of the last ice shelves of the Greenland ice sheet

Published on November 08, 2023

In northern Greenland, glaciers contain enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 2 meters. In this region, glaciers naturally flow from the interior of the ice sheet to the ocean, where they start to float and form ice shelves several tens or even hundreds of kilometers long. "These ice shelves play a crucial role, similar to giant "dams" that regulate the quantity of icebergs discharged into the ocean by the glaciers" explains Romain Millan, lead author of the study. When these ice (…)

When a photon hits the snow, what does it see ?

Published on July 13, 2023

Scientists from the Institut des géosciences de l’environnement of Grenoble (IGE – CNRS/Inrae/IRD/UGA/Grenoble INP-UGA) and the Centre d’études de la neige (CEN – CNRM/Météo-France/CNRS) have studied the interactions between sunlight and snow at the micrometer scale, which determines the snow ‘whiteness’ and consequently has a crucial impact in the Earth’s climate. In an article published the 7 July 2023 in Nature Communications, these scientists have defined and quantified a new concept : (…)

Vanishing glaciers : a cause of sea-level rise and a threat to water supply

Published on June 07, 2023

This video is the third in a series produced by PROTECT, a European research project on the cryosphere and sea-level rise.
The video discusses the contribution of glaciers to sea-level rise and their importance for humans. Due to their proximity to 0°C temperature, glaciers respond much faster to global warming than ice sheets, making their mass loss a significant contributor to sea-level rise during the 20th century and beyond. To determine the health state of glaciers and their (…)

Should climate models go on a low-sodium diet ?

Published on April 20, 2023

Cloud formation in polar regions is controlled by the presence of natural aerosols, including sea salt aerosol which is emitted when strong winds blow over the open ocean. Therefore, the proper representation of the Arctic and Antarctic climate in models relies on adequate marine aerosol parameterizations. However, these have not been evaluated in the last generation of climate models, CMIP6. We performed this missing evaluation in a study published in May 2023 in Journal of Geophysical (…)

Fanny Brun receives the International Glaciological Society (IGS) Early Career Scientist award

Published on April 06, 2023

Article initially published on the IGS website
The IGS Early Career Scientist Award is given in recognition of significant scientific and/or community contributions to Glaciology by an Early Career Scientist.
Dr. Brun (Institute of Environmental Geosciences) is a talented scientist who has already made outstanding contributions to our understanding of the evolution of Earth’s glaciers.
Dr. Brun’s PhD thesis focused on the influence of debris on the mass balance of High Mountain Asia (…)

Passing of Claude Lorius : A Pioneer in Polar and Climate Research

Published on March 27, 2023

Claude Lorius passed away on March 21st, 2023 at the age of 91. Claude had a huge contribution to the national and international ice core, polar and climate research communities. He will be deeply missed.
Claude Lorius met the polar regions at the time of the International Geophysical Year. He wintered over in 1957 as meteorologist and snow physicist with two other colleagues at the Antarctic station of Charcot. Then, instead of embracing a professional soccer career opportunity, he (…)

Human activities drive the ongoing intensification of the rainfall regime in the Sahel, and we better understand why

Published on March 08, 2023

Human activities influence the climate in different ways : greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially from the burning of fossil fuels, warm it, while sulphate aerosols (fine suspended particles) emitted by industry cool it. The direct and indirect effects of these external climate forcing factors interact with its internal variability (human activities or not, temperatures are, on average, always different from one year to the next, it never rains the same amount, etc.).
Understanding the (…)

A world atlas to characterise the response of glaciers to climate change

Published on March 03, 2023

In collaboration with Romain Hugonnet and Etienne Berthier from LEGOS (Toulouse), researchers from IGE, Antoine Rabatel and Romain Millan, recently published a synthesis (in French) of their work in the journal La Météorologie.
This synthesis reports on recent advances in satellite remote sensing for observing glaciers worldwide with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution.
The article also presents the current challenges to continue the developments on these satellite obsevations (…)

Micro Rain Radar (MRR) used to improve precipitation measurements in Everest region

Published on February 15, 2023

Precipitation and precipitation phase (liquid or solid) are key variables to understand the hydrology of mountainous catchments. However, measuring liquid and solid precipitation in mountainous area is very challenging for several reasons : precipitation is highly variable at small spatial scales, solid precipitation is not well measured by most instruments, and precipitation measurement instruments require frequent maintenance.
In order to improve precipitation measurements in Everest (…)

RI-URBANS launches the intercomparison of oxidative potential protocols

Published on January 23, 2023

The objective is to harmonise the measurements of most health relevant oxidative potential protocols and evaluate their potential to assess toxicological effects of PM10 and PM2.5
A total of 18 groups from Europe, the USA and Canada participate in the evaluation.