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Historic Greenland ice sheet rainfall unravelled

Published on June 03, 2022

For the first time ever recorded, in the late summer of 2021, rain fell on the high central region of the Greenland ice sheet. This extraordinary event was followed by the surface snow and ice melting rapidly. Researchers now understand exactly what went on in those fateful summer days and what we can learn from it.

A reactive Arctic surface layer ? The chemical connection between snow and the atmosphere

Published on May 10, 2022

Slider image credit : Didier Voisin
The remote nature and conditions of the Arctic make it difficult to routinely observe chemical species in the atmosphere. Observational stations and measurement campaigns are therefore extremely valuable and provide insight into the chemical composition and processes occurring in the Arctic atmosphere. Measurements of chemical species such as ozone, mercury, chlorine, and bromine in the Arctic are of great scientific interest as they are involved in (…)

Intense atmospheric rivers shown to weaken ice shelf instability at the Antarctic Peninsula

Published on April 21, 2022
Press release published by UGA

Atmospheric rivers landfalls shown to induce extreme conditions that destabilize Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves according to a new study from researchers (including IGE / OSUG ) from the Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sorbonne Université and Aix Marseille Université, and from Portugal, Belgium, Germany, and Norway. Their study will be published in the journal of Communications Earth & Environment on April 14, 2022.
80% of the total Antarctica ice output flow through ice shelves (…)

Urbanized tropical estuaries : hot spots of greenhouse gas emissions

Published on April 06, 2022

IGE and CARE International Joint Laboratory (Asian Center for Water Research) have been conducting research for several years on the pollution flows of organic matter and nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) from the Ho Chi Minh Megacity in southern Vietnam. This large Southeast Asian city is undergoing rapid economic and demographic expansion (10 millions inhabitants in 2020). With less than 15% of domestic urban water collected and treated, the city has a lasting impact on the quality of (…)

Antarctica : working for 2 months at -40°C to complete the Little Dome C camp

Published on February 22, 2022

The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice has been successfully completed. This international research project was funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros, supported by significant financial and in-kind contributions from the participating nations, and is coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Cnr (National Research Council of Italy). The project aims to obtain information on the evolution of the temperatures, on the composition of the (…)

Deep insights into the Arctic of tomorrow

Published on February 16, 2022
Interdisciplinary results of MOSAiC drift published

Hundreds of international researchers are currently analyzing observations from the one-year MOSAiC expedition, during which hundreds of environmental parameters were recorded with unprecedented accuracy and frequency over a full annual cycle in the Central Arctic Ocean. They have now published three overview articles on the MOSAiC atmosphere, snow and sea ice, and ocean programs in the journal Elementa, highlighting the importance of examining all components of the climate system together. These results present the first complete picture of the climate processes in the central Arctic which is warming more than two times as fast as the rest of the planet - processes which affect weather and climate worldwide.

New Atlas Finds Globe’s Glaciers Have Less Ice than Previously Thought

Published on February 07, 2022
Findings on glacier speed and depth revise outlook for freshwater availability and sea level rise.

The first atlas to measure the movement and thickness of the world’s glaciers gives a clearer, but mixed picture of the globe’s ice-bound freshwater resources, according to researchers from the Institute of Environmental Geosciences (IGE) and Dartmouth College.

In the West-African Sahel, extreme rainfalls are becoming more intense

Published on February 01, 2022

The Sahelian rainfall regime has a well tempered character : the glitz of the 1950s and 1960s was followed by a drought of unprecedented magnitude in the world in the 20th century, impacting the region for more than twenty years. Over the past 35 years, annual rainfall has gradually increased, but something has changed : "it never rains but pours"..
In this study we attempted to find out whether "extreme" rainfall events have undergone significant changes during this recent period, based (…)

Climate and floods : an international study conducted in the European Alps sheds light on the links between warmer periods and floods

Published on January 28, 2022

An international team, lead by researcher from Institut des géosciences et de l’environnement de Grenoble (IGE/OSUG – UGA/Grenoble-INP-UGA/CNRS/IRD), has studied lake sediments and reconstructed flood records during the cold and warm periods of the Industrial Era, the last millennium and the Holocene. The results of this paleohydrological study, which will be published in Nature Geosciences on 27 January 2022, show that regionally the flood hazard could globally decrease with climate (…)

Hope for Present-Day Martian Groundwater Dries Up

Published on January 25, 2022

Liquid water previously detected under Mars’ ice-covered south pole is probably just a dusty mirage, according to a new study of the red planet led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.
Scientists in 2018 had thought they were looking at liquid water when they saw bright radar reflections under the polar cap. However, the new study published Jan. 24 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the reflections matched those of volcanic plains found all over the red (…)