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10 March 2011
Archival Gold: National Snow and Ice Data Center Photo Gallery
Most of our snow has been rained into nonexistence in the past few days, but as a last hurrah before spring takes hold, I thought I’d feature photos of very cold and snowy places. The National Snow and Ice Data Center is a part of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and they have a fantastic collection of photos of glaciers, iceburgs, ice sheets, sea ice, snow, Arctic/Antarctic expeditions, and other chilly subjects. Although not a government institution, the NSIDC does allow free use of properly credited photos in their gallery.
7 December 2010
Let it snow! But maybe not on that volcano…
In honor of the snow (finally) reaching the north of Buffalo, I thought I’d write a post about volcanoes with chilly tops – i.e., ones covered in snow or glaciers. Although we tend to think of volcanoes as ‘hot’ geologic features, it’s fairly common for a volcano to be snow- or glacier-topped. More so for stratovolcanoes (like Rainier in the Cascades, or Fuji in Japan, or pretty much any volcano in Alaska), but it can happen at shield volcanoes too (such as Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii
13 April 2010
Volcano Vocab #2: Jökulhlaup
Today’s obscure volcanologically-related word is jökulhlaup (“yer-kul-hloyp”, “YO-kel-yawp” and “yo-kul-h-loip” in varying pronunciations), which is an Icelandic word for glacial outburst floods, both of water and lahars, formed when a subglacial eruption occurs. The water for these floods is formed when heat from those eruptions melts glacial ice, forming lakes that eventually become unstable enough to break through channels in the base of the glacier and flow out from underneath …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.