Research news

A new methodology to combine heaps of satellite images allows researchers from University of Oslo with colleagues to create a complete time series of glacier movement. To demonstrate the methodology, they created a map of ice flow every month, over several years, covering several mountain ranges in Southern Alaska and Canada. Once created, the dataset revealed several sudden glacier speed-ups and slow-downs.

The permafrost in the Arctic is thawing. Now a new study find that seventy percent of the current infrastructure in the Arctic in the next 30 years has a high potential to be affected by thawing permafrost. This despite if the climate change targets of the Paris Agreement is meet.

Volcanic activity primarily focuses at plate boundaries on Earth. But volcanoes can also form far away from plate boundaries due to plumes of hot material rising from the Earth’s deep interior. Eventually this material reaches the surface and breaks through the Earth’s crust to form a volcano – a so-called “hotspot”. Scientists now present a theory of how this type of hotspot activity can explain massive, past volcanic eruptions in Greenland and in the North Atlantic.

Indonesia, May 2006 - Several mud eruptions started in the North East of Java Island. Villages were burried and people were forced to flee. The most active eruption called Lusi is still active and scientist now link this to a nearby volcanic system.

The Hawaiian-Emperor volcanic island chain in the NW Pacific Ocean is well known for its peculiar 60° bend. This bend has been heavily debated for decades. Researchers from University of Oslo, GFZ Potsdam, and Utrecht University now definitely demonstrate that to form the observed bend requires an abrupt change in the motion of the Pacific tectonic plate, while southward drift of the mantle plume that has sourced the chain since ~80 Ma is required to explain its entire 2000 km length.