Earth Sciences

Leading European universities unite to battle climate change

Researchers from four leading European technical universities, all members of IDEA League, are looking for new solutions against climate change in the EASYGO project.

Back to the future of climate

Hot and humid: Using minerals from ancient soils, ETH Zürich researchers are reconstructing the climate that prevailed on Earth some 55 million years ago. Their findings will help them to better assess how our climate might look in the future.

A new way of looking at the Earth’s interior

Current understanding is that the chemical composition of the Earth’s mantle is relatively homogeneous. But experiments conducted by ETH researchers now show that this view is too simplistic. Their results solve a key problem facing the geosciences – and raise some new questions.

EPFL scientist gains fresh insight into the origins of earthquakes

The speed and intensity with which seismic waves propagate after an earthquake depend mainly on forces occurring deep inside the rocks along a fault line, according to a study by EPFL scientist François Passelègue. His sophisticated models are giving us fresh insight into the factors that can trigger an earthquake.

Thousands of seismometers on a single cable

Fibre-optic cables are emerging as a valuable tool for geoscientists and glaciologists. They offer a relatively inexpensive way of measuring even the tiniest glacial earthquakes – plus they can also be used to obtain more accurate images of the geological subsurface in earthquake-prone megacities.

The cold memory of the earth

Within the framework of an international project, researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI are helping to save a valuable environmental and climatic archive. During an expedition 4,000 metres above sea level on Grand Combin in the Alps, they are drilling ice cores from melting glaciers to preserve them in Antarctica.

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