What on Earth is a foehn wind??? That's what I thought when I first came across them. I scoured YouTube for a decent explanation, to no avail. So, 3 years later, I thought I'd give it a crack myself. Voila! This is the first episode of a mini series called 'What on Earth' - a bunch of short videos explaining real-world environmental processes. Y'know, the kind that make you go "what on earth is that?!". This one's about foehn winds - hot, dry winds formed by air flowing over mountains. If you're a nerd like me and want more info, check out this paper: Elvidge, A. D., & Renfrew, I. A. (2016). The causes of foehn warming in the lee of mountains. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97(3), 455-466. Link here: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00194.1

What on earth is surface mass balance? Luckily, you've come to the right place to find out. Surface mass balance is simple tool that helps us understand whether bodies of ice like glaciers, ice sheets and ice shelves are growing or shrinking. This can help us understand the rate of climate change and sea level rise observed worldwide.

What on Earth is going on with the extreme weather we've seen lately? Extreme heatwaves made the news in June and July 2019 as Europe and the UK baked in unseasonable heat. But are these related to climate change? It is hard to attribute individual events to climate change, but as global temperature rises, we are likely to see more extreme events such as these.

Hydrofracturing is a process responsible for the dramatic break-up of floating ice shelves in the polar regions. When cracks and rifts fill with water they widen and deepen (hydro = water, fracturing = cracking). Eventually this can cause entire ice shelves to splinter and collapse. We saw this on the Antarctic Peninsula in 1995 and 2002, when the Larsen A and B ice shelves collapsed. Will others be next?

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a periodic change in atmospheric pressure, winds, and sea surface temperature that affects weather patterns all over the world.

The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is the dominant mode of atmospheric variability in the southern hemisphere, and influences weather and climate conditions over Antarctica and countries like Australia and New Zealand.