Hurricane Season 2010 as seen from a Satellite. Image by: Maximilian Reuter

The geosciences involve the study of the Earth, covering a range of topics, from investigating the Earth’s core to outer atmosphere, including planetary and space sciences.

Geoscientists work on problems such as when a volcano will next erupt, the effects of climate change across the world, the evolution of life on the planet and the question of whether there may be other life in our solar system.

The geosciences can span really long timescales, with scientists sometimes looking thousands of millions of years into the past. But geoscientists can also do research on (relatively!) small timescales, such as the past few hundred thousand years.

Although you may not have heard of ‘geosciences’ before, it covers a wide range of topics that you will probably be much more familiar with: discovering oil and mining and other precious natural resources, studying earthquakes and what the climate was like thousands of years ago, building houses and tunnelling to build underground lines.

With I’m a Geoscientist you can discover more about all these topics, by being inquisitive and not afraid to ask tough questions!

Karymsky volcano in Russia, erupting in 2004