The 2025 Climate Physics Excursion to Southern France

In the final week of the summer holidays, twelve MSc students and IMAU assistant professor Lu Zhou explored the mountains, cities, universities, and beaches of Grenoble and Montpellier during the yearly Climate Physics excursion.

We started our trip in Rotterdam, where we boarded the high-speed train to Paris and from there took the TGV to Grenoble, a student city at the edge of the French Alps. Our three-day stay revolved around the themes of mountains, snow, and ice. On the first day, we embarked on a glacier walk at Glacier de la Girose — for most of us, the highlight of the excursion. It was incredibly impressive to walk on such a vast, desolate body of ice, to jump over crevasses formed by the immense forces at play, and to observe the glacier’s decline over the past decades within the surrounding landscape.

On the second day, we visited the glaciology department of IGE Grenoble, where we saw a weather station installed to improve precipitation radar forecasts. We also learned about the art of ice core drilling — and some of us even tasted ice more than 800,000 years old! In the afternoon, we explored the city itself. Our final day in Grenoble was spent at the Centre d’Études de la Neige, where we toured the snow observation site and discussed the results from their measurements over the past sixty years. The afternoon was spent either summiting a mountain or exploring Grenoble further.

After three days of mountains, ice, and snow, we travelled further south toward the Mediterranean and the city of Montpellier. Most of our time there was spent wandering through the small streets, hidden squares, and beautiful buildings of this vibrant medieval student city. We also visited the hydrology department, where we learned about a local spring, saw an ATCD-raft for rivers, and visited an isotope lab that Thomas Röckmann would surely be jealous of. Our final day was spent on a Mediterranean beach, followed by karaoke in the city centre.

All in all, we had a wonderful time exploring mountains, cities, and universities — but most importantly, we had lots of fun as a group.

On behalf of the explorers,

Ties Leenstra