It’s been quite a year in the Arctic. Over the winter 2015/6 we had the strongest and coldest Arctic polar vortex of the last 68 years. This contributed to a low maximum in Arctic sea ice extent. At that stage only the locals and the scientists were looking, and I wrote about this in a blog […]
The polynya over Maud Rise was visible in a beautiful clear MODIS image on 25 September. It is currently ~40,000 km2 of open water in the middle of the Antarctic winter sea ice. This will be some impressive heat loss. MODIS image of the polyna over Maud rise on 25 Sept 2017. The black is […]
I was interviewed by two great people last week, Dave Powell and Ollie Hayes for the sustainababble podcast: Advert for the Sustainababble Arctic podcast You can find the podcast over at the Sustainababble site or using the player below.
Taking photographs is an easy way to keep yourself endlessly entertained whilst in the polar regions. I started posting 1 picture a week on twitter as part of what was called “ice photo wednesday” and here they are: Ice falling from summits in the Neumayer Channel Katabatic wind off the Southern tip of Alexander Island […]
Project MIDAS shows us that the iceberg A68 is about one trillion tonnes. This is the Antarctic Peninsula and the outline of A68 from the satellite image on 14 July 2017 shown in black. The ice front is from the Bedmap2 data set (so a little out of date), and the bathymetry from the IBCSO data […]
What does Mallemaroking mean? It is an archaic naval term which means “the carousing of sailors on icebound Greenland whaling ships”. I got the definition from the Chambers Dictionary but it seems wiktionary has it too. I first came across it just before reaching Port Lockroy back in (I think) 1997. There was an American […]