August 2024

The summer of 2016 saw the joint second lowest Arctic sea ice extent. But in the middle of October unusual Arctic weather has led to it becoming the lowest extent. At the same time, Antarctic sea ice extent has also reached record lows. Tamino has a simple and clear post about what a surprising thing this is.

The Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice extent from Tamino’s blog “Open Mind”. The current year 2016 is in Red

Why is it so low?

The plot below shows the mean November Arctic sea ice extent, the sea ice extent on 16 November 2016, and the difference between the extents from 1993 to 2016. Regions shaded at the top end of the scale (the red colours) mean there is less ice now compared with in 1993.

The mean Arctic sea ice extent in November 1993, the daily sea ice extent on 16 November 2016, and the difference between them.

The stand out region (to me!) is North Russia where the Kara Sea is almost entirely clear, followed by Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay, East Greenland and the edge of the Chukchi Sea. I was interested in what was going on in the Kara Sea so I made a movie of the sea ice extent from 1 November 2016 to 16 November 2016.

Arctic sea ice 1 to 16 November 2016.

The striking thing in the clip for November 2016 is that the sea ice extent has actually reduced in the Kara Sea!

The sea ice extent in Chukchi Sea is increasing, but very slowly – and you can see from my previous image that it is very low compared with 1993.

Clearly the Arctic is experiencing strange conditions at the moment. On the climatereanalyzer.org website you can see the 5-day forecast from 17 November 2016 (tomorrow).

The temperature departure from average is off the scale over the Arctic Ocean. It’s much colder over Russia.

The 5 day forecast from 17 November 2016 from ClimateReanalyzer.org.

These are astonishing observations. When the winds change and the cold air currently over Russia ends up over the ocean I would expect it to freeze up rapidly (once the surface layers have cooled). But starting so late in the year the sea ice could end up thin enough for something impressive in the near future.

I made a gif of the full current Arctic growing season up to 16 November 2016.

I have already written a little about the this years Antarctic sea ice extent in the Antarctic Peninsula sea ice late winter 2016, in The Western Weddell Sea ice factory, in The development of the Amundsen Sea Polynya, in Dotson Getz Polynya ice growth, and in The Prince Gustav Channel is opening.

For interest, I chose November 1993 for comparison for two reasons, first it’s just before the big Arctic sea decline, and secondly I was in the Arctic for 4 months that year doing my PhD research.

Tamino is noting that the global sea ice is “About 6.9 standard deviations below the 1981-2010 mean.” . Amazing times.

Mark Brandon • January 28, 2015

The South West Atlantic is a very productive part of the global ocean. This MODIS image from the Terra satellite shows the east coast of Argentina and the Falkland Islands. The ocean between is filled with swirls of lighter colour which are a plankton bloom along the continental shelf of South America.

Terra/MODIS Image captured 21 January 2015 14:00 UTC. FULL IMAGE LINK

The high plankton productivity means that there is food for the higher predators – and this region is famed as an extraordinarily rich squid fishing ground. In 2014 the fishery apparently took over 1/4 million tons of the squid Illex argentinus.

…continue reading →

Posted in Science. Tags: Argentina, Falkland Islands, Illex argentinus, oceanography, South Atlantic, squid on January 28, 2015 by Mark Brandon.

[This is a post bringing together things I have done elsewhere whilst learning how to use this platform.]

Back in July 2012 the global news media went very big on a story on the Melting of Greenland.

The original BBC Greenland Melting story

I got involved in a discussion on twitter about it, with lots of context and decided to have a go at seeing if I could put together a “storyify” on it using the contributions of a wide range of outstanding climate scientists.

…continue reading

With three of my Open University colleagues: Dr Phil Sexton, Dr Pallavi Anand, and Dr Mandy Dyson, I have been working in the background on a new landmark TV series called Blue Planet 2.

This incredible series has been made by the BBC Natural History Unit with the Open University as co-producers. It has seven stunning episodes and will be broadcast in the UK at the end of October 2017.

Yesterday was the World Royal Premiere at the BFI Imax with Sir David Attenborough, Prince William, Radiohead, Hans Zimmer, and a team of BBC program makers that is too long for this post.

The prequel above was released after the premiere.

Episode one one the big Imax screen was stunning, and just after there was a Q&A led by Liz Bonnin with some of the key people:

Sir David Attenborough, James Honeyborne, Orla Doherty, Mark Brownlow and Hans Zimmer.

Liz Bonnin interviewing Sir David Attenborough After the World Premiere of Blue Planet 2.

It’s been a brilliant experience to work with so many incredible film makers – many of whom also have PhDs to go with their artistic and technical talent. You often hear about how the media want to tell their own story – but in my experience the NHU just want it to be the best – and, of course, correct.

I’m proud to have been a small cog in the mighty and incredible machine that made this series, and  I’m looking forward to seeing how it is received.

It has been an amazing experience to be one of four marine scientists at The Open University to have contributed to the series. As well as helping the production team we’ve been developing interactive learning materials and a poster for the general public and our students that will also be released at the end of October.

I hope the film makers get the awards I think they deserve for making such a powerful work.

British Pathé News was a British institution that produced news reels and documentaries from 1910 to 1970. Their website is full of news clips of polar interest such as Shackleton’s death in 1922.

But here is something wonderful and obscure. Gambling with the Gulf Stream made in 1936!

© British Pathe screengrab from online preview.

In just 2 and a half minutes the voice-over explains what the Gulf Stream is, how much heat it carries (“every day it gives more heat than the world’s coal supply in 2 years“), and what would be the impact on some regional climates if its pathway was deliberately moved by geoengineering.

“We should find icebergs off our favourite seafront”

© British Pathe screengrab from online preview.

“The deflected gulf stream … would melt ice at the north pole”

© British Pathe screengrab from online preview.

“instead of icefields tropical plants would spring up”

(note the penguin at the North Pole!)

© British Pathe screengrab from online preview.

“The north pole would have to look for a new home.”

© British Pathe screengrab from online preview.

“And all through gambling with the gulf stream”.

Go watch it!:  Gambling with the Gulf Stream

It’s brilliant and shows our 1936 understanding of the effect of the oceans’ circulation on regional climate.

Today we have a better understanding of the ocean circulation at a climate scale. But naturally we still have much to learn. Quirin Schiermeier published a nice piece in 2013 Nature, Oceans Under Surveillance, which showed the big experiments intended and currently going on.

Schematic of the Atlantic Circulation and oceanographic experiments. From NATURE

Since the piece was written the OSNAP program (Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program) began, and RAPID –WATCH is still running. Both projects have some great information on their websites and there are active researchers on twitter.

Relevant Links:

Some UK OSNAP Oceanographers on Twitter I think are good “follows”

@uk_osnap

@sheldonbacon

@np_holliday

@C__Wilson

Project Websites

The UK OSNAP project site

The International OSNAP site

The RAPID-Watch site

[Please let me know who I have missed on twitter]

Mark Brandon • October 11, 2016

The Amundsen Sea currently has some very large polynya. In front of the Dotson, Getz and Pine Island ice shelves they are clear in the satellite data.

The sea ice extent along the Antarctic Peninsula 9 October 2016. Data from DMSP SSMI.

A polynya is an area of open water in the winter pack ice.

These are likely latent heat polynya, and strong winds are pushing the sea ice away from the coasts to make the open water.  In the open water there will be a lot of sea ice generation. I wouldn’t be surprised if the weather that is keeping the sea ice compressed against the Antarctic Peninsula is also responsible for opening them.

Taking the MODIS data from the TERRA satellite and importing that into google earth, the open water shows up as black. At the top of the image in front of Pine Island Glacier the polynya are partially obscured by cloud.

In Google Earth you can measure the area quite easily.

…continue reading →

Posted in Science. Tags: Amundsen Sea, antarctica, Dotson Ice Shelf, google earth, Kohler Glacier, polynya, satellite, sensible heat loss, Smith Glacier on October 11, 2016 by Mark Brandon. Mark Brandon • July 10, 2015

There is a lot happening at the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet as summer progresses, and the MODIS sensor on the TERRA and AQUA satellites is a wonderful way to observe it.

I noticed the other day (8 July 2015) this beautiful image of fast ice breaking out of a Fjord on the east coast at 76N

Fast ice breaking out of an East Greenland fjord

The full image can get down to 250 m per pixel and it is amazing stuff. The image below (from Google Earth) shows the location.

Location of the enlargement

And now in the 9 July MODIS image you can see very many large pools of water on the edge of the Greenland Ice sheet. Again, remember each pixel of this image is 250 m across – they look small but that are large pools.

…continue reading →

Posted in Science. Tags: fast ice, fjord, google earth, Greenland, lake, melt, MODIS on July 10, 2015 by Mark Brandon.

Mark Brandon • January 19, 2015 Captain Robert Falcon Scott

“England knows Scott as a hero; she has little idea of him as a man. He was certainly the most dominating character in our not uninteresting community: indeed, there is no doubt that he would carry weight in any gathering of human beings. But few who knew him realized how shy and reserved the man was, and it was partly for this reason that he so often laid himself open to misunderstanding.

Add to this that he was sensitive, femininely sensitive, to a degree which might be considered a fault, and it will be clear that leadership to such a man may be almost a martyrdom, and that the confidence so necessary between leader and followers, which must of necessity be based upon mutual knowledge and trust, becomes in itself more difficult. It wanted an understanding man to appreciate Scott quickly; to others knowledge came with experience.

He was not a very strong man physically, and was in his youth a weakly child, at one time not expected to live. But he was well proportioned, with broad shoulders and a good chest, a stronger man than Wilson, weaker than Bowers or Seaman Evans. He suffered from indigestion, and told me at the top of the Beardmore that he never expected to go on during the first stage of the ascent.

Temperamentally he was a weak man, and might very easily have been an irritable autocrat. As it was he had moods and depressions which might last for weeks, and of these there is ample evidence in his diary. The man with the nerves gets things done, but sometimes he has a terrible time in doing them. He cried more easily than any man I have ever known.

What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together. It would be stupid to say he had all the virtues: he had, for instance, little sense of humour, and he was a bad judge of men. But you have only to read one page of what he wrote towards the end to see something of his sense of justice. For him justice was God. Indeed I think you must read all those pages; and if you have read them once, you will probably read them again. You will not need much imagination to see what manner of man he was.

And notwithstanding the immense fits of depression which attacked him, Scott was the strongest combination of a strong mind in a strong body that I have ever known. And this because he was so weak! Naturally so peevish, highly strung, irritable, depressed and moody. Practically such a conquest of himself, such vitality, such push and determination, and withal in himself such personal and magnetic charm. He was naturally an idle man, he has told us so;[134] he had been a poor man, and he had a horror of leaving those dependent upon him in difficulties. You may read it over and over again in his last letters and messages.[135]

He will go down to history as the Englishman who conquered the South Pole and who died as fine a death as any man has had the honour to die. His triumphs are many—but the Pole was not by any means the greatest of them. Surely the greatest was that by which he conquered his weaker self, and became the strong leader whom we went to follow and came to love.”

Apsley Cherry Garrard wrote that in the Worst Journey in the World.

Captain Scott was a complex man.

Posted in History. Tags: antarctica, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, history, Leadership, Scott, The Worst Journey in the World on January 19, 2015 by Mark Brandon.

Mark Brandon • December 8, 2016

I was asked “what is an easy way to get a satellite image into Google Earth?”. Once I explained how I do it I thought it may be of interest to others. NASA have provided a really excellent web interface to some of their visual data called Worldview.

The Worldview description puts into perspective how good it is.

The Worldview tool from NASA’s EOSDIS provides the capability to interactively browse global, full-resolution satellite imagery and then download the underlying data. Most of the 200+ available products are updated within three hours of observation, essentially showing the entire Earth as it looks “right now”

More than 200 data products within three hours…

Open worldview and this is the screen you are greeted with. It is easy to use. The key regions are the projection / copy / link tool in the yellow square on the right, the date control in the yellow box on the bottom of the browser screen and the layers control in the yellow box on the left.

Worldview opening screen.

I do recommend following the tour to find your way around the data sets.

Worldview tour screen

If you click the layers button (red on the left) this is just a part of the choice of real time data you can easily access.

Some of the data choices available in Worldview

So you select the data you want to see, and then you can zoom in and easily download areas of interest. For some reason I always seem to find my way at this view

Worldview Antarctic stereographic view.

This movie I made shows how you can get  imagery from Worldview easily into Google Earth.

I hope you find this useful. It’s easy to spend a lot of time looking at this data.

Posted in Science. Tags: MODIS, satellite, Worldview, youtube on December 8, 2016 by Mark Brandon. Mark Brandon • January 28, 2014

I don’t usually work on this sort of thing, but very recently I have been writing about hazards caused by the cryosphere. A major hazard is of course the avalanche – whether ice, snow, or a mixture.

This video was posted on You tube (with the tag line “Courtesy Vertical Solutions”), and it shows the impact of a snow and ice avalanche on the Alaskan road network on the 26 January 2014.

I tweeted it yesterday and the glaciologist Mauri Pelto replied

@icey_mark That is Richardson Highway that is flooded now, if this releases as one would expect in a torrent, the highway will fair worse.

— Mauri Pelto (@realglacier) January 27, 2014

I’ll try to remember to keep an eye online to see the outcome.

Posted in Science. Tags: Alaska, Arctic, avalanche, youtube on January 28, 2014 by Mark Brandon.

In March 2013 I was delighted to be asked to give a talk at TEDx Southampton.

This is what I talked about: What the poles are telling us about our world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SJNqBe2mUo

It was brilliant to be asked to speak, and really enjoyed the fantastically well organized day. Many thanks to the hardworking large team who put it together, and in particularly James Dyke,Alison Simmance and Jonathan Akass.

On the TEDx Southampton YouTube channel for the event are some amazing talks from that day.

Mark Brandon • October 26, 2017

As daylight has returned to Antarctica it is straightforward to pick out polynya forming on the edge of the Antarctic continent.

This one by the Stange Ice Shelf and Rydberg Peninsula caught my eye. It is a latent heat polynya formed as the winds push the sea ice away from the land to reveal the ocean that appears black beneath.

The wispy trails of grey which appear in the black are new sea ice forming as frazil ice.

A latent heat polynya forming in front of the Rydberg Peninsula and Stange ice Shelf, 22-26 October 2017.

This is the location of the peninsula.

The location of the Rydberg Peninsula.

I visited that area in 2007 and took this picture. You can a thin skim of young nilas ice in front of the ice shelf, and sea smoke too.

The Stange Ice Shelf with a thin skim of sea ice in front. Posted in Science. Tags: antarctica, frazil ice, polynya, Rydberg Peninsula, satellite, sea smoke, Stange Ice shelf on October 26, 2017 by Mark Brandon.