icey_mark | Mallemaroking

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icey_mark • December 13, 2012

I was lucky enough on Tuesday night to get to go to a preview Screening of James Balog’s film Chasing Ice at the wonderful Curzon Soho cinema

After it ended I was on the stage with the incredible polar photographer Nick Cobbing, the wonderful polar experienced and influenced artist Michèle Noach, and the Greenpeace Senior Climate Advisor Charlie Kronick. I know that is a bit effusive – but hey follow the links to Michèle and Nick and draw your own conclusions.

From Left to right: Nick Cobbing Michèle Noach, Me and Charlie Kronick. Pic by Chris Brunner

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Posted in Science, Uncategorized. Tags: chasing ice, cinema, climate, discussion, glacier, photography on December 13, 2012 by icey_mark. icey_mark • December 11, 2012

This morning I posted my 10,000 tweet.

Reduced Sea Ice in the Arctic Spurs Phytoplankton Blooms : satellite pics from summer 2012 http://t.co/amq6zvfi

— Mark Brandon (@icey_mark) December 11, 2012

Whilst I am not sure if 10,000 is significant, I pointed to the brilliant NASA Earth Observation www site which has a wonderful post today about the reduction of sea ice increasing phytoplankton growth in the Arctic. (Be sure to click the “image comparision” button on that page).

Sat picture from 10 July 2011 showing milligrams of chlorophyll per cubic meter of seawater. From the Aqua Satellite

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Posted in At sea, Science. Tags: antarctica, Arctic, habitat, polar, satellite, sea ice on December 11, 2012 by icey_mark. icey_mark • December 10, 2012

I got an email from a friend asking me about the picture I am using for the blog header.

“Where did you take that?”

Antarctica on 30th March 2007 in southern Marguerite Bay, and looking towards the Antarctic Peninsula.

It was a fantastic day’s work, making oceanographic measurements with CTD sensor to work out the ocean circulation beneath the King George VI Ice shelf.

Here is an picture with a similar view from the same day showing the whole scene.

King George VI Sound facing the Antarctic Peninsula

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Posted in At sea. Tags: Antarctic Peninsula, antarctica, Marguerite Bay, sea ice on December 10, 2012 by icey_mark. icey_mark • December 7, 2012

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

I am a huge fan of the Natural Environment Research Council, and used to work for the British Antarctic Survey. It is a fact that in the UK at the moment the community has some very tough funding decisions to make.

NERC decided to investigate  saving money through a possible merger of the National Oceanography Centre and BAS.  It is fair to say that  this was not so well recieved.

The story in the Observer

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Posted in Science, Storify, twitter. Tags: Antarctic, BAS, British Antarctic Survey, National Oceanography Centre, NERC, NOC, polar, policy on December 7, 2012 by icey_mark.