Science | Mallemaroking – Part 4

by maximios • North Pole

As a marine scientist I have always had an obsession with the sea and what it is doing. You can see that by looking at the photos section of this site, or my flickr stream. A couple of weeks ago Dr Ian Brooks (Leeds) tweeted to a colleague, a movie clip of a ship in bad storm. I looked at the video and there was no doubt. It was taken on the RRS James Clark Ross when I was on board. Here is the clip:

It was taken by Doug, who was then the Third Officer of the James Clark Ross, and I think that I was probably standing on the bridge with him and my two colleagues Dr Geli Renner, and Dr Paul Holland. We were the night shift on a research cruise in the Bellingshausen Sea.

It’s a little odd to me when people refer to the polar regions as being something to do with the “sounds of silence”. I have never thought of peace and quiet when I am on sea ice. You see the sea ice is always moving, (except when it is frozen to the coast and then we term it “fast ice”), and when it moves – the individual floes are constantly colliding and banging into each other. The collisions and banging can be very noisy.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge knew that when he wrote the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798.

On twitter this pm is a not unexpected, but rather interesting looking opportunity for those who are confident about their leadership abilities.

[news] NERC seeks new Director for BAS: NERC is looking for a new BAS director; full details are available on th… bit.ly/T577XE

— BAS_News (@BAS_News) December 21, 2012

Follow a couple of links and you end up at a dedicated website called http://www.basdirector.co.uk/index.html

It does have a nice header:

I know what you are thinking, £95k sounds pretty good, but what would you have to do for it?

The time sequence from the EllsworthLIVE site

It is a fantastic time to be interested in polar science.

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

[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.

This morning I posted my 10,000 tweet.

Reduced Sea Ice in the Arctic Spurs Phytoplankton Blooms : satellite pics from summer 2012 1.usa.gov/U1jfEk

— 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

[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