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 […]
Mark Brandon • March 26, 2015 I was enjoying my polar books the other night and came across a quote attributed to everyone’s favourite humanitarian polar explorer and scientist, Fridtjof Nansen. Fridtjof Nansen, 1915, from the George Grantham Bain Collection If I were not a Norwegian, I would be an Englishman rather than belong to […]
Mark Brandon • March 7, 2017 The polynya I saw forming in early February is still clear, and very large in the Southern Weddell Sea. At the moment it is more than than 80,000 km2, although there is clearly a lot of young sea ice covering a large part of the polynya. The Weddell Sea 5 […]
In 2012 I put together a storify using twitter and weblinks about the Greenland Surface Melt. In that story a bunch of climate scientists and I talked about whether the extreme melt seen in 2012 was a signature of global warming. The original BBC Greenland Melting story An Open Access paper by Sirpa Häkkinen and […]
Mark Brandon • December 14, 2016 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. Posted in Science. Tags: Antarctic, Arctic, podcast, sea ice, Sustainababble on December 14, 2016 by Mark […]
Mark Brandon • May 15, 2017 Approaching the middle of May and well into the Arctic sea ice retreat we can see that the sea ice extent (area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice) is still well below the mean over the satellite record. Arctic sea ice extent to 53 May 2017 from […]
Mark Brandon • September 26, 2016 The low sea ice extent I noticed in my previous blog post about Antarctic Sound has extended southwards along the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The sea ice extent along the Antarctic Peninsula 24 September 2016. Data from DMSP SSMIS The open water that shows up as black […]
Mark Brandon • February 17, 2017 I noticed yesterday that a polynya had formed in front of the Ronne Ice Shelf over the last 2 weeks. Screengrab from NASA Worldview 17 February 2017 In that image it is about 27,000 km2 in area. I mapped the opening of the polynya from MODIS imagery over the last two […]
Mark Brandon • July 24, 2017 I thought it was time to look at the sea ice data as the summer Arctic melt proceeds. The image below shows the mean sea ice extent 1989-93 on 22 July, the sea ice extent 22 July 2017, and the difference between the two data sets. Reds imply less […]
Mark Brandon • June 23, 2015 The MODIS sensor satellite imagery is showing a beautiful and evolving large plankton bloom in the Chukchi Sea at the moment. Plankton bloom in the Chukchi Sea, as seen in the MODIS sensor on 23 June 2015. Alaska is on the LEFT and Russia the RIGHT. The image is […]
Mark Brandon • March 7, 2017 The polynya I saw forming in early February is still clear, and very large in the Southern Weddell Sea. At the moment it is more than than 80,000 km2, although there is clearly a lot of young sea ice covering a large part of the polynya. The Weddell Sea 5 […]
Mark Brandon • September 16, 2016 Just noticed this on the MODIS sensor on the TERRA satellite image from 10 September 2016. (Tile Antarctica_rc05c01 if you are interested in that sort of thing) Antarctic Sound on the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula 10 Sept 2016 The Antarctic sea ice ice extent map for 10 September 2016 […]
Mark Brandon • February 13, 2017 The Metropolitan Museum of Art has made more than a third of a million images both public domain and searchable online. This is one of my current favourites: An Arctic Summer: Boring Through the Pack in Melville Bay by William Bradford and painted in 1871. An Arctic Summer: Boring […]
Mark Brandon • September 28, 2017 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 […]