Mark Brandon • August 29, 2014 In the old days Antarctica wasn’t mapped and measured by satellites like it is now. In the past it was all about exploration. Scientists were dropped at bases by ship, and then left for at least a year – sometimes two. Very occasionally more. When winter comes the sea […]
Mark Brandon • March 1, 2013 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Mark Brandon • December 13, 2012 So I was at this award ceremony, like I usually am. And….. The Most Innovative Teacher of the Year award goes to…Dr Mark Brandon (@icey_mark) from @OpenUniversity! Congrats! #THEAwards — Times Higher Education (@timeshighered) November 29, 2012 Getting THE Innovative Teacher of the Year Award 2012 …continue reading → […]
— UPDATED 11 June 2014 — This post got the dreaded TL; DR on Reddit – but at least “they” acknowledged it was useful. Since it takes someone else to pick out the value in your work I offer this tweet from Jason Major. – ORIGINAL POST A significant area of Antarctic glaciological interest is […]
Mark Brandon • June 14, 2014 Mangé par le chat de l’équipage de la Terror The cod icefish re-discovered and published in 1904 by Louis Dollo. The original caption says “Mangé par le chat de l’équipage de la Terror” or “Eaten by the Terror’s cat”! The famous polar ships HMS Erebus and HMS terror had […]
It is October and it is the Arctic sea ice growing season. The MODIS imagery yesterday shows this beautiful image of sea ice on the North East Greenland coast. North East Greenland in a MODIS image 5 October 2016 from the TERRA satellite The image below shows roughly where we are looking: Greenland and Iceland. The yellow box shows […]
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 shows an interesting and large low […]
Mark Brandon • September 17, 2014 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! © […]
I am working on a polar oceanographic problem at the moment, but the beauty of physics is the principles are universal. That means you can end up reading widely. I came across a very interesting paper (to me): 2009 paper in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science Through the joys of open access a PDF of […]
Mark Brandon • December 14, 2016 Today is 105 years since Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting and Olav Bjaaland reached the South Pole. And Google have celebrated that fact with a google Doodle: Amundsen expedition South Pole Google Doodle I love the doodle. It’s beautiful art. But it falls on me to be a […]
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 […]