PhD Student Experiences

Royal Meteorology Conferences

Sally Woodhouse1 Comment

From 3rd-6th July 2018 the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) held two national conferences at the University of York. The Atmospheric Science Conference, joint with NCAS, started off the week and brought together scientists to present and discuss the latest research findings in weather, climate and atmospheric chemistry. The following two days brought the RMetS Student Conference. Both events were well attended by PhD students from Reading and provided a great opportunity to share our work with the wider scientific community.

For a summary of the work presented by Reading students, stick around until the end of the blog!

Atmospheric Science Conference 2018

Weather, Climate and Air Quality

Many of the presentations focused on seasonal forecasting with Adam Scaife (Met Office) giving a keynote address on “Skilful Long Range Forecasts for Europe”. He presented an interesting analysis on the current progress of predicting the North Atlantic Oscillation showing that there is skill in current predictions which could be improved even further by increasing ensemble size. Adam was also awarded the prestigious Copernicus Medal at the conference dinner. Another notable talk was by Reading’s own Ed Hawkins, who presented the benefits of using citizen scientists to rescue weather records. A summary of Ed’s presentation can be accessed below, and you can read more about research involving Citizen Science in Shannon Jones’ blog.

The poster sessions at the conference also gave a great opportunity to look at the breadth of work going on in institutions around the UK. It was also a great time to catch up with colleagues and forge new academic connections.

One of the highlights of the conference was having the conference dinner in the National Railway Museum. This was a fantastic yet surreal location with dining tables set up in the station hall overlooking a suite of old steam trains . The event was made even better by watching England‘s quarter-final world cup game!

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Evolution of Science: Past, Present and Future

Students & Early Career Scientist Conference

The student conference is open to all students with an interest in meteorology, from undergraduate to PhD and early career scientists. The conference aimed to give students the opportunity to meet each other and present their work at an early stage in their career before attending other academic conferences. For many of those attending from Reading this was their first time presenting research at an event outside of the department and provided a great experience to communicate their work with others. Work presented varied from radiative forcing to normal empirical modes (summaries of talks are below). There were also a number of keynote speakers and workshops aimed at addressing the current challenges in atmospheric sciences and skills that are important for researchers.

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Rory Fitzpatrick, presenting on skills for writing as an academic. “I have the Best Words” – How to write articles that impact bigly”

https://twitter.com/jominicdones/status/1015191296334548993

Of course there was also time for socialising with an ice-breaker dinner and pub quiz  and a formal Conference dinner on the Thursday. This was the second student conference I have attended and it was a really great place to discuss my work and meet other students from around the country. I have also attended other academic events with several people that I met at the conference last year, it’s always great to see a friendly face!

The student conference is organised by a committee of students from around the UK. Being on the committee was a great opportunity to learn more about how conferences work and to practice skills such as chairing sessions. It has also been great to get to know lots of different people working within meteorology. If you’re interested in helping organise next year’s conference please do get in touch with Victoria Dickinson at RMetS (Victoria.Dickinson@rmets.org) or if you’re thinking about attending then you can start by joining the society where you’ll hear about all the other great events they host.

Highlights of the work presented by Reading students:

Godwin Ayesiga presented work on the convective activity that connects Western and Eastern equatorial Africa. Investigating how intraseasonal modes of variability influence intense rainfall.

Matt Priestley presented an assessment of the importance of windstorm clustering on European wintertime insurance losses. More details of this work can be found here.

Lewis Blunn presented his work looking into the ‘grey zone’ of turbulence at model grid scale lengths of 100 m – 1 km. At these scales turbulence is partially resolved by the grid but still needs to be partially parameterised. Lewis finds that spurious grid scale features emerge at scales where turbulence is partially resolved. Model results are poorer in this ‘grey zone’ than when turbulence is fully resolved or fully parameterised.

Alec Vessey presented his work evaluating the representation of Arctic storms in different reanalysis products. He found that there is a difference between different reanlysis and so care should be taken when using these products to analyse Arctic storms.

Dominic Jones presented a technique for extracting modes of variability from atmospheric data, and a test dataset that has been developed to use this technique to examine the relationship of modes of variability associated with the jet-latitude.

Rachael Byrom presented a motivation for quantifying methane’s shortwave radiative forcing. Her work demonstrated a need to use a high resolution narrow-band radiation model to accurately calculate forcings in atmospheric models.

Andrea Marcheggiani presented a poster on the role of resolution in predicting the North Atlantic storm track. An energy budget of the winter climatology (DJF 1979-2018) was presented.

Sally Woodhouse presented her work on the impact of resolution on energy transports into the Arctic. She has found that increasing atmospheric resolution increases the energy transport in the ocean to better agree with observations.

Kaja Milczewska presented work on evaluating the inaccuracies of predicting air quality in the UK.

Having recently passed her viva, Caroline Dunning’s presentation was on precipitation seasonality over Africa under present and future climates. Caroline has developed a new methodology for determining the beginning and end of the wet season across Africa. This has been applied to CMIP5 model output to look at future changes in wet seasons across Africa under climate change.

Presenting in Ponte Vedra, Florida – 33rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology

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Email: j.f.talib@pgr.reading.ac.uk

You’ve watched many speak before you. You’ve practised your presentation repeatedly. You’ve spent hours, days, months, and sometimes years, understanding your scientific work. Yet, no matter the audience’s size or specialism, the nerves always creep in before a presentation. It’s especially no different at your first international conference!

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Between the 16th and 20th April 2018, me, Jonathan Beverley and Bethan Harris were fortunate enough to attend and present at the American Meteorological Society 33rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in Ponte Vedra, Florida. For each of us, our first international conference!

Being a regular user of Instagram through the conference, especially the Instagram Story function, I was regularly asked by my friends back home, “what actually happens at a scientific conference”? Very simple really – scientists from around the world, from different departments, universities, and countries, come to share their work, in the hope of progressing the scientific field, to learn from one another, and network with future collaborators. For myself, it was an opportunity to present recently submitted work and to discuss with fellow researchers on the important questions that should be asked during the rest of my PhD. One outcome of my talk for example, was a two-hour discussion with a graduate student from Caltech, which not only improved my own work, but also helped me understand other research in global circulation.

Recordings of the presentations given by University of Reading PhD students can be found at:

Alongside presenting my own work, I had the opportunity to listen and learn from other scientific researchers. The conference had oral and poster presentations from a variety of tropical meteorology subject areas including hurricanes, global circulation, sub-seasonal forecasting, monsoons and Madden-Julian Oscillation. One of the things that I most enjoy at conferences is to hear from leading academics give an overview of certain topic or issue. For example, Kerry Emanuel spoke on the inferences that can be made from simple models of tropical convection. Through applying four key principles of tropical meteorology including the weak temperature gradient approximation and conservation of free-tropospheric moist static energy, we can understand tropical meteorology processes including the Intertropical Convergence Zone, Walker circulation and observed temperature and humidity profiles.

Of course, if you’re going to fly to the other side of the pond, you must take advantage of being in the USA. We saw a SPACEX rocket launch, (just at a distance of 150 miles away,) experienced travelling through a squall line, visited the launch sites of NASA’s first space programs, and explored the sunny streets of Miami. It was a great privilege to have the opportunity to present and attend the AMS 33rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, and I am hugely thankful to NERC SCENARIO DTP and the Department of Meteorology for funding my work and travel.

 

Oceans in Weather and Climate Course 2018

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email: r.frew@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Between the 11th-16th March myself and four other PhDs and post docs attended the Ocean in Weather and Climate (OiWC) course at the Met Office, Exeter. This NERC advanced training course was aimed at PhDs, postdocs and beyond. It provided a great opportunity to spend a week meeting other Oceanography researchers at varying stages of their career, and to expand your understanding of the oceans role in climate beyond the scope of your own work.

The week kicked off with an ice breaker where we had do some ‘Scientific speed dating’, chatting to other participants about: Where are you from? What do you work on? What is your main hobby? What is the biggest question in your field of research? This set the tone for a very interactive week full of interesting discussions between all attendees and speakers alike. Course participants were accommodated at The Globe Inn situated in Topsham, a cute village-sized town full of pastel-coloured houses, cosy pubs, art galleries, and beautiful riverside walks to stretch your legs in the evenings.

The days consisted of four 1.5 hour sessions, split up by caffeine and biscuit breaks to recharge before the next session.

Topics covered in the lecture-style talks included…

  • Dynamical Theory
  • Modelling the Ocean
  • Observations
  • Ocean-atmosphere coupling
  • Air-sea fluxes
  • High Resolution Ocean modelling in coupled forecast systems
  • The Meridional Overturning Circulation
  • The Southern Ocean in climate and climatic change
  • Climate variability on diurnal, seasonal, annual, inter-annual, decadal timescales
  • Climate extremes
  • Climate sensitivity, heat uptake and sea level.
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A recurring figure of the week…. taken from Helene Hewitt’s talk on high resolution ocean modelling showing ocean surface currents from HadGEM3-based global coupled models at different resolutions (eddy resolving, eddy permitting and eddy parameterised).

 

All the talks were very interesting and were followed by some stimulating discussion. Each session provided an overview of each topic and an indication of the current research questions in each area at the moment.

In the post lunch session, there were group practical sessions. These explored observational ARGO float data and model output. The practicals, written in iPython notebooks, were designed to let us play with some data, giving us a series of questions to trigger group discussions to deepen understanding of topics covered that morning.

The course also included some ‘softer’ evening talks, giving research career advice in a more informal manner. Most evenings were spent exploring the lovely riverside walks and restaurants/pubs of Topsham. The final evening was spent all together at the Cosy Club in Exeter, rounding off a very interesting and enjoyable week!

Inspirational Female Scientists #women1918

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100 years ago today the UK parliament reformed the electoral system in Great Britain by permitting women over the age of 30 to vote. Unfortunately, there were terms to the act that meant women either had to be a member or married to a member of the Local Government Register, a property owner, or a graduate voting in a University constituency. However, crucial and progressive steps had been taken for women’s rights, and it is the same for today as it was 100 years ago, that more is needed to be done to ensure global gender equality.

At Social Metwork HQ, we have taken our time to reflect and be encouraged by inspirational female scientists. Different students across the department have written short paragraphs on female scientists that have inspired them to where they are today. If you have any other suggestions for inspirational scientists, please feel free to leave us a comment.

Amelie Emmy Noether – Kaja Milczewska

emmy-noether-2A true revolutionary in the field of theoretical physics and abstract algebra, Amelie Emmy Noether was a German-born inspiration thanks to her perseverance and passion for research. Instead of teaching French and English to schoolgirls, Emmy pursued the study of mathematics at the University of Erlangen. She then taught under a man’s name and without pay because she was a women.  During her exploration of the mathematics behind Einstein’s general relativity alongside renowned scientists like Hilbert and Klein, she discovered the fundamentals of conserved quantities such as energy and momentum under symmetric invariance of their respective quantities: time and homogeneity of space. She built the bridge between conservation and symmetry in nature, and although Noether’s Theorem is fundamental to our understanding of nature’s conservation laws, Emmy has received undeservedly small recognition throughout the last century.

Claudine Hermann – Helene Bresson

Claudine-HermannClaudine Hermann is a French physicist and Emeritus Professor at the École Polytechnique in Paris. Her work, on physics of solids (mainly on photo-emission of polarized electrons and near-field optics), led to her becoming the first female professor at this prestigious school. Aside from her work in Physics, Claudine studied and wrote about female scientists’ situation in Europe and the influence of both parents’ works on their daughter’s professional choices. Claudine wishes to give girls “other examples than the unreachable Marie Curie”. She is the founder of the Women and Sciences association and represented it at the European Commission to promote gender equality in Science and to help women accessing scientific knowledge. Claudine is also the president of the European Platform of Women Scientists which represents hundreds of associations and more than 12,000 female scientists.

Katherine Johnson – Sally Woodhouse

26646856911_ca242812ee_o_1For most people being handpicked to be one of three students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools would probably be the most notable life achievements. However for Katherine Johnson’s this was just the start of a remarkable list of accomplishments. In 1952 Johnson joined the all-black West Area Computing section at NACA (to become NASA in 1958). Acting as a computer, Johnson analysed flight test data, provided maths for engineering lectures and worked on the trajectory for America’s first human space flight.

She became the first woman to receive an author credit on a Flight Research Division report in 1960 and went on to author or co-author 26 research reports. Johnson is perhaps best known (in part due to the excellent feel good film Hidden Figures) for her work on the flight trajectory for John Glenn’s 1962 orbital mission.

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She was required to check the calculations of NASA’s IBM computer and Glenn is reported to have asked for her to personally check the coordinates.

“GET THE GIRL TO CHECK THE NUMBERS… IF SHE SAYS THE NUMBERS ARE GOOD, I’M READY TO GO.”

Katherine was also involved in calculations for the Apollo missions trajectories, including Apollo 11. In 2015 she was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.

Marie Tharp – Caroline Dunning

World War II was an important period in terms of scientific advance. In addition, it enabled more women to be trained in professions such as geology, at a time when very few women were in earth sciences. One such woman was Marie Tharp. Following the advancement of sonar technology during WWII, in the early 1950s, ships travelled across the Atlantic Ocean recording ocean depth. maria-tharp-oceanWomen however were not allowed on such ships, thus Marie Tharp was stationed in the lab, checking and plotting the data. Her drawings showed the presence of the North Atlantic Ridge, with a deep V-shaped notch that ran the length of the mountain range, indicating the presence of a rift valley, where magma emerges to form new crust. At this time the theory of plate tectonics was seen as ridiculous. Her supervisor initially dismissed her results as ‘girl talk’ and forced her to redo them. The same results were found. Her work led to the acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift.

Ada Lovelace – Dominic Jones

ada-lovelace-20825279-1-402Ada Lovelace was a 19th century Mathematician popularly referred to as the “first computer programmer”. She was the translator of “Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes from the Translator”, (said “notes” tripling the length of the document and comprising its most striking insights) one of the documents critical to the development of modern computer programming. She was one of the few people to understand and even fewer who were able to develop for the machine. That she had such incredible insight into a machine which didn’t even exist yet, but which would go on to become so ubiquitous is amazing!

Drs. Jenni Evans, Sukyoung Lee, and Yvette Richardson – Michael Johnston

Leading Scientists at Penn State University, Drs. Jenni Evans, Sukyoung Lee, and Yvette Richardson serve as role models for students in STEM subjects. The three professors are active in linking their research interests to not only education but also science communication, and government policy. Between them, they highlight some of the many avenues a career in STEM can lead to. Whether its authoring a widely used textbook, leading advisory panels, or challenging students throughout their time in higher education – these leaders never cease to be an inspiration.

 

Why become a Royal Meteorological Society Student member?

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This week the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) published their strategic plan for the period of 2018 to 2020, and here at Social Metwork HQ we thought it would be a splendid idea to reflect on the benefits of being a student member of the Royal Meteorological Society.

An important benefit in my opinion is that when becoming a member of RMetS you join a well-established community who hold enthusiasm about the weather and climate at its core. Members come from all corners of the world and at different stages of their career spanning the entire range: from the amateur weather enthusiasts to professionals.  nicole-kuhn-450747As a student, being an RMetS member can lead to conversations that could develop your career and bring unexpected opportunities. This has been greatly enhanced with the RMetS mentoring scheme.

RMetS host many different types of meetings, including annual conferences, meetings hosted by regional centres, and national meetings. Additional gatherings are held by special interest groups, ranging from Weather Arts & Music to Dynamical Problems. Meetings on a regional and national scale provide a platform for discussion and learning amongst those in the field. DEhXj9AXkAARyMM.jpg largeFor a student, the highlight in the RMetS calendar is the annual student conference. Every year, sixty to eighty students come together to present their work and develop professional relationships that continue for years to come. This year’s conference is hosted at the University of York on the 5th and 6th July 2018 (more information). After two student conferences under my belt (see previous blog post), I would highly recommend any early career research scientist attending this event. It serves as a platform to share their own work in a friendly atmosphere and be inspired by the wider student community.

nasa-63030Other benefits to becoming an RMetS student member include eligibility to the Legacies Fund, grants and fellowships, and receiving a monthly copy of Weather magazine. Most importantly though, through becoming a RMetS member you support a professional society who are committed to increasing awareness of the importance of weather and climate in policy and decision-making. Alongside this week’s publication of RMetS’ strategic plan, both the Met Office and NASA have published press releases stating that 2017 was the warmest year on record without El Niño. The atmosphere and oceans of our planet are changing at unprecedented rates: rising sea levels, reductions in Arctic sea-ice, and an increased frequency of extreme weather events to name but a few climate change impacts. Becoming an RMetS student member does not only benefit your career and knowledge, but also supports a society that is committed to promoting and raising awareness of weather and climate science.

VMSG and COMET 2018 (or a Tale of Two Conferences)

Rebecca Couchman-CrookLeave a comment

The Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group (VMSG) held a conference from the 3-6th of January in Leeds. The Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET) held a student conference from 8-9th January in Cambridge. It was a conference double-whammy about all things volcanic – heaven!

VMSG is a joint special interest group of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the Geological Society of London. The VMSG conference is a fairly small affair, with about 200 in attendance, and it brings together research in geochemistry, seismology, volcanology and related fields. Because of its size, it’s a nice informal space where there is a focus on students presenting their work to the VMSG community, but anyone is free to present their research.

Talks ranged from how tiny fossils, called diatoms, became trapped in a pyroclastic density current, to modelling of lava domes, to how local people interact with the volcano they live on at Masaya, to every aspect of volcanology you can think of. The final talk was definitely a highlight – with everyone in 3D glasses to look at volcanic plumes across Russia, it really brought the satellite images to life (and we got to keep the glasses).

90 posters on a variety of topics were presented, the majority of which were by students (I was one of them). There was of course an obligatory dinner and disco to round off the second day of talks, and a great chance to network with other people from VMSG.

For the best poster title of the conference, you need look no further than this gem.

The conference also provides workshops on different aspects of research, with sessions on writing papers, diffusion modelling and InSAR to name a few. These were hosted on the 6th at the University of Leeds Environment and Earth Sciences Department, and comprised a full day of talks and labs so you could get to grips with the techniques you were being shown. I attended the InSAR workshop, which gave a good introduction to the topic of comparing two satellite images and seeing where the ground had moved. There was also a session on deformation modelling in the afternoon and playing with bits of code.

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An afternoon of modelling InSAR deformations and code – hill-arity ensued.

Then it was onto the second leg of the conferences, which took the action to Cambridge, where students that are part of COMET met up to discuss work and attend talks from 8-9th January.

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Gneiss weather in Cambridge!

COMET is a National Environment Research Council Centre of Excellence, it comprises a group of researchers that uses remote and ground sensed data and models to study earthquakes and volcanoes. They also work with the British Geological Survey and the European Space Agency, and fund PhD projects in related fields.

The meet-up of students comprised two days of talks from students, with some keynote speakers who had been past members of COMET that had gone on to careers outside of academia. The talks from second and third years included: remote sensing and InSAR being used to examine tectonic strain in the East African Rift Valley and slip (movement) rates along faults in Tibet, modelling how gas bubbles in magma change the more crystals you add to the magma, and using cosmogenic isotopes to work out slip rates on a fault in Italy.

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The Department had cabinets and cabinets of samples that rocked.

First years are also given the chance to give a talk lasting 5 minutes, so I filled people in on what I’d been up to in the past four months – lots of data collection! My project will be using satellite data to look at the varied eruption behaviour of Bagana volcano in Papua New Guinea, with a view to modelling this behaviour to better understand what causes it. Bagana has a tendency to send out thick lava flows in long pulses and let out lots of gas, and occasionally then violently erupt and let out lots of ash and hot pyroclastic density currents. But it is very understudied, as it is so remote – so there’s lots still to be learnt about it!

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Me with my poster (I’ve run out of geology puns).

The meet-up also included a fancy meal in Pembroke College’s Old Library, with candles and it felt a bit like being at Hogwarts! Then it was back to Reading, thoroughly worn out, but with lots of ideas and many useful contacts – VMSG2019 is in St. Andrews and I can’t wait.

A week at COP23

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From the 6th -17th of November the UNFCCC’s (United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change) annual meeting or “Conference of the Parties” – COP took place. This year was COP23 and was hosted by Bonn in the UN’s world conference centre with Fiji taking the presidency.

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Heading into the Bonn Zone on the first day of the COP. The Bonn Zone was the part of the conference for NGO stands and side events.

As part of the Walker Institutes Climate Action Studio another SCENARIO PhD and I attended the first week of the COP while students back in Reading participated remotely via the UNFCCC’s YouTube channel and through interviews with other participants of the COP.

There are many different components to the COP, it is primarily the meeting of a number of different international Climate agreements with lots of work currently being done on the implementation on the Paris Agreement. However it is also a space where many different civil society groups doing work connected to or impacted by climate change come together, to make connections with other NGOs as well as governments. This is done in an official capacity within the “exhibition zone” of the conference and with a vast array of side events taking place throughout the two weeks. Outside of these official events there are also many demonstrations both inside and outside of the conference space.

Demonstrations in the Bonn Zone

As an observer I was able to watch some of the official negotiations. On the Wednesday I attended the SBSTA (Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice) informal consultation on research and systematic observations. It was an illuminating experience to see the negotiation process in action. At times it was frustrating to see how picky it feels like the negotiation teams can be, however over the week I did have a newfound appreciation for the complexity of the issues that are having to be resolved. This meeting was based on writing a short summary of the IPCC report and other scientific reports used by the COP, and so was less politically charged than a lot of the other meetings. However this didn’t stop an unexpected amount of debate over whether to include examples such as carbon-dioxide concentrations.

One of the most useful ways to learn about the COP was by talking to the different people and groups who we met at COP. It was interesting to see the different angles with which people were approaching the COP. From researchers who were observing the political process, to environmental and human rights NGO’s trying to get governments to engage with issues that they’re working on.

Interviewing other COP participants at the Walker Institutes stand

A particular highlight was the ex-leader of the Green Party Natalie Bennett, she spoke with us and the students back in Reading about a wide range of topics, from women’s involvement in the climate movement to discussing my PhD.

Kelly Stone from Action Aid provided a great insight into how charities operate at the COP. She spoke of making connections with other charities, often there are areas of overlap between their work but on other issues they had diverging opinions. However these differences have to be put aside to make progress on their shared interests. Kelly also discussed how it always amazes her that people are surprised that everyone who attends COP does not agree on everything, “we’re not deciding if climate change is real”. The issues being dealt with at the COP are complex dealing with human rights, economics, technology as well as climate change. Often serious compromises have to be made and this must be done by reaching a consensus between all 197 Parties to the UNFCCC.

To read more about the student experience of COP and summaries of specific talks and interviews you can view the COP CAS blog here. You can also read about last years COP on this blog here.

Clockwise from top left: The opening on the evening of Monday 6th November showed Fiji leaving its own mark as the President of the conference. The Norwegian Pavilion had a real Scandi feel, while the Fiji Pavilion transported visitors to a tropical island.

 

Sea ice is complicated, but do sea ice models need to be?

Rebecca Frew1 Comment

email: r.frew@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Sea ice is complex…

When sea water freezes it forms sea ice, a composite of ice and brine. Sea ice exhibits varying structural, thermodynamic and mechanical properties across a range of length- and time-scales. It can be subcategorised into numerous different types of sea ice depending on where is grows and how old it is.

 

 

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Different sea ice growth processes and types 1.

However, climate models do not simulate the evolution of floes (they model floes as cylindrical) or the floe size distribution, which has implications for ice melt rates and exchange of heat with the atmosphere and ocean. Sea ice also hosts algae and small organisms within brine channels in the ice, which can be important for nutrient cycles. This is a developing area of earth system modelling.

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Schematic of life within brine channels in sea ice 2.

How much complexity do global climate models need to sufficiently model the interactions of sea ice with the ocean and atmosphere?
The representation of sea ice in global climate models is actually very simple, with minimal sea ice types and thickness categories. The main important feature of sea ice for global climate models is its albedo, which is much greater than that of open water, making it important for the surface energy balance. So, it is important to get the correct area of sea ice. Global climate models need sea ice:

  • to get the correct heat exchange with the atmosphere and ocean
  • to get a realistic overturning circulation in the ocean.
  • because salt release during sea ice growth is important for the ocean salinity structure, and therefore important to get the correct amount of sea in/near deep water formation sites.
  • sea ice is not important for sea level projections.

So, do the complex features of sea ice matter, or are simple parameterisations sufficient?

Sea_ice_Drawing_General_features.svg Schematic showing some dynamic features of sea ice 3.

Which leads to a lot more questions…

  • Where does the balance between sufficient complexity and computational cost lie?
  • Does adding extra model complexity actually make it harder to understand what the model is doing and therefore to interpret the results?
  • Do climate models need any further improvements to sea ice in order to better simulate global climate? There is still large uncertainty surrounding other climate model components, such as clouds and ocean eddies, which are believed to explain a lot of the discrepancy between models and observations, particularly in the Southern Ocean.

A lot of these questions depend on the scientific question that is being asked. And the question is not necessarily always ‘how is global climate going to change in the future’. Sea ice is fascinating because of its complexity, and there are still many interesting questions to investigate, hopefully before it all melts!

 Images clockwise from top left: grease ice 4, pancake ice 5, surface melt ponds 6, ice floes 7. 

The Future Developments in Climate Sea Ice Modelling Workshop

This blog stems from a one day workshop I attended on ‘Future developments in climate sea ice modelling’ at the Isaac Newton Centre as part of a four month programme on the ‘Mathematics of Sea Ice Phenomena’. The format of the day was that three different strands of sea ice researchers gave 40 min talks giving their strand’s point of view of current sea ice developments and what the focus should be for sea ice modelers, each followed by 40 mins of open discussion with the audience.

The three (very good!) talks were:

  1. Dirk Notz: What do climate models need sea ice for? A top-down, system level view of what sea ice models should produce from the perspective of a climate modeller.
  2. Cecilia Bitz: What sea ice physics is missing from models? A bottom-up view of what is missing from current sea ice models from the perspective of a sea ice scientist.
  3. Elizabeth Hunke: What modelling approaches can be used to address the complexity of sea ice and the needs of climate models?

 

  1. https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/characteristics/formation.html.
  2. https://www.eduplace.com/science/hmxs/ls/mode/cricket/sect7cc.shtml
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_ice
  4. https://www.travelblog.org/Photos/2101807
  5. http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/environment/icebergs-and-ice/sea-ice
  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_ice#/
  7. https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-15391768-stock-footage-flying-over-arctic-ice-floes.html