Robots aren’t a frequent topic of conversation amongst PhD students in the Met department, but currently everyone seems to be talking about a robot, virtual reality and COP. What’s going on?
COP stands for the Conference of the Parties, and forms the decision making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This is the UN body with the responsibility of “stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. They meet once a year to review and assess the implementation of the UNFCCC and associated agreements and protocols. The 22nd COP will be held in Morocco next week.
So what is significant about this year’s COP? Well 2015 was a landmark year in terms of creation of UN agreements. Firstly, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction aims to substantially reduce disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health. Secondly, the Sustainable Development Goals, call for action to end poverty, protect the planet and encourage peace and prosperity. Thirdly, and finally the Paris Agreement, when all nations agreed to limit the global temperature rise this century to below 2 degrees Celsius and to try to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.
We, as PhD students studying meteorology understand that robust evidence underpins the three major global agreements of 2015. The first priority for action under the Sendai Framework is ‘understanding disaster risk’, where science is one of the major contributors. Many of the Sustainable Development Goals, which link strongly with both the Paris Agreement and Sendai Framework , require a strong scientific basis. As early career scientists, appreciating the role of research and importance of our science is crucial.
So where does the robot come into this? Next week, Josh Talib and Caroline Dunning will be attending COP22 in Morocco on behalf of the Walker Institute. Accompanying us will be a robot avatar, which will enable remote participation in COP. Back in Reading, other PhD students will be running a Climate Action Studio, operating the robot and using virtual reality to interact with the COP and conduct interviews with participants. The hope is that, with the help of the robot avatar, we will all be able to engage with the discussions in Marrakech, and gain a greater understanding of climate governance.
If you are interested in hearing more, or intrigued about how we are using a robot to conduct interviews, we will be posting updates on this blog under the COP22 link (https://thesocialmetwork.wordpress.com/cop22/). We will also be tweeting using the hashtag #COPbot on @SocialMetwork. Thank you to NERC, SCENARIO DTP and the Walker Institute for this incredible opportunity.
One of the key aspects of science is communicating our work, not only to other scientists but also to the public. As part of the Manchester Science Festival the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) have been holding a number of events and last week (25 – 29 Oct) Into the Blue (a science showcase) was held at the Runway Visitor Centre underneath the wings of a Concorde. Along with a fellow PhD student from Reading (Kieran Hunt, who helped out on a stand about the monsoon) I was privileged to help man a stand (on flash flooding).
The event was used to showcase all the science that NERC funds from the atmosphere through to ecology. There were 40 exhibits and the chance to take tours of Concorde and the FAAM aircraft.
Concorde (left) and FAAM aircraft (right)
Exhibits involved a variety of interactive activities from making clouds in a bottle, using Infra-red cameras, making rivers in sand boxes, meeting Boaty McBoatface and a virtual reality flash flood!
During the quieter moments at their stands the exhibitors were allowed to wander around the rest of the event (including getting tours on the planes). In doing this we were able to talk to a number of different scientists about their work and engage in all the activities.
Personal highlights for me were touring both the Concorde and the FAAM aircraft. Although the best bit was the interaction with the public and being able to give everyone (no matter the age, from kids to adults) a “wow moment”.
The stand I was helping run was called FlashFlood! This stall was run predominantly by the University of Hull on behalf of the Flooding From Intense Rainfall (FFIR) project. They had created a virtual reality flash flood that was based on a real event (Thinhope Burn, 17 July 2007) which enabled us to place the stand’s visitor into a river valley and take them through the process of flooding from intense rainfall and how floods can change the characteristics of the rivers. It also gave us the ability (because of the case we had chosen) to show people that just because its not raining heavily at your location does not mean you won’t get flooded.
Having virtual reality was a massive draw for people to come to our stand so we were always fairly busy, but the feedback we had was very positive with the most frequent comments being,
“It felt like I was really there”
“It really helps me to visualise the science”
“Wow, this is really amazing”.
Comments like this really make events such as Into the Blue worth while for us as scientists as we then realise we are getting our messages through to people, and it shows the usefulness of scientific research to the public.
Events like this can be exhausting, but they are definitely worth the effort as you get to see the delight of the public as they learn about different science and have fun at the same time.
A big thank you must be said to NERC and Manchester Runway Visitor Centre for organizing and hosting the event and to all the exhibitors who did a great job in communicating science to the public.
What happens when you ask a bunch of PhD meteorologists (and a space physicist) to come up with an innovative business idea and pitch it to leading experts in business development?
If we’re honest, a bunch of crazy ideas that happened to land us with something believable and attainable. Some of our brainstorming ideas included:
Cow Power: Using Pizoelectric sheets to generate electricity from the movement of cows in turnstables.
Pick Me Cup: A brand new portable cup created from biodegradable products as part of a reusable scheme.
PVC Insulate: Encouraging PVC recycling (i.e. plastics found in food wrap) and use the products for loft insulation.
Satellite Design Detection: Using satellite data and weather forecast models to predict the movement of crop diseases.
As scientists we tried to develop ideas that we thought would be plausible, effective and reduce the environmental impact of humans. Therefore the idea we settled on before the start of the workshop was Pick Me Cup. We aimed to use biodegradable materials that are waste products from the agriculture industry such as straw to make a durable and reusable coffee cup. We developed a strategy that would allow consumers to use the cup, deposit it in a recycle type bin, and get a new clean one next time they buy a drink. The scheme’s aim was to reduce waste in an easy manner for customers.
When we arrived at the workshop it quickly became evident that our idea wasn’t interesting enough, and our idea had to be plausible… but importantly not real. So we developed our idea adding in what we called ‘fake science’, which we found difficult as scientists. After talks outlining important things to remember when creating a business plan, we were set loose to work on our idea, with time spent with mentors helping us with the business strategy and intellectual property.
We wrestled with our idea trying to think of something interesting that we could incorporate, then patent and sell the license for. This finally led us to ‘ThermoPaper’. The idea was adding a chemical to the paper, increasing its thermal properties without compromising its recyclability, weight or increasing the costs significantly. This way fewer paper cups would be used as people don’t have to ‘double cup’. It also removes the need for a protective sleeve.
The workshop was an interesting insight into the world of business and entrepreneurship, informing us of patenting, licensing and the most important part of any small business… the exit strategy. By combining all these elements we forged a business plan that we thought was ambitious, asking for £200 000 investment, and an estimated sale price of £14 million in 5 years. So we gave our Dragons Den style pitch and they loved our idea, but apparently we were not ambitious enough! We aimed to start small and build our way up, developing new uses for ThermoPaper, but they said we should have just gone straight for the top. As a result we didn’t win, but it was an interesting few days.
A big thanks to NERC, Syngenta and all the other organisations that made the workshop possible, and also to the speakers and mentors that helped shape our idea and business plan throughout!
NAWDEX (North Atlantic Wave and Downstream impact Experiment) was an International field campaign led by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) Oberpfaffenhofen in cooperation with the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich and the Office of Naval Research in the USA, with many other international collaborators. Multiple aircraft were deployed from Iceland (the HALO aircraft and the DLR and Safire Falcons) and the UK (the FAAM aircraft) to take meteorological measurments with the aim of providing knowledge of mid-latitude dynamics and predictability. There was involvement from across the UK, including the University of Reading, the University of Manchester, and the Met Office as well as from the FAAM.
The NAWDEX operations centre was based in Keflavik, Iceland (number 27 in Figure 1), which I visited for a week to join the campaign as one of the representatives from the University of Reading, UK. I was tasked with being the ground-based observation coordinator.
Figure 1: Radiosonde launch locations for the campaign.
A Europe-wide network of radiosonde launch locations (Figure 1) had been readied for additional launches during the NAWDEX period. Our role was to choose sites to launch sondes from that would complement measurements taken by the aircraft and/or support one of the NAWDEX objectives. Of particular interest was downstream high impact weather events over Europe. It was great to be given real responsibility and be able to actually contribute to the NAWDEX project.
Below is a typical daily schedule I would have in Iceland:
Daily schedule:
UK call: 8:30am Icelandic. Conference call between UK parties discussing plans for the coming days and any updates from Iceland or the UK.
General meeting: 12pm Icelandic. Go over brief weather summary, instrument status reports, flight plans for the coming days and reports of previous flights.
Weather meeting: 4pm Icelandic. Detailed look at the weather situation for the short and medium-ranges, highlighting key features that would be of interest to fly into, e.g. extratropical transitions of tropical cyclones (which we were fortunate to observe more than once). Radiosonde launch updates.
In between: assessing forecasts and flight plans for the coming days and meeting with scientists for their input to decide where we want to launch radiosondes from. Along with preparing slides to present to the group proposed launch locations and emailing various meteorological services to request the launches (the most time consuming).
My time in Iceland was a great learning experience. Working with some of the pre-eminent scientists in the fields of dynamics and predictability (and spending most of the day discussing the weather!) really helped improve my understanding of the development of mid-latitude weather systems and better understand their predictability.
Figure 2: On-board the FAAM aircraft.
After returning from Iceland I got the opportunity to fly on the FAAM aircraft (Figure 2) whilst it was on a mission for another project. The flight aim was to perform a radiometer inter-comparison by taking coordinated measurements of deep-frontal cloud to the north of Scotland with the HALO and Safire aircraft. The flight was remarkably turbulent free (I‘d been hoping for more of a roller coaster ride), although we did perform a profile right through the cloud to an altitude of less than 50 ft, which was pretty fun! Whilst on the aircraft we were also able to plot measurements being taken in real time on an on-board computer.
Figure 3: Flying at an altitude of 35 ft.
NAWDEX was a great opportunity to get first-hand experience of a major international field campaign (and see some of Iceland).
Imagine you’re creating a problem that we don’t understand. A problem where the majority of people just go, “meh, not important, I don’t really get it”.
What would it look like?
It would be complex, uncertain, something in the future and possibly an issue that was geographically distant.
Now those factors should you remind of climate change, and on 5th October 2016 the South-East Royal Meteorological Society local centre hosted a meeting where a panel of experts were presented with the question, “What will make the public and politicians take climate change seriously?”
The panel included professionals from a range of backgrounds including Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, leading expert in meteorology and climate, and first director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London. Dr Rachel McCloy a well-respected figure in behavioural science with experience in policy making in the former Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Treasury. Finally, Paul Simons a prominent journalist for the Times known for the depth of scientific understanding in his articles.
Images taken during the RMetS South East local centre meeting (06/10/16). Left image: Panelists (from left to right) including Dr Rachel McCloy, Sir Brian Hoskins and Paul Simons.
Sir Brian Hoskins opened the discussion with the challenge that we have a responsibility to “encourage” rather than “make” the public take climate change seriously, and recognised the progress in politics including targets announced in COP21, Paris and the UK Climate Change Act 2008. However, it was also recognised that climate change may not be prioritised high enough in political agendas, and the question was raised on whether governments take their environmental global responsibility seriously enough?
Discussion then moved onto personal actions each one of us can take to increase the public response. Repeating the “doom and gloom” message over climate change can become boring and repetitive, and we need to bring a positive message to tackling this global issue. We also need to recognise the responsibility of the individual in a global context and introduce small steps that can be taken to reduce our environmental impact.
One key message from Brian’s talk, and the meeting as whole, was that it’s currently hard for a member of the public to understand what climate change actually means to their daily lives. What impact will a 2°C global temperature rise actually cause? Researchers, the media and policymakers need to relate the science of global warming to our everyday lives, whether that’s through health, nutrition, the working environment, or air quality to name a few.
Our second speaker, Dr Rachel McCloy, introduced psychological behavioural frameworks that are introduced by climate change and how they impact the progression towards successful mitigation. For example, emotional reactions towards climate change can include dread and injustice, and this combined with typical adjectives used to describe the environmental changes including “natural” and “uncontrollable”, can lead to an increased likelihood of no effort being taken at all against climate change.
A component of Rachel’s talk I found particularly interesting was the impact of over-congratulating individuals and societies for taking “baby steps”. When we congratulate or applaud an action too much it reduces the likelihood of an even better action taking place. Therefore, as a society, we need to keep looking at the next step to mitigating against climate change. If we think about this in the present day, could we agree that we congratulated the agreements met in COP21 Paris too much, and as a result the likelihood of ratification and progress being made has been dropped. We as a community need to hold each other to account even when those “baby steps” have been made.
And finally, Paul, a leading science journalist for The Times, brought to the discussion how the media can be used to encourage climate change to be taken seriously. Everything in the media is a story and when a phenomena such climate change impacts health, water or even transportation it can gain a public interest. To increase the media’s attention to climate change, greater emphasis is needed on how environmental changes will impact our daily lives. Paul also reminded us that the public have begun to associate extreme weather events to climate change, whether proven to be a result of anthropogenic action or not. A recent example that comes to my mind is the recent European thunderstorms that occurred last summer. The media should be used to successfully “shape opinions” and it is up to us to grasp the opportunities that they have to offer.
After an intriguing set of three short talks to answer the question “What will make the public and politicians take climate change seriously?”, discussion was opened to the audience. Questions included: What is the importance of education to solving climate change? How much advocacy work should a climate scientist get involved in? The meeting as a whole stimulated a continued discussion on how climate change can be communicated effectively to “encourage” the public and politicians to take climate change seriously.
I would like to thank all three panellists for a set of thought-provoking and challenging talks. Thank you to the Royal Meteorological Society for supporting the local centre event, and to find out more about meetings taking place in your region check out https://www.rmets.org/events/forthcoming-meetings.
If there are two things that keep the Met department running it’s cake and coffee. This year the department got involved in the Macmillan coffee morning on the 30th September and raised a whopping £282 within three hours.
There was a bake off, a general cake sale and a guess the number of spots on a cake game, which got very scientific! The bake off had four categories, each with a prize: Savoury, bake your research, green theme and free-from, ensuring that there was something for everybody. As always the competition was good-natured but fierce and the judges (2 members of staff, 1 post-doc and 1 PhD student) had a sugar crash at around 3pm.
Here are some of the creations from the event:
First up (left) a chocolate cake carved into the shape of Africa, complete with wildlife, sprinkles and clouds. The judges didn’t want to cut this one, choosing to eat Madagascar first!
The next bake (top middle) went on to win the Best in Bake-off award, vanishing within minutes of being put on the sale table! Each slice was a decadent mixture of chocolate and lime.
The marvellous creations in the bottom middle image were free from everything except nuts. Using vegan marshmallows and chocolate alongside gluten free biscuits created a wickedly dark rocky road with plenty of crunch and just the right amount of marshmallows.
These gluten free wind turbines (right) were entered into all four categories of the bake off. Making gluten free pastry is no mean feat and unless told, no-one was aware that these moreish snacks were gluten free!
Finally, a shot of the table before it got too full of goodies! There are the edges of vegan pretzels (front left), a shop brought Victoria sponge (front middle), a supreme chocolate cake with Malteaser decorations (right) and a hazelnut and pear chocolate brownie which really captured the autumnal flavours and was the first to be completely sold!
Fortunately the department has its own running group to help counteract some of the cake eating.
That’s it from me for now, hopefully they’ll be more foodie posts soon!
The aims of the NERC funded BAS run course, “A skills framework for delivering safe and effective fieldwork in the polar regions”, were to learn how to safely and effectively plan and carry out fieldwork at the poles. And in doing so, to give 16 early career polar scientists across a range of disciplines the opportunity to go to the Arctic and learn practical fieldwork skills that we don’t pick up from our day to day office work.
The first part took place at Madingley Hall in Cambridge where we were briefed as an entire cohort on planning, logistics, instrumentation, risk assessment, GPS mapping, health and safety, and were exceedingly well fed as part of the process….
The sunny early morning views that greeted us into Ny Ålesund.
Next we set off to put what we had learnt into practice in Ny Ålesund, on the Island of Spitzbergen (translates as ‘pointy mountains’) in Svalbard. Ny Ålesund is a small international village predominantly inhabited by scientists, with a peak population in summer of around 150, and a hardy winter population of 35 toughing out the minimal daylight hours and chilling temperatures, which reach minimums of around -20°C! Our journey began with three flights, and a stopover in Longyearbyen, also known as Santa Claus town, although it looks a lot more industrial than the name implies. We then had a 3.30am start which was aided by the 24 hour daylight to get the boat to Ny Ålesund. After 4 hours of queasiness we arrived at the NERC UK Arctic research station in Ny Ålesund.
The group all kitted out in front of the NERC UK Arctic Research Station. Photos courtesy of Simon Morley.
The first task we had to do after arrival was the rifle training course. This felt like a dangerous activity to be doing at 2pm in the afternoon after a 3.30am start. However it is safe to say we were all sufficiently awake after the first gun shot… We never left the NERC Arctic base without a massive rucksack full of layers, food, water, flask etc and most importantly a rifle and flare gun in case of running into a polar bears. As we are essentially trespassing on the bears’ territory, it is up to us to avoid disturbing them and to use rifles for self-defence as a last resort.
Terrestrial wildlife around Ny Ålesund. The greatest wildlife threat we faced was the cheeky Arctic fox stealing our sandwiches!
In Ny Ålesund you are very far removed from civilisation, even via digital means as there is no wifi (due to a large experiment detecting quasars) or phone signal. Therefore life in Ny Ålesund feels timeless, as outside events that rampage on social media feel far removed and irrelevant. However signatures of global warming are evident, with the extent of glaciers noticeably retreating each year, and sea ice becoming a rarer and rarer occurrence in the fjord within the living memory of residents of Ny Ålesund.
From left to right: View of Ny Ålesund, the closest we came to a polar bear in the doorway of the mess building, old hut from the mining industry.
The past mining infrastructure is evident everywhere, and classified as ‘heritage’, meaning that despite thinking of them as eyesores, in the otherwise immaculate views the run down infrastructure is actually protected as part of Ny Ålesund’s history. The NERC UK Arctic base was very cosy, we definitely weren’t roughing it like all those early polar explorers! The base is run by station manager Nick Cox, who was full of stories about everything and anything. Most evenings ended with everyone staying at the base gathering together for storytime with Nick in the living room of the UK Arctic base. Everyone in Ny Ålesund went to the mess building (best view I’ve ever had whilst eating breakfast!) in the centre of Ny Ålesund for meals, and on Saturdays everyone makes more of an effort to change out of work clothes and enjoy good food and wine together before heading to the small pub which opens on Saturday nights for people to gather to drink, chatter and dance.
Every time we left the UK station we had to take an enormous rucksack filled with food (packed lunch and lots of snacks, Mars bars disappeared like gold dust), waterproofs, spare layers, emergency blanket, first aid kit, temporary shelters, spare batteries for any equipment needed, flare gun, rifle, bullets, a satellite phone (one between the group), radio (at least one for each separate group). Keeping in contact via radio is very important, even if our group was going to be just 15 mins late we had to radio in and let the people at the station now so they can amend the signing out book. There was also a radio line for all of the stations in Ny Ålesund, so everybody would know if somebody was in trouble or extra help was needed. All the extra layers were essential. In just the five days we were there, we saw sun, rain, snow, sometimes all in one day! Preparing for all eventualities and all of the `what ifs’ is essential for polar fieldwork.
We had two main projects that required fieldwork planning and execution. The first was a two day marine biology project (led by Simon Morley from BAS) which was undertaken in two boats followed up by lab work. We took sediment grabs, plankton nets, CTD profiles (measurements of salinity, temperature and density), put down traps overnight. The aim was to investigate the difference between near rivers and near glaciers, and build up a picture of the food web there. Understanding the small marine creatures at the base of the food web and their temperature tolerance has important implications for larger marine and terrestrial creatures higher up the chain.
Left to right, getting our hands dirty sieving the sediment samples on the boat, putting on the immersion suits before getting onto the smaller boat in case of falling in! Photos courtesy of Simon Morley and Ed King.
The second two day task (led by Ed king from BAS) was to investigate the retreat of a glacier about 4-5km from Ny Ålesund called Midtre Lovénbreen. We carried out was to do a ground penetrating radar survey along and across the nearest glacier to Ny Ålesund to measure the ice thickness. Also, we mapped out the snout of the glacier and took photos to compare the glacier to previous years. A 15-20m retreat of the snout of the glacier relative to last year was measured!
Clockwise from left: Setting up the geophysics kit for a transect on the glacier, Midtre Lovénbreen in 1999, Midtre Lovénbreen September 2016. Glacier photos courtesy of Ed King.
The five or so days we had in Ny Ålesund flew by and before we knew it, it was time for us all to take the (very choppy) boat journey back to Longyearbyen before heading back to the UK. I really, really enjoyed the course, and I would highly recommend to any PhDs or Postdocs who study the poles to consider applying for the course in 2017!
Thanks to everyone at BAS involved in organising the course, in particular Alistair Crane, Blair Fyffe, Simon Morley, Ed King, Nick cox, and of course Ali Teague for organising all of the logistics and ensuring we all got there and back as smoothly as possible!
The Social Metwork 