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The state of the NAO may affect how water masses in the northern North Atlantic -- say, around the site of the North Atlantic Spring Bloom 2008 experiment which is the subject of my master's thesis -- are "squished" or move around. Is water from the Irminger Basin or Labrador Sea more likely to snake around the Reykjanes ridge into the Icelandic basin when the NAO is low (or high)?
So far, the only place I've seen as a source for 2008 NAO data is this one web page and as strange as it may sound, I feel pretty lame about using something that I have to copy and paste, not that FTPing a text file with the same information in it is that much different or more official. It's just... yeah.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF AVAILABILITY FOR ELIGIBLE STUDENTS
The College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences is pleased to announce
the availability of up to four student scholarships for the 2009-2010
academic year, made possible by the generosity of Clarence H. Campbell in
memory of Lauren "Doc" Donaldson.
( details )
Remember when the Irridium satellite got whacked back in February? The debris from the collision is making a pretty ring around Earth (why should Saturn and Jupiter get all the bling, eh?), and it's endangering the ESA earth-observing satellites ERS-2 and Envisat -- oh, and by the way, Envisat is the one that almost does what NASA's carbon-observing satellite was going to do. Speaking of which, NASA is trying to figure out if it can fund a replacement and if so, would it be an exact replica deployed in 2011, or a better version deployed in 2015?
It's important to note that these two things are very different: scientific experiments that use iron fertilization as a tool to study biological oceanography are not the same as attempts at sequestering carbon using iron fertilization. Recently a call went out on the OCB-all email list (ocean color & biogeochemistry) for scientists to help explain to the Ministry of Education and Science (and the public) what this difference is, because the research vessel was being delayed by various environmental groups. The irony of course is that they were interfering with the very scientific research that is required to determine whether iron fertilization done on a large scale is feasible, effective at sequestering carbon, or likely to have negative environmental impact. If you're going to demand that an environmental risk assessment be done, shouldn't you let the assessors do their job?
Mentioning the 2004-5 CROZEX study and this year's contested LOHAFEX Indo-German experiment is a quick newsbit in Nature: Ocean fertilization: dead in the water? (Starts at the bottom of the first page).
This is not at all surprising. Honestly, I'm happy if I get any points at all!
The other students in the class, the EEs and the stats grad students, are not doing nearly as poorly. But then, they ought to be getting all of this easily -- it's their field, for crying out loud, which they've been studying for 2 or 3 or 5 years already. For me, it's like taking geology in French: déchets des mines, réseau hydrographique, vitesse de décantation and effondrement. Except it's "autocovariance sequence," "spectral representation," "stochastically continuous," and "autoregressive process." We just started the chapter on filters, and I feel much better now that we're stepping away from statistics and towards physics just a little bit. Unfortunately, the professor referred to the plot that was projected today that most closely resembles some of the work I have to do as "basically a wavelet" -- which is a whole 'nother class.
After this one, will the professor even let me take another?
...
My other big task this quarter is TAing an undergraduate class. It's threatening to fill every spare moment of my week, and I'm trying to figure out how to get some of my time back. They have a midterm this coming week, which means I'll be doing twice as much grading next weekend -- but I'm still very, very happy that I don't have to do a lab this coming week. I'll be able to spend my wednesday doing my math homework instead, and on thursday I'll be able to have lunch before office hours.
- Mood:
duly daunted
The NAB 2008 experiment ran from the beginning of April to the beginning of July. In addition to everything involved with the preparation, execution, and the start of the long process of data analysis, I survived the Mixing class better than I expected. I still have some work to finish for the AMATH class, which I punted in favor of the American Geophysical Union fall meeting. The workup to AGU coincided with finals week -- I lost track of when weeks started, since I worked to one deadline after another without regard for weekends, and things like mondays got lost along the way.
I don't recommend this approach for long, but it does work in a pinch.
Winter quarter 2009 has me TAing, taking a class I'm completely unprepared for, taking a class I don't have any time for, and... oh, right... there are the usual New Years Resolutions. You probably are familiar with the one I'm talking about: work/life balance. For me that's working out regularly, practicing my fiddle, and setting aside some time every day for writing. My super-secret project last year was writing a novel during nanowrimo; from now until november I'll be working on the revision. I'd like to slip language study in there, too, but there's only so much time -- lame, huh?
Today is the last day of my vacation. I didn't Get Out Of Dodge like I wanted to, but I did get all my electronic waste disposed of appropriately (resolution #2), I got all the paperwork I ignored for the past 3 months organized and dealt with (resolution #3), and I got my hair colored with my favorite color (resolution #5), woot! Now it's time to get back into gear, and deal with resolutions 1, 4, and 6-10.
- Mood:
hopeful
Then there's outreach (Ocean Inquiry Project) and volunteering (Seattle Girls School mentoring, KEXP pledge drives, beach clean-ups with Seattle Surfriders), daily workouts, and attempting to build a social life...
So, what's important? There's a big ol' election coming up, and that's pretty damn important. For me, the most important issues at the federal level are the ones to have lasting effects -- selecting supreme court justices affects the future direction of American law, (see Marbury v. Madison (1803)). I'm less likely to get worked up over policies that run 4 or maybe 8 years; I feel comfortable with short-term variability. [Caveat: actually, I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around the work Kolmogorov did with the inertial range of turbulence, which lives in that short-term variability world...]
But there are long-term trends which can be seriously affected by policies set up in one administration; and from here, I can't tell which ones are going to suffer or benefit the most from one candidate or another, but why risk a bad outcome on an issue that is important?
Science funding is important. Although the republican campaign relies heavily on the ideal of an innovative, technologically advanced American Worker, McCain has trivilized science and science funding in at least two of the debates. First was the crack he made about "$3 million to study the DNA of bears" (scroll down to that heading here), which is not a terrible price for a basic research project, and the second was characterizing the Adler Planetarium's Sky Theater as an "overhead projector" (more commentary here). In politics, though, there is a difference between what you say when you're pandering to the crowd, and what you do when it comes to making policy. Nature magazine has a collection of election-related pieces, including a set of 18 science-related questions given to the candidates (only Obama replied). ScienceDebate2008.com sent 14 science questions, and posted the replies from both candidates on their website.
Fostering girls and young women in science is important, too. AWIS and SWE presented questions to the Obama and McCain campaigns, and posted the responses [pdf].
... I can't wait for my ballot to arrive in the mail ...
- Mood: hopeful
That evening I received a mailing from Heifer International, which included a bit about how the gift of goats & training in goat breeding and care are helping two gypsy communities in Romania. It's amazing that something so basic as a handful of livestock can make such a positive change in the world. (Then again, there are a lot of city folk who would benefit from spending quality time with the animals that provide their food and clothing.)
One of the presenters at the conference was arguing that being in science, especially working in climate science, is not the way to change the world for the better, and the only real way to "make a difference" is through direct action. Well and good, but there must be knowledge to make action effective -- and besides, one can both pursue science and make direct, local, substantive contributions to benefit society, whether it's picking up trash from your local beach or community park, donating money to effective charitable organizations, or fetching goats in gas-sippers.
- Mood: hopeful
The wave action starts around 5 minutes in, and there's some really great "churning" at 11:20.
I should add that the first time I came across the term "disaster porn" was in a Pat Cadigan novel, so I feel compelled to state for the record that I don't usually seek this sort of coverage out. My childhood home got pretty seriously flooded this summer, so I do understand the human impact of weather; but it is true that we choose to live in areas that are prone to this sort of thing for good reasons and it is a tribute to our engineering that we can and sometimes do build structures that can take episodic poundings like this.
And wow! Check out those waves and think about the amount of energy they're carrying to the shore.
- Mood:
awed
OK, so it's not a Seaglider, and it looks more like a fish you'd find in a coral reef than our "dolphin"-like gliders, but it's still great to see that this high-profile project is off to a good start.
I found an article today that I'd love to read -- "An abrupt wind shift in western Europe at the onset of the Younger Dryas cold period" -- if only Nature hadn't created a new journal ("Geoscience") and placed it there. This is a problem because my library doesn't have a subscription, so I can only read the abstract and not the article. Ah, Nature -- once again forcing people who are already subscribers to pay more.
And then I found this in the National Science Foundation's daily digest:
National Science Foundation-funded scientists working in an ice-free region of Antarctica have discovered the last traces of tundra--in the form of fossilized plants and insects--on the interior of the southernmost continent before temperatures began a relentless drop millions of years ago.
An abrupt and dramatic climate cooling of 8 degrees Celsius, over a relatively brief period of geological time roughly 14 million years ago, forced the extinction of tundra plants and insects and tranformed the interior of Antarctica into a perpetual deep-freeze from which it has never emerged.
[...]
Part of the study in the Dry Valleys is captured in the documentary "Ice People," by Emmy-award winning director Anne Aghion. NSF's Antarctic Artists and Writers program supported Aghion in the field for four months in 2006 to document the work of scientists there. The film is being released to coincide with the International Polar Year 2007-2009 (IPY), a global scientific deployment, and is scheduled to air on the Sundance Channel in 2009.
OK, so there is some good stuff to be found on TV.
Originally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
Because today wasn't going to let me off, anyway. SG142 didn't call home last night, so from the moment I got in until I packed everything up to go home I've been poring over the last logs and running through all sorts of scenarios to help the search team. They're going out on the R/V Saemundsson, so they probably won't be functional (read: they'll be hurly) for the first 24 hours, and they won't have an ADCP to tell them what the currents are doing or web access to see the latest plots of the glider locations and status -- and the ship's email arrives and sends only 4 times a day.
Read the rest of this postOriginally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
The big news of the day is that iRobot snapped up the recently-completed license for Seaglider. You can read the press release on the Boston Globe.
Originally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
In case you haven't heard, there was an earthquake in Iceland recently. I was on a bus at the time, heading from Reykjavik to the Blue Lagoon (closer to the international airport), and completely didn't notice.
Somehow, even right in the thick of things, I managed to miss all the excitement.
Originally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
I'm in Iceland on vacation, technically, until May 31st. My original plans were to go home then and take over glider piloting again, but the recent near-demise of Float 48 and Seaglider 143 have changed that -- now I'll likely be staying for a few more days and heading out to 61N again on the Bjarni for a quick recovery cruise.
Read the rest of this postOriginally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
It's 12:55 on thursday, 22 May, and we're in sight of Reykjavik now. You can just make out the cathedral (the dark gray spike) near the guesthouse many of us stayed in prior to the cruise.
There's a latte waiting for me, in just another hour. :-)
Originally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
14:20 on 21 May 2008: we're just now doing the final CTD cast of the cruise, wrapping up the last station of the last bowtie survey pattern. The weather is lovely: sun's out and the seas are calm. As soon as this is done, we head back towards Reykjavik. I suggested this final survey pattern (in green): yes, it's a joke. I don't understand why so many people are falling for it -- we barely have time for the straight run back to Reykjavik!
Originally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
We picked up that last of the 5 PELAGRA sediment trap floats at 03:30, and now Dave Checkley and Ryan are getting ready to deploy the "bongo" zooplankton net tow in the quickly-fading semi-darkness. (Zooplankton come up when it's dark, which only happens for a few hours here.)
This is my second-to-last watch. One more to go, and then we'll be back in port! It's hard to believe the field cruise is nearly over.
Originally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
We could see the rains coming yesterday afternoon. Now we've got 26-knot winds, and the sky has been overcast for most of the day. When Eric R. called up to the bridge to get permission to put the optics package overboard, he asked the Chief Mate to keep the sun on the starboard side -- which was taking enormous precautions, since the sun wasn't even out -- so Dee (C.Mate) said she'd do a sun dance. The sun didn't come out for the optics cast, but it did just come out now, and she called down to the Main Lab to point out that it worked. We had no doubt that it would...
Read the rest of this postOriginally published at North Atlantic Bloom Experiment 08 Collaboratory. You can comment here or there.
The Bridge calls down to the main lab whenever there's a whale spotting, and whoever can typically dashes out onto deck with cameras and binoculars for a chance to see... well, anything that isn't their sampling apparatus, really, and whales are perfect for that. I took these pictures while a pod of pilot whales (probably) was checking out the boat and a distance of 300 - 500m, and off on the horizon some very large whale or group of whales was spouting off some huge plumes of water, easily visible against the blue sky.
The whale spotters are (left to right) Maren, Emily, and Alba.
Read the rest of this post
