Rob Larter
@rdlarter
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Polar marine scientist. UK Science Lead in @GlacierThwaites Science Coordination Office. Views are my own. On mastodon @PoLaRobs @fediscience .org
Cambridge, UK
Joined May 2015
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Global sea-ice extent is at a record minimum for the time of year, but on the
#KangGlac
research cruise on
#RRSSirDavidAttenborough
we've found some off the east coast of Greenland. Beautiful to see, both aesthetically and because of its value to the Earth's climate system.
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If you don't find this concerning, you really don't understand how bad things are getting. Yes, there's an El Niño at the moment, but the sea surface temperature anomaly has never been so extreme during previous El Niños.
From
@guardian
article - link in following post.
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This may look like a very ordinary seascape, but it isn't. This view is at 72°S in the Bellingshausen Sea,
#Antarctica
, taken from RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
. In a normal year there would be a lot of
#seaice
in this area, but this year there is none. 1/3
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Among several graphs showing unprecedented current climate extremes it is the ones showing the growing anomaly in Antarctic sea ice extent that I find most concerning.
1/n
It finally happened, breaking 5 sigma, the same statistical threshold physicists used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
At 2,700,000 km² below the 1991-2020 mean, Antarctic sea ice extent was 5.14σ below the mean, roughly a 1-in-7,400,000 chance.
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I'm aware of a lot of change going on in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean environment, but sometimes I see a new paper, read the abstract and think "OMG it's worse than I thought". This is one of those papers.
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For the first time in ages we had clear skies at sunset on RRS Discovery
#DY087
in the South Atlantic, and it coincided with the partial
#Eclipse2018
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Absolutely fantastic visualisation.
If you ever wanted to know why the Southern Ocean is often an uncomfortable place to be on a ship, look at this.
Or if you want to see what drives the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the largest ocean current system on Earth.
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So, when are we actually going to start that rapid decline in fossil fuel use that would prevent us exceeding the 1.5°C above pre-industrial threshold?
1/2
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Absolutely appalling propaganda on
@BBCnews
this evening for a crazy geo-engineering idea of pumping up water to thicken Arctic sea ice. Didn't even include any expert comment from a polar scientist. Such projects are a dangerous distraction from what we know needs to be done.
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This has been going on all year and is a major concern, because if the decline that has been observed over the past 7 years continues there will be effects worldwide. At least it's front page news at last.
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A selection of climate data graphs from my Twitter feed this morning. It's shaping up to be an interesting year. Oh, and by the way, there's a strong El Niño on the way.
Graphs from tweets posted by
@kevpluck
@m_parrington
@BMcNoldy
and
@DrTELS
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@_david_ho_
@scottpw7
Or that total warming over 20,000 years since the Last Glacial Maximum was just 7°C, so 1°C in 50 years is more than 50 times the average rate of warming over that period.
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Never before have I responded to so many media requests in one day as yesterday. If only there was similar media interest in some of the unprecedented climate extremes being observed at the moment.
1/2
A selection of climate data graphs from my Twitter feed this morning. It's shaping up to be an interesting year. Oh, and by the way, there's a strong El Niño on the way.
Graphs from tweets posted by
@kevpluck
@m_parrington
@BMcNoldy
and
@DrTELS
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I know that the election is a major focus, but surely 800,000 people evacuated as a cyclone makes landfall merits at least a bit of coverage in UK news media?
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The winter heatwave in Antarctica is continuing for a second month, and presently the heat anomalies have settled over West Antarctica and and the sector of East Antarctica centred on Totten Glacier.
1/2
Antarctic temperatures rise 10C above average in near record heatwave
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It's sad to witness it, but Kivioq Fjord appears to be a glacier graveyard.
Photos taken from
#RRSSirDavidAttenborough
, which is here as part of the
#KangGlac
research project.
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Any post about declining
#seaice
extent triggers replies pointing out that as the ice is already floating it doesn’t make any difference to sea level. This is correct of course (well, nearly). So why does sea-ice loss matter? There are several reasons. 1/11
This may look like a very ordinary seascape, but it isn't. This view is at 72°S in the Bellingshausen Sea,
#Antarctica
, taken from RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
. In a normal year there would be a lot of
#seaice
in this area, but this year there is none. 1/3
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@AWI_Media
@BAS_News
The minimum
#seaice
extent is highly variable from year to year, and we should be cautious about reading too much into a single year. However,
#Antarctic
annual and summer sea ice extents have now been below the long-term average for 7 years. A trend seems to be emerging. 3/3
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@AWI_Media
@BAS_News
This month has seen a new record minimum in
#Antarctic
#seaice
extent since satellite records began more than 40 years ago. In the Bellingshausen Sea most of the ice was gone by the end of November. 2/3
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A really excellent lecture that I saw from a doorway to the lecture room because it was overflowing. I already knew about what could happen from palaeo records, but I'm now a lot more concerned we may be nearer to the tipping point than many people assume.
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Here's a thought-provoking bit of feedback I received in response to a recent series of tweets about the wider consequences of the current anomalously low Antarctic sea-ice extent.
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During the coming UK general election campaign we'll be bombarded with graphs showing polls, economic parameters, NHS waiting lists etc. Here are a few that I think should be front and centre of policy discussions.
Credits to
@EliotJacobson
@ed_hawkins
@ZLabe
and Berkeley Earth
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I've participated in 14 previous research cruises that visited the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, but have never been through the Lemaire Channel. Until yesterday, on RV Polarstern Expedition
#PS134
. Can confirm that it's as spectacular as everyone says.
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New research shows that Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers both started retreating in the 1940s after thousands of years of relative stability.
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My first sight of the
#ThwaitesGlacier
ice front in the pre-dawn light this morning. This was on the west side of the Eastern Ice Shelf. Since then we have conducted detailed bathymetry survey along much of the ice front and deployed an ocean glider.
@GlacierThwaites
@BAS_News
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Fiddling while the planet burns continues.
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It was an amazing surprise to receive notification yesterday that a glacier has been named after me. What an incredible honour! However, I want to
to take this opportunity to highlight that no scientist achieves much around Antarctica without support from many others. 1/3
Larter Glacier in Hudson Mts just named after
@BAS_News
geophysicist
@rdlarter
! Congratulations Rob, and thank you for your huge contribution to cryospheric science and public understanding of
@GlacierThwaites
research - you deserve this all the way!🥳
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The new face of Pine Island Glacier today, which B-49 and associated icebergs calved from 10 days ago. This is the third time I've been here in recent years, but each time 'here' is a few km further back into the glacier.
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Great to see
@GlacierThwaites
research covered in national media, but a few points in this
@guardian
article need correction or further explanation.
1/n
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The thing I find most surprising in this article is that as many as 6% of scientists involved in the IPCC think that warming will be limited to 1.5°C or less.
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We're trying to get away from the "Doomsday Glacier" label, as how much West Antarctica will contribute to future sea-level rise is still to some extent in our own hands. But thanks to CNN for the coverage.
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We just approached within a couple of miles of the new giant
#PineIslandGlacier
iceberg B-49 (the white wall behind smaller icebergs and brash ice in the foreground) on
@GlacierThwaites
@GlacierOffshore
cruise
#NBP2002
aboard RV Nathaniel B Palmer.
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It's a fluke! I've dreamed of taking a humpback whale fluke photo like this for years, and then a few days ago on RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
in Eltanin Bay, Bellingshausen Sea,
#Antarctica
, I was lucky enough to have my camera and telephoto lens on me at the right time.
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This is an excellent animation of a sequence of satellite images spanning several years, but it is important to understand that it shows just part of the front of the glacier where the ice flows out into the Amundsen Sea and goes afloat.
1/2
Glacial motion and breakup of
#Thwaites
Glacier in
#Antarctica
.
#Radar
images taken by
@CopernicusEU
#Sentinel1
since June 2017.
Data processed in
@sentinel_hub
@SistersofSAR
😉
#Glacier
#SAR
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I'm starting to appreciate what a long way it is from Cape Town to
#Antarctica
. Three and a half days into RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
and we're not even half way there. You can follow our progress at
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It is a rare event to cross paths with another research vessel around
#Antarctica
, but last weekend
the South African vessel SA Agulhas II was operating near RV Polarstern offshore from the Ekström Ice Shelf.
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I was privileged to be invited to write a commentary on an interesting recent paper about the roughness of ice shelves by Watkins et al. (2021).
Commentary features this schematic diagram of the
#ThwaitesGlacier
Eastern Ice Shelf by
@MarloWordyBird
1/N
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On the recent RV Nathaniel B Palmer cruise
#NBP2002
to
#ThwaitesGlacier
we requested a camera on the megacorer and CTD to obtain images of the seabed. We never expected this
#photobomb
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OK
#geotwitter
, who can identify this beautiful old instrument that I'm being let loose with tomorrow?
(posted this on mastodon about an hour ago and it got absolutely no engagement - let's see if it elicits more response here)
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It seems to me that the jury is still out on whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet can stand even 1.5 °C warming. If it turns out that it can’t and we pass that threshold we will be committed to a global mean sea-level rise of more than 3 m.
#Antarctica
can't cope with 2C warming.
- Multiple tipping points crossed
- 45% of summer sea ice lost by 2070
- 50% of ice shelves gone by 2100
- Sea level rise of up to 3m per century
Multi-generational repercussions
@naish_tim
#BonnClimateConference
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One of the great pleasures in participating in ship-based research around
#Antarctica
is seeing some of the spectacular wildlife, such as this Minke Whale that we saw yesterday on RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
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I've never really been into making panorama shots, but today as we were working near the mouth of Kangerlussuaq Fjord on the
#KangGlac
research cruise aboard
#RRSSirDavidAttenborough
seemed a good time to try. I've no idea how Twitter will render this image.
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You may have seen scientific papers on marine sediment cores from around
#Antarctica
, but they don't tell you what scientists and technicians do to collect them. Photo shows liner being extracted from gravity core barrel near
#ThwaitesGlacier
on cruise
#NBP1902
last night.
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Very disappointing to see a national newspaper giving publicity to a ridiculous geo-engineering suggestion for slowing ice-sheet loss. I'm deliberately not including a link because the article doesn't merit anyone wasting their time on it. Shame on you
@RobinMcKie
and
@OberverUK
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As global average surface temperature and sea surface temperature break records, the negative anomaly in Antarctic sea ice extent continues to become ever more extreme and Canada burns, the world’s media obsesses about defining a point in time when it all went wrong 🤦♂️
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It occurred to me today that I've now been working for
@BAS_News
for more than a third of a century. To mark that milestone here's a small selection of photos from my first
#Antarctic
research cruise as a BAS employee (my third overall) in the 1987-88 season.
#PolarThrowback
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Delighted to have been notified recently that my application for promotion to UKRI Individual Merit Promotion Level 3 (IMP3) has been successful. For most
of my career I never expected to reach this level and recognise that in doing so I have benefitted from some great teamwork.
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Not the first
#iceberg
we've seen on
@GlacierThwaites
RV Nathaniel B Palmer cruise
#NBP2002
, but it's my first iceberg photo this trip. Not a bad start eh?
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Some important messages here, even though watching and listening to myself talking to camera makes me squirm.
"The question is still how fast" New research on the so-called "Doomsday glacier" suggests its collapse is unstoppable.
@rdlarter
on what that could mean.
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For two and half years fast ice surrounding the
#ThwaitesGlacier
Tongue has held it together. After the fast ice shattered on Feb 1st the Glacier Tongue (lower right in these images) disintegrated within a few days.
Sentinel-1 images from
@CopernicusEU
@ESA_EO
via
@polarview
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Now I've access to better internet I can post some things that it wasn't possible to post from the ship during RV Nathaniel B Palmer cruise
#NBP2002
.
Here's a clip from a GoPro mounted on the magacorer showing the controlled way core tubes penetrate into the sea-floor sediments.
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I know posting
#iceberg
photos is a bit of a cliche when people are on ships around
#Antarctica
, but some are just so achingly beautiful.
#ThwaitesGlacier
@GlacierThwaites
@BAS_News
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@HankRacette
@guardian
Over the past couple of decades a lot of scientists have worked on deriving palaeoclimate proxy records spanning that past few thousand years. For example see
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Transitting slowly along an icy part of the East Greenland coast today to the next equipment deployment location for the
#KangGlac
research project aboard
#RRSSirDavidAttenborough
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The
#RRSSirDavidAttenborough
entering Kivioq Fjord a couple of days ago to conduct research for the
#KangGlac
project, viewed from the Erebus workboat.
@BAS_News
@GeogDurham
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Some news I've been putting off sharing here -
Last month I took on the role of UK Lead for the Science Coordination Office of
@GlacierThwaites
So, sorry if you think I go on too much about
#ThwaitesGlacier
- expect more of the same.
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Includes a detail you could easily miss:
"The report also found that the sea level in the UK had risen by 18.5cm since the 1900s, with about 11.4cm of this rise having taken place over the past 30 years."
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An fairly average iceberg in the southern Bellingshausen Sea on 22nd February this year. What's unusual is the total absence of sea ice in the area at that time. 125 years earlier the Belgica was beset by sea ice for more than a year in the same area.
#AntarcticaDay
1/2
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Chaos where the southern shear margin of Pine Island Glacier meets the sea, seen in pre-dawn light this morning. Immense forces are at work here, shattering, rotating, tilting and thrusting large blocks of ice.
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I’ve been keeping quiet about this, but my family insist I need to come clean.
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As it's now midwinter in Antarctica and the extent of sea ice around the continent reaches its annual maximum in August, the deficit in sea ice formation also means a large deficit in production of cold, saline water that results from brine rejection as sea ice forms.
3/n
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View from cabin window, RV Nathaniel B Palmer cruise
#NBP1902
day 29.
The front of Thwaites Glacier. People who have seen other ice shelves may say "That doesn't look like a normal ice shelf front."
It isn't.
@GlacierThwaites
@BAS_News
#Antarctica
#RoomWithaView
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Nine days until I head South for the 22nd time to join a ship in order to participate in an
#Antarctic
or Southern Ocean research cruise. This year I'll join RV Polarstern, which recently completed 40 years of service, for the second time.
1/2
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The message clearly isn't getting through is it? To avert dangerous climate change immediate and steep cuts in emissions are needed, but instead we get this.
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First polar bear sighting on the
#KangGlac
cruise to SE
#Greenland
on
#RRSSirDavidAttenborough
. This one is exactly where I want to see any bears on this trip - a long way away.
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“The model projections of rapid change in the deep ocean circulation in response to melting of Antarctic ice might, if anything, have been conservative”
Slowing ocean current caused by melting Antarctic ice could have drastic climate impact, study says
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We're getting nearer to
#Antarctica
each day on RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
and the
#icebergs
are getting bigger.
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For the second time in the space of two weeks
@guardian
has published a misleading article about some environmental issues I care a lot about.
1/n
Sands of time are slipping away for England’s crumbling coasts amid climate crisis
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Exceptional visibility over
#ThwaitesGlacier
from RV Nathaniel B Palmer cruise
#NBP1902
today that gave us clear views of Mount Murphy from more than 50 miles away. How about that
@geologicalJo
?
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We’ve made a lot of progress in understanding
#ThwaitesGlacier
change but it still remains the biggest uncertainty in predicting future sea-level rise.
Scientists monitoring 'doomsday' glacier warn climate change happening faster than ever before
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Looking back at Cape Town as we set out towards
#Antarctica
at 10pm on Friday at the start of RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
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“This contribution is five times what it was 30 years ago.”
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As new sea ice was forming on a bitterly cold day in the Amundsen Sea at the end of February this year the dawn sky displayed almost all the colours of the rainbow. Posted as a reminder that it's
#PolarPride
Day.
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This means that the current generation of politicians don't have the option of kicking the can down the road like their predecessors. On our present trajectory we are going to crash through this threshold of dangerous climate change on their watch, or very soon afterwards.
Analysis: What record global heat means for breaching the 1.5C warming limit |
@hausfath
Read here:
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On
#EarthDay
, a reminder that the biggest uncertainty in predicting sea-level rise to the end of this century and beyond is how the
#Antarctic
Ice Sheet will respond to climate change, particularly in West Antarctica, where the most imminent concern is
#ThwaitesGlacier
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“The average rate of rise since 1993 until now is 3.2mm per year. However, from May 2014 to 2019 the rise has increased to 5mm per year.”
No surprise to cryosphere community.
BBC News - Climate change: Impacts 'accelerating' as leaders gather for UN talks
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If Sir Mo Farah had stopped half way through the Olympic 10,000 m final and announced that he planned to walk for the next four laps, but was still aiming to win the gold medal, would anyone have believed him?
That's effectively what
@RishiSunak
did yesterday.
#NetZeroBy2050
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As Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) flows down into the abyss it acts as a primary driver of the thermohaline overturning circulation, which in turn influences climate worldwide. Reduced AABW production can be expected to result in slowing of the overturning circulation.
5/n
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Which begs the question, if the EU and UK are serious about reducing carbon emissions, why are they not imposing much heavier taxes on short-haul flights and using them to subsidise rail travel?
4/4
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Very pleased to have been involved in this study, published today in a First Release version, which shows that the earliest large Antarctic Ice Sheet that developed about 33.7 million years ago did not extend to West Antarctica.
1/9
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To take my mind off Thursday in a dull and damp UK I've decided that I'm going to call it
#ThwaitesDay
and use this as an excuse to post photos and graphics relating to
#ThwaitesGlacier
each week. To kick off here's a photo of the front of the Glacier Tongue taken last year.
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I haven't been keeping a close eye on changes in sea ice in the Bellingshausen Sea since returning from RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
, but a colleague just made me aware that there has still been hardly any new ice formation. AMSR2 analysis here from Uni Bremen.
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Oops.
'Investigations show that practically none of the signatories to the "World Climate Declaration" are climate scientists.
Also, 6 of the signatories are dead.
Fact check: Did 1,200 climate experts sign 'declaration' denying climate emergency?
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I've worked at a largely government-funded research institute for more than 35 years. Until a couple of months ago the science staff had never taken strike action. However, since then there has been no movement, so here we go again today.
This placard captures the main reason why many colleagues and I have taken the difficult decision to strike today. We work in research because we love doing it and because we're passionate about science, but it's getting more and more difficult.
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Concerns about ongoing change are heightened by results of a recent modelling study indicating that under a high emissions scenario AABW production will decrease and the overturning circulation will slow dramatically over the next 30 years.
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@kevpluck
@MarloWordyBird
@griffiths_huw
400 years since Galileo and many humans still don't understand the difference between evidence and belief.
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Midwinter is approaching in
#Antarctica
, so
#ThwaitesGlacier
is in continuous darkness. I've never been in the region later than mid March. For this
#ThowbackThursday
#ThwaitesDay
here is a 📷of one of the last sunrises over sea ice I saw there last year.
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As we have been working further offshore from east Greenland on
#RRSSirDavidAttenborough
since yesterday morning, mostly in thick fog, I have taken fewer photos. Here are a few of my favourites though from the day we spent near Rosenborg Gletscher for
#KangGlac
project research.
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Sometimes conditions for marine geoscience research become challenging, on RV Polarstern expedition
#PS134
in the Bellingshausen Sea,
#Antarctica
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