When I returned home from Antarctica last year, I put this promise on my pin-board—that I would go back in the role of science communicator to this place that captured my soul, no matter how long it took. I would dedicate my days to an active role in communicating the vital importance of our polar regions. Well…
I’m beyond thrilled to share that I’ve been selected as the Outreach Officer for an IODP Antarctic expedition next year called Iceberg Alley (Iceberg Alley and South Falkland Slope Ice and Ocean Dynamics).Around mid-March next year, I’ll head down to Punta Arenas, near the southern tip of Chile, and board the JOIDES Resolution. The JR is a research vessel with a drilling derrick. It’s able to drill deep into the seafloor to collect core samples and various measurements, providing data that informs us about our planet’s past.
We’ll sail through the notoriously wild Drake Passage and into the seas east of the northern Antarctic Peninsula, part of “Iceberg Alley” — where most icebergs converge after drifting counter-clockwise around the continent of Antarctica. Here they meet the warmer waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and melt, dropping sediment they picked up when they were glaciers grinding across the continent.
We’ll drill in the Scotia Sea and the South Falkland Slope during two months at sea. Among other things, the sediment we recover will tell us where the iceberg originated and about melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) in the past. Since Antarctic glaciers are melting now as our planet warms, it’s important to know how the AIS responded in the past, so we can better prepare for a future of sea level rise and other changes.
I’m honored and so grateful to take on this role and be involved in such important work about subjects that fascinate me. And very excited! Wild seas, many icebergs, maybe sea ice, polar birds, and science about the Antarctic Ice Sheet… a dream come true!
The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of activity for us both. Kev has been keeping himself busy while I prepare for NESCBWI 18. Check out his latest illuminating animation — It’s a map, and your home is on it!
I’ve been readying my postcards and illustration portfolio for this Friday night’s Portfolio Showcase, in which art directors, editors, and agents, followed by conference attendees, will have a chance to peruse each illustrator’s portfolio.
My big goal over the last two weeks has been to create a new Antarctica-inspired piece. As you may have realized by now, we at Pixel Movers & Makers are both enthralled by polar ice.
I’m particularly interested in the relationship between polar ice and the ecology of the surrounding environment (as well as how that ecology acts upon the ice itself), and primarily, how it affects the success of phytoplankton. Among other things, I’ve been wanting to make a piece that explores the role of icebergs in ocean fertilization.
I decided to make something showing a simplified food chain around the iceberg, with an informational shape poem about the “life” of an iceberg, from the formation of the glacier from which an iceberg calves to its eventual melting out at sea.
After a detailed pencil drawing of each element, which I scan, I am using digital oil paint.Since then, it’s been a race against the clock to complete the illustration in time for my printer to do their thing. (Shout-out to fantastic Iolabs who patiently put up with my last-minute rush every April; thanks Emma!)
It’s Sunday, the last day of Polar Week, after a late night of working on Pixel Movers & Makers, which my co-conspirator Kevin Pluck and I launched a week ago. In truth, while Kev toiled away with his numbers and his codes, I spent most of the evening dripping paint on paper. I really couldn’t have been happier. And I filmed it.
I’m about to show you my watercolor sketching process from start to finish. I’ve gotten a little bit brave, and I’m talking my way through the video, explaining what I’m doing at each stage. (This is about my fifth attempt to do so, and most times I have pushed the wrong button on my phone and waxed poetic, only to find I’ve recorded a lovely shot of the ceiling or nothing at all. Pity about the Mr. Squiggle anecdote, but you’ve missed out. Or have you?)
My point was (apart from Mr. Squiggle being one of my early heroes) that I often turn my paper while I’m painting. Gravity is a key player in each of these creations, as are the paper itself (Arches hot press) and the paint (Windsor & Newton, the professional grade stuff). Skimping on the paint and paper quality is entirely self-defeating when it comes to watercolor.
What I most want you to know, though, is that polar ice is beautiful.
It’s extraordinarily beautiful and, even more so, it’s incredibly important to our planet. I cannot even begin to do it justice.
So, what is the Polar Ice Sketch Project anyway? It’s an ongoing project in which I paint and tweet as I finish each one, often with information about our vital polar ice. I hope you’ll enjoy this window into my process and my playtime.
This is the final day of Polar Week, and what a week it has been! A week ago today, Kevin Pluck and I launched our joint venture, Pixel Movers & Makers.
Kev and I have been secretly toiling on this venture every night for months now, and we were thrilled to present a poster and a short sample animation at the APECS Workshop on Antarctic Hydrology & Ice Shelf Stability at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in February. The response and support we’re received so far from the polar community is very heartening.
We’re currently creating an animation about Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier, a melting, accelerating glacier up to 3 km (~1.8 miles) tall and about 400 km (250 miles) long.
In personal news, I was pleased to co-present a workshop on effective online science communication at Boston University with Dr. Laura Schifman. We talked about scientists taking control of their science communication by writing effective blog posts for the public and how to harness the power of social media. Thanks to Claudia Mazur for inviting us. We’re now looking for opportunities to take our show on the road!
So, it’s been a rather busy year thus far. There’s still a lot happening in ice news, so I’m providing a list of links below that you may want to check out.
Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its annual maximum extent on March 17. This is the second lowest Arctic maximum in the 39-year satellite record. The four lowest maximum extents in the satellite record have all occurred in the past four years.
...in the Southern Hemisphere, sea ice reached its minimum extent for the year on February 20 and 21, at 2.18 million square kilometers (842,000 square miles). This year’s minimum extent was the second lowest in the satellite record, 70,000 square kilometers (27,00 square miles) above the record low set on March 3, 2017.
This week, I was thrilled to attend an APECS workshop, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, on Antarctic Surface Hydrology & Ice-Shelf Stability at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Thank you to organizers Luke Trusel and Jonathan Kingslake and everyone else who made this possible!
Ice shelves melt from from both below (due to warm ocean water) and from above (due to atmospheric conditions). But Antarctic ice shelves are not all the same, and the processes that affect them are surprisingly complex and not yet fully understood.
Meltponds near Black Island, Antarctica Credit: NASA Operation IceBridge
How do various inputs such as temperature, humidity, snowfall, cloud cover, winds, (creating micro-climates and impacting snow-cover to uncover darker ice with lower albedo), the topography of the land, the presence (or not) of algae (which reduces albedo on Greenland ice shelves), the profile of the calving edge of ice shelves, ocean and atmospheric currents, and more all affect melting? How will future warming affect all of the above?
How does knowledge of processes in Greenland apply to Antarctic ice shelves? How can knowledge of past events inform our theories about what will happen in the future? Which are the most effective models for scientists to use, and how can they best be used in concert? How well do we know the processes that drive surface melt, and can we, therefore, accurately model them? How do we put recent melting into a proper long-term climatological context?
These are some of the topics and questions raised during presentations and discussions. It was very clear an interdisciplinary approach is needed. Indeed, one goal of the workshop was to determine priorities for future research and how scientists from various disciplines might collaborate.
Stef Lhermitte delivered the sobering statement, “We are currently underestimating melt,” and said much melt is happening below the surface. It’s unclear where this water goes or, at this stage, even how to study that. (Check out this excellent site to learn more .)
On a personal note, it was truly wonderful to meet and spend time with people who love our polar ice just as much as I do and have dedicated their lives to studying it. I was so pleased to have the opportunity to present a poster, with my co-author Kevin Pluck, on effective science communication for polar scientists. Among other things, I emphasized how important it is for scientists to take charge of their science communication and leverage the power of social media by following these pointers:
This week, Kevin Pluck also illustrated the enormous size of the Pine Island Glacier, which– like the Thwaites Glacier–is an accelerating and weakening glacier of concern to scientists.
Thank you for reading. It’s good to be back! Now preparation for the APECS workshop is over, I expect to be updating This Week in Ice… well, weekly.
As always, I am not a scientist but a writer/illustrator and science communicator passionately in love with sea ice, ice shelves, and polar ice in general. I welcome input and corrections from and connections with polar scientists as I learn more about this remarkable and vital part of our planet and bring this knowledge to a wider audience.
While there was no This Week in Ice post this past week, plenty happened in ice news. Every day, I get up early and pore through headlines about sea ice, glaciers, ice shelves, the Arctic, Antarctica, and icebergs via Google and Twitter. I collect the links and tweets I think are interesting, read them, and eventually construct my blog posts each weekend. And last week was no exception, BUT…
It’s also my first science conference–so, I’m busy learning how to create a science poster.
The entire ice system and that of the surrounding ocean is fascinating. I want to know how it all works: sea ice, ocean currents, polynyas, ice shelves (and the forces that act on them from above, below, within, and around), plus the ecology—diatoms and other phytoplankton, the marine food chain, benthic (seafloor) communities, the carbon cycle, etc, etc., etc. It’s a complex, fascinating, and intricately woven system, and while we are so far away, our actions and fates are interlinked.
Yet little of this is in most people’s consciousness, or if it is, it may cause a sense of unease that makes them turn away and shut down. My goal is to provide a bridge between scientists and the wider community that’s factual, that isn’t sensationalist, and which shows how worthy these parts of our planet are in and of themselves—not just because the collapse of the system could have drastic consequences for civilization.
So, This Week in Ice will be back, but please expect a fortnightly edition for now. In the meantime, I wrote an article about our SNOWBIRDS Transect research cruise for Envirobites this week. Here’s the link.
I took this photo on my local beach in southern Rhode Island early one morning at the start of the week. The whole shore was covered in thick ice, which I’ve never seen there, and the waves were sluggish in the 0 degree F/-18 degree C conditions. But this is nothing compared to just a little farther east around Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which has seen the rapid growth of sea ice during our recent Arctic blast.
Credit: Terra Satellite, Jan 7, 2018
Cape Cod Bay from Rock Harbor Beach Credit: Scott Eisen/Getty Images
Meanwhile, global sea ice concentration is experiencing a troubling start to the year.
Let’s zoom in a little, so you can better see the dipping of 2018’s bright red line:
A new study has shown that melting sea ice is changing the flow of nutrients into the Arctic Ocean. With sea ice melting, sediment from the continental shelf containing nutrients, carbon, and trace metals is flowing into the Arctic Ocean. Along with increased light (also due to the melting of sea ice), this influx of nutrients could cause a phytoplankton bloom. Phytoplankton form the base of the marine food chain, and it’s likely this increased productivity would affect the marine ecosystem.
Scientists are closely watching the Beaufort Gyre, a major wind-driven current in the Arctic Ocean, which has, historically, weakened every five to seven years and reversed direction. When this happens, it expels ice and freshwater into the eastern Arctic Ocean and North Atlantic.
But the gyre seems to be stuck and has been spinning clockwise for twelve years, collecting cold freshwater from melting sea ice, runoff from Russian and North American rivers, and from the Bering Sea. When the gyre does eventually slow and reverse direction, scientists are concerned that it will expel this icy freshwater into the Northern Atlantic, causing severe winters and a disruption to the fishing industry in northern Europe.
Sea Ice — Current Conditions
ARCTIC
Arctic sea ice is at a record low for this time of year.
Credit: NSIDC
Credit: NSIDC
Record low #Arctic sea ice extent continues for the first week of the new year. 2017 was the previous record low for the dates (satellite era).
I've been receiving an unusual number of ?ice age? / Arctic recovery messages lately. These are misinformed. While weather & internal variability remain important components, the long-term trend is also clear.
Arctic sea ice has been particularly low in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, which connect with the northern Pacific Ocean.
Quite an alarming year for #seaice on the Pacific-side of the #Arctic – near record low extent for most of 2017 (esp spring & fall). Older years (1979, blue) –> recent years (2016, yellow).
Antarctic Sea ice concentration is also far below the mean, though not quite as low as last year’s record low.
Ice Shelves & Icebergs
Strong El Niño events cause large changes in Antarctic ice shelves, a new study has found. While more snow falls on the surface during such events, changes in ocean circulation cause increased melting from below, resulting in a net loss of ice mass:
Iceberg A-86a is still bumping around near the Larsen C ice shelf from which it calved back in July.
Michael Wolovick, a glaciologist from Princeton has been studying whether building massive underwater walls of sand and stone at the mouths of unstable glaciers could slow or reverse their collapse.
I will be continuing the Sea Ice Sketch Project this weekend, and posting on Twitter as I complete each piece and continue my exploration of sea ice—as well as ice shelves and icebergs.
I’m ending this week’s post with some stunning imagery of sea ice, like spectacular abstract artworks, from NASA Earth Observatory.
Newly formed sea ice (gray) in the Weddell Sea. Credit: NASA/Nathan Kurtz.
Pieces of sea ice, thick and thin, mingle in the Weddell Sea. Credit: NASA/Digital Mapping System.
Sea ice near the Larsen C Ice Shelf. Credit: NASA/Digital Mapping System.
As always, I am not a scientist but a writer/illustrator and science communicator passionately in love with sea ice, ice shelves, and polar ice in general. I welcome input and corrections from and connections with polar scientists as I learn more about this remarkable and vital part of our planet and bring this knowledge to a wider audience.
Ok, so this is not a week in ice, it’s This Fortnight in Ice. A combination of the holidays and, quite frankly, distress over what is clearly a wide-spread, vigorous, and alarming effort to misinform the public about Climate Change required me to take a breather.
Yes, it has been cold. No, it doesn’t disprove that Global Warming is real.
Here are some links to share with your misinformed uncle that explain why the extreme weather we’re experiencing in the US only supports that we are in the grip of anthropogenic Climate Change. (I’ve included some more general links, too.)
How a Melting Arctic Changes Everything (This one is more general and includes the geopolitics of a melting Arctic, which may make your misinformed uncle think.)
The polar vortex is an area of low pressure and cold air over the polar regions. When winds that keep colder air over the Arctic become less stable, cold air can dip farther south. Credit: NOAA
Of course, while we have been shivering in the eastern US, most of the planet has been experiencing warmer than average temperatures. Here’s today’s global map showing the temperature anomaly. Most parts of the world are warmer than average.
Credit: ClimateReanalyzer.Org, University of Maine, Climate Change Institute
This includes the Arctic.
This plot shows the departure from average air temperatures (at the 925 hPa level) in degrees Celsius for December 2017. Yellows and reds indicate higher than average temperatures; blues and purples indicate lower than average temperatures.
Credit: NSIDC courtesy NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory Physical Sciences Division
Wow. Fall air temperatures (925 hPa; Oct-Dec) in the #Arctic were nearly as high as last year using R1 data – positive anomalies (small subplot) over the entire Arctic Ocean!
This figure shows departures from 1850 to 2013 calendar-month averages of Arctic sea ice extent as a function of year (x-axis) and calendar month (y-axis). The color bar at the right shows magnitudes of departures from the average. Credit: J. E. Walsh, F. Fetterer, J. S. Stewart, W. L. Chapman. 2016. Geographical Review; after a figure by J. Stroeve, National Snow and Ice Data Center
This image brings it home:
These sea ice concentration maps compare the lowest September minimum Arctic sea ice extents for the periods 1850 to 1900, 1901 to 1950, 1951 to 2000, and 2000 to 2013. Credit: F. Fetterer/National Snow and Ice Data Center, NOAA
Current conditions:
Credit: NSIDC
Credit: NSIDC
ANTARCTIC
Antarctic December sea ice was the fourth lowest on record.
Credit: NSIDC
Credit: NSIDC
And here’s another animation by Kevin Pluck showing the global sea ice anomaly and comparing it to countries of similar size.
NASA has provided a stunning new shot of the iceberg formerly known as B-44, which has now broken into numerous smaller bergs. B-44 calved from the accelerating Pine Island Glacier back in September and quickly broke up.
NASA glaciologist Chris Shuman says that warm water in the polynya (open water in an area of sea ice) likely caused the speedy breakup of the iceberg.
Dec. 15, 2017 Credit: NASA Earth Observatory, Landsat 8
Schuman estimates the iceberg is about 315 meters (1005 feet) thick, with approximately 49 meters (about 160 feet) above the water’s surface.
Here’s the breakup in action:
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory, from 5 Landsat 8 images over the last 4 months.
Iceberg A-68A nudged up against the Larsen C ice shelf, from which it (A-68, a slightly larger berg) calved back in July. A-68A is about the size of Delaware.
I am very excited about the British Antarctic Survey’s upcoming expedition to the Larsen C ice shelf to explore the benthic diversity (the variety of fauna on the sea floor) in an area that, up until the calving of A-68, was covered by the thick ice shelf. I cannot wait to see what they find! If you’re interested, you can follow using hashtag #LarsenCBenthos on Twitter.
Marine technicians steady the megacorer, which has returned from the sea floor filled with mud.
I constructed and maintained our website and social media, raised public awareness, blogged about our science, was the photographer, mentored and edited graduate students writing guest blog posts, created illustrations, and got my hands wet and dirty whenever an extra hand was needed.
I’m now writing a book about our high-seas adventure and our fascinating science, which explored the roles of nitrogen and silicon in the success of diatoms, and included growing diatoms, filtering marine snow, and retrieving deep-sea mud cores. (I also have another polar science book underway.)
Mid-year, I traveled to Yellowstone National Park to do research for the illustrations for VOLCANO DREAMS, a non-fiction book for children about the Yellowstone supervolcano by award-winning author Janet Fox.
I’ve spent the rest of the year completing the illustrations. Volcano Dreams will be published by Web of Life Children’s Books in September, 2018. This is the first time I’ve illustrated a published children’s picture book, something I’ve worked for for years.
In September, I started POLAR BIRD, the next step on my journey as a science communicator, non-fiction writer, and sci-art illustrator.
POLAR BIRD is a labor of love, and I’m grateful to everyone who has liked, shared, retweeted, subscribed, and—most especially—read.
2017 has been truly transformative, and I’ve never felt more like I’m on the right path. More than anything, I dream that my work will lead me back to the ice.
As we head into 2018, I’m actively seeking opportunities to be an embedded team member and offer my experience and diverse skill set on future research cruises, taking the considerable and important work required of Outreach—both before, during, and after an expedition—off scientists’ hands.
While I’d be thrilled to join any research cruise, I’m particularly interested in sea ice dynamics and ecology, polynyas, phtyoplankton, krill, the biological pump and carbon cycle, paleoclimatology, ice shelves and glaciers, sea bird and marine mammal ecology, and more… (I could easily spend the rest of my life writing and illustrating about science in polar regions.)
Thank you for reading! I look forward to bringing you new science adventures, more about our planet’s vital sea and land ice, and new art.
I wish you all a very healthy, peaceful, and happy New Year!
I am travelling for Christmas, so this week’s post won’t be as extensive as usual. So, this week in ice, Polar Bird and Wordy Bird Studio are wishing you all a very Merry Everything. May your iceberg be festooned with penguins—except if it’s in the Arctic… because penguins and Santa? Well, come on now…
And speaking of Christmas, see how concentrations of greenhouse gases have changed since that very first Christmas:
Merry Christmas from The Antarctic Report! when Jesus was born, the average concentration of CO2 in the air was approx 280ppm. Today it’s 405ppm. At current rates, CO2 levels will hit 500ppm within 50 years, on track to reach temperature boosts of +3°C https://t.co/uj63a5X7qwpic.twitter.com/wN4VFI7RDN
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about albedo. Albedo is a measure of reflectivity. Sea ice has high albedo, meaning it has high reflectivity, and most of the solar radiation (sunlight) that hits it is reflected away from the planet.
Just as you get warmer when you wear darker clothes, when ice is covered in something darker, such as algae or dust, it has lower albedo—it absorbs more solar radiation. Lower albedo = faster melting.
But a new study found that algal growth on the Greenland ice sheet reduces its albedo and influences melting more than dust and black carbon, which has implications for how scientists may project future sea level rise. And as temperatures warm, algae thrives. Algae accounts for 5-10% of ice sheet loss (in Greenland) each year.
Current Sea Ice Conditions
ARCTIC
Credit: NSIDC
Credit: NSIDC
The state of sea ice near #Alaska is shockingly bad. Low concentrations in much of Norton Sound and the southern Chukchi coasts, no ice at all near St. Lawrence Is. Hunters can't work in this: communities with real people are threatened. #akwx#Arctic@DaveSnider@lisashefguypic.twitter.com/Us25i47qVu
I don't have any plots offhand remotely, but here is a sea ice concentration composite along with climatology from the 1980/1990/2000s… pic.twitter.com/QYvzc9y1S4
The Arctic has changed, and the latest Arctic Report Card says it will likely never return to being the Arctic we have known.
ANTARCTIC
Sea ice in the Antarctic is also well below the mean.
Credit: NSIDC
Credit: NSIDC
I will be back next week with my usual full-length ice news. In the New Year, I’ll also be sharing my recent interview with filmmakers Stephen Smith and Diana Kushner of Enduring Ice, who kayaked 500 miles from the North Pole while making their upcoming documentary about the plight of Arctic sea ice.
Until next time, I will leave you with this fabulous footage from above Antarctica. Have a safe, peaceful, and happy holiday!
This is the final day of 
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