Welcome to the first
Blue-Action Newsletter of 2019!
After a brief break in newsletter communications, we are back and ready to tackle the new year. In this newsletter, we take a look back at some of the events the Blue-Action team attended over the past few months, and a look ahead at the activities coming up. We also highlight some new publications that are generating excitement in the press. Iif you have anything you want to share in a future newsletter, please get in touch at with the new WP8 leader at hannah.grist@srsl.com.
In the News
Have we been wrong about the drivers of the gulf stream? A new paper shows that most of the overturning and variability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is occurring not in the Labrador Sea off Canada, as past models have suggested, but in regions between Greenland and Scotland. The study featuring Blue-Action authors was released in Science earlier this month titled "A sea change in our view of overturning in the subpolar North Atlantic."
Overturning variability in this eastern section of the ocean was seven times greater than in the Labrador Sea, and it accounted for 88 percent of the total variance documented across the entire North Atlantic. This paper is the first from the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP), and presents data from a 21 month period since the arrays were deployed in 2014.
Blue-Action has also been highlighted as a success story by the EU Commission. An article on the European Commission website showcased the work being done by the Blue-Action project on developing more accurate long-term forecast systems for the Northern Hemisphere. Read the article here.
Cloudy with passing schools of tuna...why don't we hear fish forecasts? Mark Payne (DTU-Aqua) tackles these and other questions in his new article for Polar Prediction Matters. The piece highlights the work done on our Blue-Action case study on fisheries predictions, and the success of the first efforts to model fish distributions around the globe.
Example of an ecological forecast product, showing the forecast spawning distribution for blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou) in March 2018. Distribution is represented here as the probability of observing blue whiting larvae and is plotted as a) the value and b) the anomaly relative to the climatological probability (1960-2010). From PPM, credit Mark Payne.
Blue-Action is officially part of the Year of Polar Prediction! The project has been endorsed by the YOPP Steering committee. This will help achieve our aims of working in collaboration with other projects, improve our visibility, and confirms the importance of our work. Congratulations to everyone involved in making this happen!
Something unusual happened to death rates during the great recession in 2008: they went down. Higher income would normally be associated with higher life expectancy, as diets, healthcare and lifestyle improve. A paper in Nature Communications including Blue Action partners showed the opposite was true across 15 countries in Europe, a finding which mirrors previous research into recessions. The worse a region was affected, the bigger its decline in death rates – an extra 1% a year in Spain, while in Germany the previously declining mortality rate stalled.
The panel shows the evolution of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP, thousand euros) and age-standardized mortality (annual deaths per thousand). Squares and circles indicate the beginning and end of the study period, respectively. Diamonds correspond to year 2007. In Nature Communications, credit Joan Ballester.
The final report of the "Impact Assessment on a Long‐Term Investment on Arctic Observations" (IMOBAR) project is now available. Blue-Action took part in the stakeholder workshop in November 2017, contributing to discussions on societal benefit areas of existing and future observational systems.
Future Events
ECRA Assembly
27th - 28th February
The European Climate Research Alliance will have a general meeting in Brussels, Belgium, at the end of February. Scientists, decision-makers and experts from other fields will come together for presentations and panel discussions around the theme of "Climate Change and Actionable Information". Registration is open until 27th Februaryhere.
IMEMO Event
15th March
Representatives from Blue-Action will be at an Arctic event organised by our partner organisation the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, Russia. The team will be presenting the results of the Yamal project to a broad Russian audience, including the scientific community, business, officials, and NGOs.
AtlantOS Symposium, 25th - 28th March 2019
This symposium will celebrate the success of the Horizon 2020 project AtlantOS, and simultaneously mark the beginning of the international AtlantOS (Atlantic Ocean Observing System) as the All-Atlantic part of the Global Ocean Observing System. The event will take place in Paris, France, and registration is open here.
EGU Assembly
7th - 12th April
The European Geosciences Union meeting in 2019 will take place in April in Vienna, Austria. Several Blue-Action representatives will be presenting, and the meeting now has more dedicated time for networking. It will cover all aspects of earth sciences. Registration is open here.
ASOF Meeting
24th - 26th April
The next Arctic-Subarctic Ocean Flux meeting will be held at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is hosted by DMI, and co-sponsored by Blue-Action and CliC. Registration is open until 15th February: click here.
ECCA Conference, 28th - 31st May
The next European Climate Change Adaptation conference will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, in May. The themes this year are: data, methods and approaches in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction; co-production of knowledge, solutions and services; communication, data-sharing and decision support; Institutions, governance, citizens and social justice; global climate challenges and climate risk management and resilience. Blue-Action are planning to have a stand in partnership with Climateurope and JPI climate, and several members are presenting or attending. Registration is open here.
Second EU Modelling Workshop
5th - 7th June
This workshop held in Bergen, Norway, will be on the topic “How climate prediction work can inform model development”. Spaces will be limited and further details will be circulated soon. Please note the date in your diary if it is relevant.
PAMIP Workshop
24th - 27th June
This Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project workshop aims to present early results from PAMIP and related modelling activities, and to strengthen collaboration between PAMIP contributors. Registration is by invitation, and the event will be held in Devon, UK.
Blue-Action Annual Meeting
15th - 17th October 2019
The next annual meeting for Blue-Action will take place in Edinburgh, UK, on 15th - 17th October 2019. Further details will be released closer to the time, but please save this date in your diaries now.
Blue-Action held the first policy brief in Brussels, Belgium, at the European Parliament on 4th September 2018. Scientists from Blue-Action and AtlantOS discussed our current understanding of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and its impacts on climate at an event hosted by the SEARICA intergroup of the European Parliament. The event was very successful, and well-attended by policy-makers who were interested in the findings. The briefing document can be found on Zenodo here.
Arctic Frontiers Opening Ceremony. Credit Alberto Grohovaz/Arctic Frontiers 2019
Arctic Frontiers 20th - 24th January 2019
The Arctic Frontiers conference was held in Tromsø this January, with the theme of Smart Arctic. The event was live-streamed, and catch up videos are available here for those who couldn't make it.
Øivin Aarnes fromBlue-Action spoke at a side event on "Improved safety and environmentally sound operations in the Arctic Ocean", organised by the Arctic cluster. The event provoked a range of discussions between industry and researchers, and the interest in the Blue-Action Polar Lows’ case study showed there is strong interest in the prediction and forecast of extreme weather events. However, the discussion also covered theneed to distinguish clearly between forecasts and predictions in this regard.
Vilena Valeeva also spoke at a session on handling vulnerability in the Arctic about the Blue-Action case study "Scenarios as a tool for the improvement of stakeholders' capacity for adapting effectively to multiple changes in the Arctic: The case of the Yamal region."
APPLICATE Meeting 2019. Credit Luisa Cristini
APPLICATE Annual Meeting 28th - 30th January 2019
The APPLICATE General Assembly 2019 was held in Reading (UK) 28th - 30th January, hosted by ECMWF. The Assembly was then followed by an Early Career Event from 31st January - 1st February. The meeting featured presentations on the project’s scientific progress, invited talks and breakout sessions. Steffen Olsen presented work by Blue-Action in the plenary of the first evening, and Mark Payne was invited to showcase Blue-Action at the case studies session. There was also plenty of opportunity for networking and discussion, an ice breaker reception and a meeting dinner.
And finally...
We are restyling the Blue-Action website! The website is being edited in response to the need for a more public-friendly approach at this stage of the project. Keep checking back for changes, and if you have any feedback on the restructure, please get in touch at hannah.grist@srsl.com.
Remember to acknowledge Blue-Action in your publications!
To acknowledge Blue-Action, include this sentence in the acknowledgements section: "This study/paper was supported by the Blue-Action project, which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727852."
Are you struggling to upload to ZENODO?
All presentations, documents, and outputs should be uploaded to the Blue-Action Zenodo community. Chiara has produced some helpful instructions, which you can find here: Zenodo Instructions
The Blue-Action project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727852
