Blue-Action Autumn Newsletter 2020

Here we highlight some of the many publications this year that acknowledge Blue-Action, published in collaboration with partners, projects and organisations across the world. Congratulations to all the authors!

Early Warning from Space for a Few Key Tipping Points in Physical, Biological, and Social-Ecological Systems
 

In this review paper, Swingedouw et al. explore the latest results concerning a few key tipping elements of the Earth system in the ocean, cryosphere, and land realms, namely the Atlantic overturning circulation and the subpolar gyre system, the marine ecosystems, the permafrost, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and in terrestrial resource use systems. 

This paper also proposes a few research avenues concerning the use of remote sensing data and the need for combining different sources of data, and having long and precise-enough time series of the key variables needed to monitor Earth system tipping elements.

 

This exciting new paper, led by Doug Smith at the Met Office, UK, and involving several Blue-Action authors, assesses retrospective climate model predictions of the past six decades and shows that decadal variations in North Atlantic winter climate are highly predictable, despite a lack of agreement between individual model simulations and the poor predictive ability of raw model outputs.

These results highlight the need to understand why the signal-to-noise ratio is too small in current climate models, and the extent to which correcting this model error would reduce uncertainties in regional climate change projections on timescales beyond a decade.

 

This recent paper by Helene Asbjørnsen et al. describes the recent “Atlantification” of the Arctic, which is characterized by warmer ocean temperatures and a reduced sea ice cover. They determine the relative importance of transport of heat by ocean currents (ocean advection) and heat exchanges between the atmosphere and the ocean (air‐sea heat fluxes) in warming the Barents Sea and Fram Strait.

In the ice‐free region, ocean advection is found to be the main driver of the warming trend due to increasing inflow temperatures between 1996 and 2006. In the marginal ice zone and the ice‐covered northern Barents Sea, ocean advection and air‐sea heat fluxes are found to be of interchanging importance in driving the warming trend through the 1993–2014 period analyzed. A better understanding of the recent warming trends in the Barents Sea and Fram Strait has implications for how we understand the ocean's role in ongoing and future Arctic climate change.

In this newsletter, we are shining a light on the art-science interface, and the growing importance of learning and sharing between disciplines. We begin with sharing an exciting upcoming Blue-Action event where practitioners and researchers are coming together to share knowledge and insights. Finally, we showcase the diverse talents of some of our Blue-Action team- who demonstrate that science and art can coexist and thrive. 

In this collaborative online workshop, Blue-Action are working with Creative Carbon Scotland to bring together scientists and artists to discuss how we can use arts to explore and understand complex climate science. You do not need to be an expert in either sphere, an interest in participating in the discussions is more than enough! To register, please click here. Places are running low- if you are keen to be involved then you can also reach out to hannah.grist@srsl.com, or the outcome from the workshop will be posted on the Blue-Action website afterwards. 

When we posed this question to the Blue-Action team, the answer was unequivocal! 

Many of our team use their science as inspiration for environmentally-themed art, or use art as a way of relaxing from work. Check out some of the examples from the team below- and if you also have art you would like to share, we would love to hear from you.

Recent events
 

Future events
 

Scientist - Data Assimilation and Integration, ECMRF
The position is in the Earth System Assimilation Section of the Research Department. The Scientist will work in the Data Assimilation Methodology team and will be co-managed by the CAMS Development Section in the Copernicus Department. Deadline 19/11.

Ocean Modeller, CMCC
This position is for two Ocean Modellers (i.e., Post Doc or Junior Scientist for research career at CMCC) with strong knowledge of coastal processes and unstructured grid modelling, and programming skills. Deadline 30/11.

Postdoctoral scientist, MET Norway

This position is for a 2-year Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the field of data assimilation of sea ice. The successful candidate will be affiliated with the project SIRANO (Sea Ice Retrieval and data Assimilation in NOrway, cryo.met.no/sirano), funded by the Research Council of Norway.