Elin receives award for polar sciences!

Posted on by Mirjam Glessmer

I’m sure there will be an official press release some time later today, and we will link to it when it comes out, but I thought I should let you all know that yesterday, on Nansen’s Birthday, Elin received the 2017 award for polar research of the Framkomitee.

I don’t know what was said in the official laudation or why Elin was chosen, but here are a couple of things I would have said that are more than enough to make her deserve this award more than anybody else I can think of:

That Elin’s research is outstanding doesn’t need to be mentioned specifically, otherwise she would not even have been nominated for a price like this one. When, some time last year, I read the proposal that ultimately funded all our time in Grenoble, doing research on this really cool pool-on-a-merry-go-round, I was so impressed by how all-embracing it was. In contrast to almost everybody else I know, Elin is not a one trick pony. It’s not enough for her to “just go on a research cruise and measure things” (and let me be clear: That in itself is an amazing trick that any pony, and any oceanographer for that matter, should be happy to master!), or “just do tank experiments”. Elin’s research combines sea-going oceanography, experimental work, and numerical models, and not just on paper as is sometimes the case in interdisciplinary research projects, but in practice. She sees how integrating results from one method with results from another will benefit both, and how adding a third could contribute even more. Of course she doesn’t do it all by herself; there is a reason this blog is called “Elin & team’s scientific adventures”. But the way she brings together people from different countries, with different backgrounds both scientifically and culturally, makes her team both stronger scientifically and so much more fun to work in.

Elin is also very invested in sharing her science and her excitement for it with the world. She has been blogging for years (find links to her previous adventures here) for different audiences: Primary school kids, teachers (even including teaching materials like experiments and exercises), the general public. And she gave me completely free reign over what would be published on this blog: We explicitly agreed to share all our “oh sh**, we should have thought about this before!” and “ooooops, that didn’t work!” moments with the world, in order to portrait science in a realistic way and maybe help others who might be struggling with their research by showing that it is normal to spend the first week or more at a new research facility just trouble-shooting (remember our persistent problems with the source, for example? Yes, that is the kind of stuff that doesn’t usually get shared in scientific publications or presentations, but isn’t it nice to know that other people’s research isn’t always going smoothly, either? Not even award-winning people’s research! And let me tell you, when I told other researcher friends about our plans to share this kind of stories with the world, they almost all declared us mad!). I believe these stories need to be shared (and there is actually research backing up this claim), but it takes a very strong person, like Elin, to actually do it!

But in addition to being an amazing researcher and science communicator, Elin is so much more. She is an inspiration and a role model. She makes doing exciting and complex research look easy. Not easy in a “oh, anyone could do it!” way, but in a “despite working really hard, she manages to have a life outside of work that seems to feed her energy levels, provide new ideas, sustains friendships, and ultimately makes her an even better scientist. Maybe I should try that, too?” kind of way. Elin is the kind of person who organises funding and then logistics for an early-career women workshop and then invites more than a dozen of those into her holiday house over night when, on the day of the event, the weather is so bad that we can’t take the cable car up the mountain to go to the place we had planned. Or that urges us to rent bikes in Grenoble and take the scenic route home to enjoy the views of the river and the mountain to recharge after a long and exhausting day in the lab. Or that cooks for her team in Grenoble, taking into account everybody’s different dietary restrictions. And — extremely impressive — Elin didn’t even complain when her phone drowned in her backpack (and not even in Bergen, in Grenoble!), let alone let us see the enormous strain she must have been under when experiments didn’t work out right away and we hadn’t found all the fixes yet! Long story short: Working with Elin means being reminded every day of why I love oceanography, and what a great and rewarding way of spending your time it is to work on exploring and understanding — and sharing with the world! — the wonders and puzzles of the ocean.

There would be so much more to be said about Elin and why I am so happy she got this award, but I have a day job that doesn’t involve writing laudation speeches, so this will have to do for now.

If you want to know what it was like to shake the Norwegian King’s hand (and I don’t even know if that happened, but I hope for his sake that he didn’t miss out on the opportunity to get to know Elin!) and all the other fun events of the day, maybe, if you ask nicely, Elin will tell you herself later. For now, join me in congratulating her! I can’t think of anyone more deserving for this award. Congratulations, Elin!!!

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Picture by Nils Gunnar Kvamstø, via Twitter

Introducing: Ho Kyung Ha

Posted on by Mirjam Glessmer

Written by Ho Kyung Ha

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Ho Kyung Ha is an assistant professor at the Department of Ocean Sciences, Inha University, Korea. His research interests center on (1) the ocean circulation and (2) associated particle transport in water column. Research has included the study of such diverse areas as rivers, estuaries, continental shelf, and Polar Oceans.

Using the long-term mooring system, he is seeking to understand the ocean circulation and hydrographic features. Most recently, he has studied the intrusion of warm water masses, which might be a potential heat deliver to under-ice system in the Arctic and Antarctica. He is analyzing the moored time series data in the view of the teleconnection of climate change signals between low latitude and Polar Oceans. In the field of particle transport, he has developed an acoustic inversion method to estimate the concentration of suspended materials and the flux. The developed acoustic techniques and approaches are being applied to the biology to monitor the transport of organic matters and migration of zooplankton in water column.

Visit of VIPs for the opening of the “Fête de la Science”

Posted on by Nadine Steiger

“Fête de la Science” is a national event that promotes French science to the general public and gives access to research institutes and laboratories, including hands-on experiments, activities for the whole family and screening of movies. LÉGI is an important contributor for the region Isère and welcomed many important French people at the opening of the event on Thursday.

Here you can see the big crowd squeezed onto the surrounding platforms gazing at the rotating Coriolis tank, while Samuel and the director of the laboratory explained what kind of experiments they conduct in the lab. Unfortunately the tank was not filled with water yet, but the topography for our experiments that will start next week was mounted in the tank.

The laboratory with the Coriolis platform was filled with people glazing at the rotating platform during the opening of the “Fête de la Science”.

Among the visitors there were also journalists that interviewed Céline afterwards. It was screened on the local TV channel France3 and is available online: http://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/emissions/jt-1920-alpes.

A short translation of what the journalists says in the beginning and what Céline explains about the background of the experiment:

Journalist: It looks like a big merry-go-round. Its name is Coriolis. With 13-m diameter, it’s the largest platform of its kind in the world. People come from all around the world to use it. Here, Swedish scientists are preparing their experiments that they will perform with a lot of instrumentation and nearly 1m of water height. They are studying the melting of Antarctic glaciers.

Céline: « Once the glaciers have melted, and have produced a relatively fresh water, what does this freshwater do ? To which depth does it sink, where does it go to, how does it mix with the rest of the water column, and which consequences does that have on the whole global ocean circulation ? »

 

Introducing: Anna Wåhlin

Posted on by Mirjam Glessmer

Written by Anna Wåhlin

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Anna is a Professor of Physical Oceanography at the Department of Marine Sciences, University of Gothenburg. Her research focus is in the field of Polar Oceanography, mostly in the Southern Ocean. Specifically her research investigates several aspects of dynamics of polar seas including physical oceanography, ocean circulation, topographic effects, ice shelf melt processes and air-sea-ice interaction. When Wåhlin was appointed professor in 2015, she became Sweden’s first female full Professor of Oceanography.

Wåhlin was between 2015-2017 co-chair of the joint Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and SCOR initiative Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS). She is an Associate Editor of the journal, Advances in Polar Science and member of IOW scientific advisory board (2016-2019).

Wåhlin’s awards include being a Fulbright Scholar (2007-2008), receiving a Crafoord Research Stipend from the Swedish Royal Academy of Science (2010) and being a SCAR visiting professor (2013).

Fluorescent dye and baroclinic experiments

Posted on by Nadine Steiger

As promised last week, here are some photos of the shining flow that contains fluorescent dye. To remove the green light from the laser, we used the polarized safety glasses that only left the illuminated current. Isn’t it pretty?

Adding fluorescent dye to the inflow water makes the current nicely visible. In the beginning of the experiment, the baroclinic flow turns around the first corner. The waves evolve due to the shear between the moving current and the still-standing ambient water.

 

Once the current has evolved and deepened, the part closest to the wall is barotropic and passes the first curvature without turning.

Whether the flow resembles the first photo or the second photo mainly depends on the strength of the inflow and the density difference between the inflowing and the ambient water. But the flow also evolves with time! That means, in the beginning the freshwater flow turns directly around the first corner, whereas it rather continues straight along the slope after a certain time. Let’s explain that in more details on some sketches:

Does this make sense to you?

How we can see vertical slices of the flow field in our tank

Posted on by Mirjam Glessmer

We’ve talked before how we use the laser to light up neutrally-buoyant particles on horizontal slices of our tank, but we can actually also do this in the vertical.

This is sometimes very helpful to check whether the particle distribution is still good enough or whether someone needs to go in and stir up some particles before the next experiment.