Dr. Leonie Esters graduated with her PhD earlier this month. Her thesis was titled "Observational Based Evaluation of Air-Sea Gas Fluxes and Turbulence in the Surface Ocean Boundary Layer". Congratulations to Leonie.
TIDA Award Announcement
A TIDA (Technology Innovation Development Award) award was just announced by SFI and DJEI for the proposal entitled "Surface Ocean Autonomous Profiling Platform (SOAPP)" whose aim is to design an instrument to improve the characterization of turbulence at tidal energy sites, to assist the tidal renewable energy industry in optimizing turbine efficiency. This technology will be based on the successful ASIP profiler.
WDAC meeting
Brian W. participated in the 6th world climate research programme (WCRP) data advisory council (WDAC) at the ESA-ESRIN facility in frascati on march 22-23.
JGR article accepted
Leonie just had her article "Parameterizing Air-Sea Gas Transfer Velocity with Dissipation" accepted for publication with JGR-Oceans.
Phd opponent at uppsala university
Brian W. was the opponent for the phd of Andreas Andersson from uppsala university in Sweden on march 17.
Retrospect meeting in Lofoten
The second retrospect project meeting was held in heningsvaer during march 8-10, attended by Brian W., Anneke, and Sebastian. The data from the cruise in 2016 was presented.
New PhD Student
Valentina Giunta has just started a PhD in the AirSea Laboratory. She comes from Argentina and has a masters in physical oceanography. She will study mixed layer dynamics with data from ASIP.
Visit to Weizmann
Brian W. spent a week in Israel visiting Ilan Koren at the Weizmann institute in Rehovot from January28th to February 3rd. Here he presented a seminar on the impact of rain on upper ocean turbulence and salinity. He also visited the IUI institute in Eilat, and presented another seminar. We identified an opportunity to collaborate with scientists in Eilat to study the breakdown in the mixed layer in Spring.
Irish Times Article
Brian Ward was interviewed for an Irish Times article "North Pole under threat" by journalist Kevin Courtney. The article discusses the demise of Arctic ice extent.
Arctic field experiment with members of the AirSea Lab in Svalbard in March 2015
The Arty Scientist workshop 2016
Anneke and Leonie took part in this year Arty Scientist workshop during the Galway Science and Technology Festival on Sunday 27th November at the National University of Ireland, Galway. It is an art workshop was designed to bust the myth of the mad Scientist, to open the mind of children on how scientists look like and what type of science they can do. It hosted 173 participants including 83 children who drew themselves as scientists. During the workshop, children could take inspiration from pictures representing the diversity of NUI Galway Scientists.
More information can be found here: http://www.cellexplorers.com/single-post/2016/12/19/The-Arty-Scientist-2016 and here http://www.cellexplorers.com/the-arty-scientist.
Anneke and Leonie as Oceanographers, photo taken by Claire Riordan
Ultrawave Measurements by Waverider
Brian Scanlon participated in a short cruise on the R/V Celtic Voyager from Cork to Galway. The objective was to spend time at a MK3 waverider off the coast of Clare to validate the wave spectra measurements from our UltraWave device.
Cruise track for the R/V Celtic Voyager UltraWave validation (which has a clear seasonal shape to it).
UltraWave measurements on the R/V Celtic Voyager
Sebastian and Brian travelled to Cork yesterday to install our UltraWave system on the R/V Celtic Voyager. This project is funded by Enterprise Ireland with the objective to make wave spectra measurements from ships.
Wave sensors installed on the R/V Celtic Voyager
SOLAS in Asia Symposium
The SOLAS Asia Symposium was held at the Ocean University of China on October 27th. Brian presented a seminar titled "Upper ocean turbulence and its impact on air-sea fluxes". The campus was very impressive and included a tour of one of the buildings.
Model of the campus where the OUC is located.
SOLAS Scientific Steering Committee Meeting
The 16th SOLAS SSC meeting was held in Qingdao from October 24-26. Many issues were discussed, and many decisions were taken. We had excellent hosting by our Chinese colleagues. It was a lot of fun.
Dr. Chet Grosch Symposium
Brian Ward participated in the Dr. Chet Grosch Symposium on "The Art of Fluid Dynamics" at Old Dominion University October 13-14, 2016. This symposium was organised to commemorate the retirement of Chet Grosch.
Retrospect project workshop at NUIG
The retrospect project workshop was held at NUIG on October 3-4th. The objectives were to provide a short introduction to the project, followed by presentations of the work on analyzing cruise data and plans for further work and publications. The second day had presentations on the status of the modeling (assimilation and drift trajectories), and discuss how to bring in cruise results in future modeling efforts. The workshop was attended by Brian Ward (NUIG), Kai Christensen (Met.no, Oslo), Svein Sundy (IMR, Bergen), Sebastian Landwehr (NUIG), Anneke ten Doeschate (NUIG), Leonie Esters (NUIG), Brian Scanlon (NUIG), Kjersti Opstad Strand (IMR/UiB, Bergen), Johannes Röhrs (Met.no, Oslo), Ann Kristin Sperrevik (Met.no, Oslo), and Alfatih Ali (NERC, Bergen).
Keynote Presentation
Brian Ward presented a keynote at the ESA-SOLAS workshop Air-sea Gas Flux: Progress and Future Prospects. This was held at IFREMER, Brest, France, 6-9 September 2016. The title of the presentation is "Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS): Air-sea interface and fluxes of mass and energy".
Upper Ocean Turbulence Summer School
Anneke and Leonie attended the Upper Ocean Turbulence Summer School in Gdansk, Poland.
The three week summer school included two weeks of lectures by international experts ranging from turbulence theory and spectral methods to turbulence modelling and data analysis. The last week was focused on actual turbulence measurements and included a day at Gdansk Bay to get experience in using the turbulence microstructure profiler VMP250.
More information: http://uot2016.mif.pg.gda.pl/index.html
New Postdoc
Dr. Brian Scanlon starts a post-doc on the Ultrawave project on September 1st. He will replace Ciaran kennedy who recently left to move back to industry.