In northern Greenland, there’s a large region of ice that flows unusually quickly. Only discovered in the 1990s from studying satellite images, this feature is called the NorthEast Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS). While typical speeds of the moving ice outside NEGIS are meters per year, NEGIS itself accelerates toward the coast, moving at hundreds and eventually over a thousand meters …
Open software, open science, reproducible results
Last post Nat introduced the concept of computer code as a tool for scientists (including oceanographers), and highlighted the IPython Notebook — one of the recent steps along a path toward more open and reproducible research. As a user of the R software environment1 (which was featured in a recent Nature article), I thought it would be interesting to present one …
Working toward open and reproducible calculations
Figure taken from Peng (2011), DOI: 10.1126/science.1213847 Last post, Andree wrote about archiving data with NODC. I’d like to share something in a similar vein that I think is important not just for polar scientists, but for researchers of all disciplines. Much of modern science relies heavily on computation, whether for analysing data, evaluating analytical results, or running full-scale general …
NODC Data Submission 101
By Andree Ramsey One of the most important aspects of any project is the requirement to submit data to data repositories such as National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC), National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Advanced Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (ACADIS), Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), Biological …
Just how quickly are icebergs and glaciers melting?
The melting of icebergs beneath the ocean’s surface, or submarine melting, occurs continuously as the submerged portion of the iceberg is exposed to relatively warm ocean waters. Although the contrast in temperature and salinity between the ice and surrounding water is the primary driver of melting, melt rates are also influenced by the size and shape of icebergs and by …