Eustasy video

Eustatic sea-level changes refer to the world-wide changes in the height of the sea surface with respect to land areas.  In regards to long term climate changes, eustatic sea-level change is largely due to changes in the amount of water locked up in the ice sheets and mountain glaciers.  As an ice sheet melts, sea level rises and as ice sheet grows, sea level falls.  This process also happens on shorter timescales, and the research project I am working on at the moment is looking to see how changes in the ice sheets has affected sea level over the last 500 years in the North Atlantic.

A logical idea, however, I thought it would be fun to make a video to show the students this process as it is one of the main causes of sea-level change.  I slightly underestimated how long it would take my freezer to make a mini ice sheet (with blue food coloring – to make it more interesting and make the sea level change clearer), however, once my ice sheet had frozen, I used time lapse photography to create a video of the ice melt causing eustatic sea-level rise in an 'ocean' in my kitchen!

The finished product:

One must be aware that this video suggests the sea level rises uniformly across the whole ocean as the ice sheet melts.  In regards to ice sheets and mountain glaciers, the picture isn’t that simple as a big lump of ice has its own gravitational field, in the same way as the moon does. When the ice sheet is at its biggest, the sea is pulled towards the ice, resulting in higher sea level closest to the ice sheet.  When the ice melts, the ‘ocean tide’ moves away from the ice sheet and the greatest sea level rise is in fact furthest away from the ice sheet.  More details can be found in this research paper.  Our present research project trys to pick out these patterns of sea-level change around the North Atlantic to work out which ice sheets may be contributing to sea-level change.

Past ice sheets

For a geographer that studies past climate the idea of areas of the world being covered by ice in the past that are now forest, fields and towns seems quite normal, but for many school students that seems a very bizarre concept.

I used the excellent video developed by the Aberystwyth University Glaciology research group to show the students how big the British and Irish ice sheet was and how it grew and shrunk during the last glaciation.  I also created an image to show the students thick the ice sheet was.  This somewhat blew their minds!

Preparation

Reflecting back on my placement, I was very nervous beforehand as I was not sure how the students would respond to me, and the ideas I was trying to get across.  As a result, I wrote quite detailed lesson plans, which looking back was very beneficial.  I am a bit overly organised/keen at times so this does reflect my working style, however it did mean that when I walked into the first class I had some idea of what I was doing, which calmed my nerves.  My plans did not always go accordingly, based on the particular class, but it gave me something to work around.

One suggestion that the Researchers in Residence trainers gave us, was the use of word searches.  Most classes have a real range of students in them, and inevitably, there will be students who fly through the tasks or those whose imaginations don’t run away with them.  Having some word searches on the theme of the lesson was a lifesaver.  I was shocked how much the students loved them: noisy students suddenly became silent.  I used this website to create my own sea level/past climate word searches.

Meet the teacher

The Researchers in Residence Scheme pairs you with a local school and teacher that match the information in your application form.  I slightly landed on my feet with mine as while discussing the scheme with a friend who is a local geography teacher she became very excited and after running it past her Head Teacher, she signed up to the scheme and I got paired with her and St Roberts of Newminster in Washington.  Miss Quinn and I have met a couple of times at school, firstly to get an overview of what I can bring to the school and a second meeting to finalise the details.  She is really excited and all the teachers in the Geography Department seem really lovely.  It is less than two weeks now until I go into the school, for real!  I am now busy trying to get all the material for the placement ready.

Training

As part of the Researchers in Residence you are required to take part in a days training.  This is a very good thing as though I think it is a great scheme, it is a little scary to go beyond the walls of the University to a local school.  My training day was in Edinburgh in November, just as the snow started to fall.  It was an early start and I had time for a coffee and cake when I luckily arrived in Edinburgh on time and then made my way to the amazing Dynamic Earth centre (http://www.dynamicearth.co.uk/). 

This engraved rock outside Dynamic Earth makes it clear reconstructing past sea level and environmental change is important for the future.

The day consisted of some fantastically over excited trainers David and Ben, a Researchers in Residence contact Fiona, about 20 nervous PhD students and postdocs (mainly from Scottish Universities) and lots of ideas about what your placement could involve.  David, Ben and Fiona also went through the practical day-to-day points of being involved in the scheme and some of the issues you may encounter, as well as how to get round them.  A PhD student who had participated in the scheme last year explained what she and her colleagues had done in their school.  She also gave some suggestions of things to learn from their experience.  I came out of it tired but excited, and on the train home quickly wrote down lots of ideas.  It was invaluable and anyone else thinking about taking part in the scheme should be reassured that you will receive the support you require and you can ask any questions you want.

Researchers in Residence

Part of being a modern scientist involves outreach.  It is all very well being sat in your office or lab but if no one outside of the University has any idea what you are up to it is a bit pointless.  Science should be of value to people and knowledge, and in the modern climate taxpayers want to know what happens to money that goes to Research Councils that fund UK science.  As a result, the Research Councils (rightly) ask their funded researchers to take part in some outreach activities.

I personally believe there is a lot of power in taking science from inside the nations Universities out to young people.  Young people have a hunger for knowledge, they will be the scientists of the future and they have great influence on the older generations by talking with enthusiasm to their peers, parents, grandparents and sometimes the dog!  As a result, I have decided to take part in the Research Council UK and Welcome Trust Funded Researchers in Residence Scheme (http://www.researchersinresidence.ac.uk).  This scheme places researchers in secondary schools and colleges to engage young people with up-to-date research to stimulate their interests and motivation in the social, physical, life and earth sciences and the humanities.  Through this blog, I aim to record some of my experiences on the scheme, some of the ideas I have had and some reflection on the process.

An Introduction

I am a postdoctoral researcher at Durham University working on a project called: North Atlantic sea level variability over the past half millennium.  It is a project run jointly between Plymouth and Durham Universities and the National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool.  It is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/) for three years. 

The aim of the project is to reconstruct in detail the sea level changes over the past 500 years around the North Atlantic.  To do this, we use the microscopic plants and animals burried sediments deposited at six salt marshes in the North Atlantic (see map below).  These salt marshes act as geological tide gauges. 

Salt marsh sites around the North Atlantic.

Modern tide gauges around the North Atlantic provide a record of sea level changes over the last 200 years, at the longest, and most only cover the last 100-20 years.  The salt marshes therefore can extend these records further back in time.  Using these records we aim to understand whether similar magnitude sea level changes around the North Atlantic occur at similar times, i.e. whether sea level changes around the North Atlantic are synchronous, or not.  We also want to find out if there were fast episodes of sea-level rise in historical times, similar to those observed more recently by tide gauges and satellites. Such episodes could signal, for example, a sustained response to changes in polar ice-sheet dynamics, a process which is poorly constrained in IPCC sea-level predictions for the 21st century.