Dear reader,
Introduction IMAU newsletter November 2023
The 2023/2024 academic year has started! We welcomed 21 new Climate Physics master students and three (re-)new(ed) courses. In this newsletter, we also look back. Climate Physics students visited Venice and Austria, and you can read a report of this excursion in this newsletter. And, as Earth's extreme weather and climate frequently made the headlines these past months, many IMAU researchers have taken up the task to explain it in the media.
One of the three new Climate Physics master courses is already completed. In a rapidly changing research environment with bigger datasets, extensive international collaborations, and complicated research techniques, sharing best practices in the fine art of doing science is essential. To that end, Sanli Faez and Erik van Sebille developed the course "Open Science for Physicists". That was not an easy task, because Open Science is not only about research knowledge and skills, but also about engraining an attitude of open science in all research activities. Sanli and Erik evidently succeeded, as the students were motivated for and enthusiastic about the course.
The two other new courses are Atmospheric Boundary Layers and Remote Sensing. The course on boundary layers returned after a year's absence, but the Remote Sensing course is completely new. It will be taught by our new staff member Lu Zhou, who starts as assistant professor on 1 December at IMAU. One of her first tasks is to design this course so that students get more acquainted with various techniques and applications of (satellite) remote sensing.
Personally, over the past months I have been teaching the course Ice and Climate. One of the lectures is about Marine Ice Sheet Instability, the mechanism potentially leading to complete deglaciation of West Antarctica within the coming centuries. Every year, I need to update this lecture, and every year my message becomes a bit grimmer and more definite. We, the scientific community, are not able to accurately pinpoint whether and how fast deglaciation will proceed and what is needed to stop it. However, it is becoming ever less likely that "all will be fine". Sooner or later, the deglaciation of West Antarctica will become a concern for low lying countries like the Netherlands.
Also elsewhere in Antarctica, climate change is unfolding. Since 1979, the start of regular satellite observations, Antarctic sea ice cover at first simply varied from year to year and until 2016 even showed a small increasing trend. But since then, things changed and last year Antarctic sea ice cover was persistently 10% below the lowest extent ever measured before. At the same time, atmospheric and oceanic temperatures in 2023 hit records everywhere on Earth. Yes, we have an El Niño, but that normally leads to a temperature peak during the Northern Hemisphere winter. There might be more records to come.
It is thus beyond doubt that climate research, education and communication are essential activities. In this newsletter you read more about our efforts at IMAU to fulfill this mission.
Willem Jan van de Berg
Master's programme Climate Physics director