It is with great excitement that the Oban-based Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) announces that Professor Nicholas Owens will be its new Director from 1st September.
Professor Owens succeeds Professor Laurence Mee, who died suddenly in August 2014.
Professor Owens, since 2012 Director of the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, said:
Earlier this month, an educational resource about the ocean was launched for schools, youth groups and other curious young learners, entitled the Youth Guide to the Ocean.
This informative guide was jointly developed by PML and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on behalf of the Youth and United Nations Global Alliance (YUNGA).
"Understanding how and why and to what effect the Agulhas flows, will reveal an elegant and beautiful natural system that, by the sheer chance of physics, makes our world a more comfortable place to live than it would otherwise be." - Dallas Murphy
The Agulhas Current is an extraordinary South African feature which has a strong impact on society given its influence on local and regional weather and climate, as well as biodiversity and fisheries.
Globally, the Agulhas Current provides a key pathway of heat and salt from the Indian Ocean into the South Atlantic, which is then transported equatorward. This distribution of heat and salt in the oceans, thermohaline circulation, is what regulates our climate.
The Agulhas System Climate Array (ASCA) is a multi-institutional, international collaboration. It is designed to provide the first long-term observations of Agulhas Current volume, heat and salt transport and its variability from mesoscale (eddies), through seasonal to interannual timescales, and critically, its contribution in terms of heat and salt to the Thermohaline Circulation - and thus its impacts on climate variability and climate change.
ASCA's objectives are to determine how the Agulhas Current varies over time, and by including additional instruments such as Sea-Bird Microcats along the mooring lines, to measure the heat, salt and volume flux of the current and better interpret what is being introduced into the Agulhas Return Current and the South Atlantic. Fundamentally this will improve our knowledge of the Thermohaline Circulation and global climate change.
Warm ocean water is melting the largest glacier in East Antarctica from below, according to new Australian Antarctic research.
The team of 23 scientists and technicians from the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC (ACE CRC), the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, returned to Hobart today onAustralia’s icebreaker Aurora Australis, after taking the first water samples ever collected alongside
the Totten Glacier.
On Monday, 26 January 2015, Prof Karen Wiltshire will assume the office of Chair for the Partnership for the Observation of Global Oceans (POGO). During her upcoming two-year term of office the Vice-Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), plans to promote the formation of partnerships between research ships in the Atlantic, and to improve the networking of researchers who use long-term data. Further, she hopes to encourage scientists to take on a more proactive role in the establishment of marine protected areas.