I’m delighted to have been awarded a £3000 Software Sustainability Fellowship by the Software Sustainability Institute. This promises to be a great collaboration and I’m excited to be working with the SSI to promote sustainable software practices. I plan to use the Fellowship funds to host a Software Carpentry Workshop at RHUL, and to attend … Read more
As part of Earth Week 2014, the Geological Society ran a competition to find the UK’s top 100 Geosites. The competition can be followed on Twitter with the #100Geosites hashtag. The results were published as an online clickable map and the results were highlighted on the BBC. This map is ideal for choosing your next … Read more
The Antarctic Peninsula is warming very rapidly, about six times the global average[1-3]. There has been a 95% increase in positive degree day sums since 1948[4]. Glaciers in the region are accelerating, in response to frontal thinning and recession[5]. In addition, ice shelves are collapsing[6], glacier fronts are retreating[7]. The causes for much of these … Read more
Next week is Freshers’ Week and across the country, universities will be welcoming enthusiastic students into their departments. These students will be equipped with notebooks, lever-arch files, reading lists and text books. But there is more that you can do to prepare for university. Here is my own recommended reading list. These are popular science … Read more
A major new review of the last glaciation of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet has just been published by Quaternary Science Reviews. The special issue of the journal includes a suite of review papers involving an international team of experts regarding the last glaciation of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet. This review, which comprises six review papers … Read more
A position on a funded PhD studentship in the environmental sciences (including Geography and Geology) has never been easy, but in these days of funding cuts and university and RCUK (Research Council UK) reorganisations, it’s ever more difficult to get PhD funding. It’s competetive and every studentship may have hundreds of applicants. Here’s a guide … Read more
So, in September I’ll be moving on again. I’m leaving the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading to take up a lectureship in Physical Geography (Quaternary Science) at Royal Holloway, University of London. I haven’t been at the University of Reading for long, but I’ve been impressed by their progressive attitudes, by the … Read more
Occasionally, comments on this website call me reticent. I think that this is because I try not to let my personal opinions cloud my professional, scientific judgement. I am proud to be reticent. I always try to be informative, to give values of uncertainties and ranges and assessments of confidence. I try to present both … Read more
There is a lot in the media at the moment about the ‘collapse’ of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. See my previous blog post for more information. But when we talk about ‘ice sheet collapse’, what do we actually mean? When we talk of people ‘collapsing’, they fall down right in front of us in … Read more
Marine ice sheet instability The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the world’s most vulnerable ice sheet. This is because it is grounded below sea level, and marine ice sheets such as these are susceptible to rapid melting at their base. Fast-flowing ice streams draining the WAIS (Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier in particular) … Read more
