Blue Crab Bowl 2015

Earlier this month, I spent all day Saturday on my feet, telling high schoolers to be quiet.  Maybe not my first choice on how to spend a weekend day, but it was all for a good cause.

Every year, in February, my university and another institution band together to host the Blue Crab Bowl.  It's a high school trivia contest focused on all aspects of the ocean sciences, from physics and biology to marine technology and politics.  Teams from different high schools in the area come to compete in our regional bowl.  The winners are sent on to the national competition, the National Ocean Sciences Bowl, held this April in Ocean Springs, MS.

Match officials look on as two high school teams compete in the Blue Crab Bowl.  Source

To us, this competition is more than just another type of high school trivia games.  In most high schools across the US, students are not offered any courses on ocean sciences.  They can graduate without any understanding of the environment.  By holding the Blue Crab Bowl every year, we help encourage students to learn basic knowledge about ocean sciences and work to decrease the national gap in environmental studies.

Of course, our hope is that the students who participate will stay interested in the ocean and go on to have ocean-based careers.  Even if they don't, we've helped prepare them for careers in any STEM subject (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), and increased their basic understanding of science.

Check out the NOSB website and our local BCB website and Facebook page to learn more about the competition and see more pictures.

And, if you are up for a challenge, take this quiz!  It's based on past ocean science competition questions.  How much do you know about ocean sciences?

Dive In: Geoengineering the Southern Ocean

This is the fourth post in the Dive Into Science series.  Here I'll be explaining results from recent scientific papers.  Dive Into Science gives you a glimpse of current research in an easy to read format that anyone can understand.  To read more, just use the Dive Into Science tag.

Today's article is "How deep is deep enough? Ocean iron fertilization and carbon sequestration in the Southern Ocean" by Josie Robinson, et al, published in Geophysical Research Letters, 2014.

One of the main factors influencing climate change is the amount of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere.  I'm not going to go into how greenhouse gases increase global temperatures, or what the sources are.  Instead, let's jump ahead to: what can we do about it?

One major option is that we can store a lot of it in the deep ocean.  This carbon sequestration keeps the carbon dioxide in the ocean for maybe hundreds of years, giving us more time to cope with climate change.  How do we increase the amount of carbon sequestration?  By geo-engineering the ocean.

When phytoplankton bloom, they take up sunlight and carbon dioxide.  Some of the phytoplankton are eaten, and the nutrients and carbon dioxide they take up are eventually returned to the surface ocean.  Some of the phytoplankton sink out of the surface ocean and are exported to deep waters, maybe even to the bottom, storing carbon dioxide and nutrients deep in the ocean for long periods of time.

To geo-engineer the ocean to increase carbon sequestration, we would need to stimulate phytoplankton to bloom more, over longer time periods, and ensure a large portion of that bloom sinks.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has guidelines on carbon sequestration.  They suggest, that to be truly sequestered, the carbon needs to stay at least 1000 meters deep in the ocean for 100 years.

The prime location to geo-engineer is the Southern Ocean.  A large portion of it is iron-limited, which means we just need to add iron (called iron fertilization) to get more phytoplankton to bloom.  It also has certain locations where dense water sinks to the bottom of the ocean and stays there for hundreds of years.  Sounds promising, right?

This premise is what the authors of this paper tested.  Suppose we geo-engineer the Southern Ocean.  We add enough iron to the Southern Ocean at the right time, stimulating a massive bloom, which sinks to 1000 meters.  Everything goes right.  What happens to the carbon next?  Does it stay below the 1000 meter limit for 100 years?  Or do we need new guidelines for carbon sequestration?

Using an ocean model, the authors of the paper tested this theory.  They put in almost 25,000 tracer particles at 1000 meters all throughout the Southern Ocean.  Then they ran the model for 100 years to see where the particles ended up.  Particles that make it above the Mixed Layer Depth (MLD), or the depth to which surface forcing, such as wind, can mix the water, are considered to be exposed to the atmosphere and aren't sequestered.

Figure from Robinson et al.  Panel a shows the starting location of all the particles that made it to the surface, and the color indicates how long it took them to upwell.   Panel b shows the percentage of particles in each block that stayed sequested for the entire 100 year simulation.

They find that after 100 years, 66% of the particles have been exposed to the atmosphere.  That means less than half of them that met the original standard actually stayed sequestered for 100 years.  On average, it took a particle 37.8 years to make it back to the surface.  However, if the particle got out of the Southern Ocean, it tended to stay in the deep ocean.  Of the ones that reached the surface, 97% were still in the Southern Ocean.

So what does this mean for carbon sequestration and iron fertilization?  Even if we manage to get all the geo-engineering aspects of iron fertilization right, it doesn't mean that the carbon will stay down long enough for it to be useful.

From Robinson et al. Shows the percentage of particles that stayed sequestered at different time points over the model run, based on whether they started at 1000 or 2000 meters deep.

The authors also re-ran the same simulation, but this time set all the particles at 2000 meters, instead of 1000.  By requiring a deeper depth in order to be "sequestered", they found that only 29% made it back to the surface ocean over 100 years, a large improvement.


Overall, this paper demonstrates the issues with geo-engineering the Southern Ocean.  It suggests that new guidelines are needed to define carbon sequestration - it must initially sink to a depth of 2000 meters instead of 1000 meters.  It also demonstrates that the Southern Ocean might not be the best place for geo-engineering, as the dynamics of the water cause a large portion of particles to rise to the surface, rather than keep sinking.

Starting the job search early

I've made enough progress, finally, in my grad school career, that my advisor suggested I should start looking for postdocs.  It's probably still too early to apply, he said, but if I find a perfect position, they might be willing to wait for me to graduate.

Little did he know that I've been keeping tabs on job openings for several years now.

Early on I realized that I didn't have a good grasp of what sort of jobs I could apply for once I got my PhD.  Yes, I knew I was looking for something with a strong research component, but I needed more information.  Could I do the sort of research I wanted in industry, or in a government lab as well as academia?  How applicable are my skills to other research areas; can I change my focus at all and by how much?

Instead of waiting until it was time to apply for jobs and researching the answers all at once, I decided to slowly gather information as I went.  It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Here's why.

Know where to look.  Every time someone mentioned a job search website, a database, or an email list, I took note.  Every time a professional organization advertised their job board or search site, I signed up.  Instead of starting the search from scratch, I'm already getting notified about all the positions I'm eligible for - no extra effort required.

Know when to look.  Each of those email lists or job sites I signed up for sent out notices about various types of jobs.  Skimming through one or two interesting ones each week gave me a good idea of the lead time required for different positions.  A postdoc position in my field, for example, is typically advertised 1-2 months before the application deadline.  Start times are typically 1-6 months after that, although ASAP start times are quite common.  However, if I wanted to apply for my own funding, grants are only available at certain times of the year.  Also, I would have to find my own mentor, and start dates are closer to a year after applications are due.

Learn the right skills.  For each position, there is typically a list of required and desired skills.  Take a mental note of what is listed, and pretty soon you'll have an obvious subset of skills you need for your desired job.  For example, I work with certain software and coding languages now, as a graduate student.  However, to do the same exact work at a different university, or in a different country, they require knowledge of different software.  Instead of waiting until I apply to make the case that I can learn these skills, I know ahead of time that I need them, and can take the time to learn them now.

Understand job options.  After you've been casually skimming job postings for awhile, you start to notice some trends.  Places that hire frequently become familiar to you.  A too-good to be true job sticks out like a sore thumb as soon as you glance at the salary range and realize its 20% below typical ranges for that geographic area.  And the best part is, you don't have to put much effort into understanding these options.  You don't have to perform extensive calculations on cost of living and value of benefits.  By the time you are ready to look for real, you will have seen enough that you know just by looking how the job fits in with what you expect.


Convinced yet?  Considering trying this method?  If you want to get started now, here's how I carried out my job search way before I was actually searching for jobs.

Sign up for email lists or feeds.  A lot of sub-disciplines have their own email list to announce jobs, conferences, data requests, etc...  Find the ones that overlap with your interests and sign up.  Or, wait until you hear someone mention certain ones, then sign up.  Also, most websites that list jobs have a way for you to sign up for email digests or use a feed reader to notify you about new postings.  Sign up for these too.  And, while you are at it, go ahead and sign up for email notifications from professional-based forums that post jobs as well.  If in doubt?  Sign up.

Be prepared to skim and delete.  So now that you've signed up for a ridiculous number of emails, you need to manage them.  I redirect all of mine into a specific folder, bypassing my inbox completely.  Then, just scan the titles.  Anything that mentions a job you aren't eligible for (too qualified, under qualified, wrong field) gets deleted.  Same with anything in a geographic location you aren't interested in (although you may want to keep your options open at first).  I typically get 5-20+ emails in this folder per day, and at max I read maybe 3 of them.  And by read, I mean glance at the location, salary, basic requirements, and start time.  Then I delete those ones too.

Bookmark universities, companies or labs.  Since you aren't actually searching for jobs, you don't need to save interesting opportunities, because they won't be there when you are ready.  However, as you go, you may notice certain universities, companies, or labs reappear quite often in the listings you actually read.  Go ahead and bookmark their websites (or add them to a list) for future reference.  Even if they don't have job openings when you start searching for real, their past history suggests they might soon, or they might be open to talking to someone with the same interests.  These are the people and places you can contact even without a job opening, to possibly collaborate on a proposal, or just to express your interest.


By jumping on the job search years before you graduate, when it doesn't matter so much, you can save yourself a lot of stress and learn ahead of time what you want to do when you finish.  So go ahead, put in the very little effort now.  It'll pay off later.

What do you think about this method?  Have you started job searching for your next position yet?

Dive In: Global sea ice cycles and trends

This is the third post in a new series called Dive Into Science.  Here I'll be explaining results from recent scientific papers.  Dive Into Science gives you a glimpse of current research in an easy to read format that anyone can understand.  To read more, just use the Dive Into Science tag.

Today's article is "Global sea ice coverage from satellite data: Annual cycle and 35-yr trends" by Claire Parkinson, published in Journal of Climate, 2014.

Sea ice is one of the hot topics in climate science right now, with a particular emphasis on Arctic sea ice.  In recent years, Arctic sea ice has been decreasing, both in how much area the ice covers, and in how thick the ice is.  This has serious implications on everything from climate change to global trade to animal welfare.

However, this is only one half of the issue.  On the opposite end of the earth, sea ice in Antarctica is increasing.  And, given that the average amount of sea ice at each pole is similar in magnitude, many people think (wrongly) that the two poles cancel each other out.  And so, instead of focusing on one pole, the author of this paper looked at both poles combined to calculate the global trend in sea ice and set the record straight.  (Spoiler: It's still decreasing overall.)

Now, let's back up for a minute and talk about exactly what I mean by "sea ice".  The term itself is rather obvious - ice that is on the ocean.  This does not count ice that is attached to ice on land - no glaciers, ice shelves, or ice sheets here.  When sea ice is measured, a satellite measures the amount of ice in a particular area, essentially one square in a grid that covers the earth.  This measurement is returned as a percentage - so the percentage of water that is covered by ice in each particular box.  To get the total amount of ice, we say that each box that is more than 15% ice is ice covered.  Then we add up the areas of all the ice covered boxes.  15% may seem like a random threshold, but it is widely used in the scientific community as a standard.

In general, sea ice in the Arctic is very different from the Antarctic.  There are two main characteristics we can use to compare sea ice at each pole (indeed, any sort of environmental data).  When we measure sea ice, we can separate the data into two parts - a seasonal cycle, and a trend.  The seasonal cycle is just what it sounds like.  As it gets warm in summer, the ice decreases, and then increases again during winter.  Almost everything in the environment has a seasonal cycle.  We can calculate the seasonal cycle, and subtract it from the data.  What we are left with is the trend, or how the amount of sea ice changes from year to year.  In terms of magnitude, the seasonal cycle is typically much larger than the trend, so it is hard to see a trend without removing the seasonal cycle.

Sea ice seasonal cycles. The seasonal cycle is the same for every year data was taken.  Note that while both poles seems to have a similar amount of sea ice, the extremes in the Antarctic are larger than those in the Arctic (compare the maxes and then the mins).  Thus, the global seasonal cycle hits a minimum the same time as the Antarctic.  Figure 2 from Parkinson, 2014.

In the Antarctic, the seasonal cycle is large in magnitude.  In the (austral) summer, almost all of the ice melts away, but comes back again the following winter.  In terms of trend, different regions of the Antarctic have different trends.  If you average them out, the overall trend is slightly positive = increasing amounts of sea ice over time (years).

In the Arctic, the seasonal cycle is smaller in magnitude.  It is opposite sign of the Antarctic, because the seasons are switched going from southern to northern hemisphere.  Ice tends to grow slightly in winter, but sticks around during summer.  A good portion of the ice in the Arctic is multi-year ice - it has been around for several years.  The trend here is decidedly negative = decreasing amounts of sea ice over time.

Sea ice trend.  This is the part that is left over after removing the global seasonal cycle from the data.  The data is still noisy - not all points fall exactly on the trend line - but it is easy to see that the global trend is clearly negative.  (A statistical analysis shows that it is significant as well.)  Taken from Figure 3 of Parkinson, 2014.

Now, if we add the sea ice information from both poles together, we get an idea of what sea ice is doing globally.  Looking first at the seasonal cycle, the global cycle follows the same basic pattern as the Antarctic.  This makes sense.  The Antarctic cycle has more extremes than the Arctic one, and this dominates when you combine the data.  But, when you look at the global trend, it follows the negative pattern of the Arctic trend.  Since the Arctic is losing sea ice much faster than the Antarctic is gaining sea ice, it follows that globally sea ice is decreasing.

Thus, with a relatively simple (but necessary) analysis, the author showed that the negative sea ice trend in the Arctic is not canceled out by the positive sea ice trend in the Antarctic.  Overall, from a climate perspective, global sea ice is decreasing - a solid indicator of climate change.

You may have noticed the title of the paper specifically says a 35-yr record.  That's all the longer we have the satellite data to make these sorts of calculations.  It is entirely possible that the 35 year trends found here are not trends at all, but small sections of a much longer cycle.  This is why climate scientists use other sources of data and climate models to help confirm findings from the satellite record.

Working over the holidays

So, it's that time of year again.  Classes are over, finals are finished, and the campus is almost deserted.  The pressure is off, at least for the moment, and there is an overabundance of cookies, parties, and free food.

From PHD Comics

It sounds good, but I have mixed feelings about it.  I can't decide what I should be doing during this time.  School is technically no longer in session, but the University is still open...  Does this mean I am still expected to be working?  (I've decided that, since my credits for this semester are "research credits", and I get paid half time as a research assistant, that I should probably be working only half time now.)  There isn't really a set guideline on what is expected.

I could also use this time to be more productive.  It's quiet and peaceful, a perfect moment to catch up on research, put work into those side projects I never seem to have time for, and get myself organized.  But, do I only think this because I'm from the US and have been indoctrinated into the "work is life" culture?  Maybe a break from everything would be better for my health and sanity.  After all, it is a holiday - why would I be so crazy as to stay and work at this time?

If I take a serious break from grad school work, that doesn't necessarily mean less stress for me.  I'm just putting off the stress of research until I return to my office.  Not to mention that I would spend a good chunk of that time off catching up on cleaning and laundry.  Even planning to visit family and friends holds a similar level of stress - its just a different type.

So I'm torn.  I'm happy that its the holidays, and a lot of the little annoying things about grad school don't apply for a few weeks.  But its not clear to me that any of my options are winners.  In the end, I decided to compromise.  I'm spending some time with friends and family, but keeping part of the break for catching up on work.  To alleviate some of the normal pressure, I've been coming into my office every day, but not putting any expectations on what I get done.  If I feel motivated, great!  If I need a break and spend the whole day on social media sites, well, that's ok too.

In the end, when you don't hold a job that has defined hours, it's hard to define days off and vacation time.  So far, my mish-mash solution is (mostly) working for me.

Tell me, do you do anything differently over the holidays?  Is it a time to catch up on work or to put work aside?  I'd be interested in hearing other thoughts and plans, and maybe changing how I think about it.