Scoping Our Planet: Opportunity seeds

Unlocking Ground-Breaking Observations of Antarctic Mixing With Legacy Data
Project lead: Kathryn Gunn, University of Southampton
Team: Bieito Fernández Castro, Alberto Naveira Garabato, + Alessandro Silvano, University of Southampton

Kathryn + team will combine seismic reflection with hydrographic data to assess the role of ocean mixing on Antarctic ice melt and sea level rise. The melting of Antarctic ice could raise global sea levels by up to 55 metres. While we know that ocean heat drives ice melt, the difficulty of consistently observing Antarctic waters has limited our understanding of how this process is regulated. In particular, the role of mixing – the stirring and blending of different water masses – remains largely unknown. One way to overcome this limitation is to use existing data in innovative ways. Kathryn + team’s vision is to tap into a 50-year dataset of circumpolar coverage, offering a new way to measure ocean mixing.

“I’m excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what we know about the ocean, especially around Antarctica. The opportunity space encourages bold, unconventional approaches, which perfectly aligns with our research.”

Photonics for portable isotopologue and ppt sensing
Project lead: Peter Nisbet-Jones, Twin Paradox Labs + Christopher Bridges, University of Surrey
Team: Colin Chau, Twin Paradox Labs

Peter + Christopher are collaborating to combine radio hardware from mobile phones with Twin Paradox Labs’ digital laser system. The aim is to create the optics and electronics needed for NICE-OMHS spectroscopy in an ultra portable size, weight, and power format. The project’s successful completion should pave the way for sensors that can fingerprint methane emissions, yet also operate autonomously in the real world, not just in high-precision laboratories.

“Scoping Our Planet gives us a fantastic opportunity to build precision methane instruments – after all, you can’t change what you can’t measure.”

Antarctic explorations: where does glacial meltwater go?
Project lead: Laura Cimoli, University of Cambridge
Team: Karen Heywood, University of East Anglia | Alex Brearley + Kate Hendry, British Antarctic Survey

Laura + team are setting out to better understand how glacial meltwater is exported from the Antarctic glacial margins to the open ocean, as well as the consequences of such processes for local ocean circulation and biogeochemistry. Reducing uncertainty in future climate projections, such as global sea level rise, is one of the largest challenges facing the science community. Antarctica is currently losing ice mass, which contributes to sea level rise, but the processes are poorly understood. The Bellingshausen Sea in West Antarctica is particularly sparsely observed because it’s inaccessible and covered in sea ice for much of the year. However, new instrumented autonomous underwater vehicles are now available that enable cost-efficient and low-carbon measurement campaigns. This project will provide the means to gather new observations in the Bellingshausen Sea, a crucial pathway for glacial meltwater from the rapidly melting West Antarctic Peninsula.

“Scoping Our Planet will allow us to do hardcore research in one of the most extreme environments – the oceans around Antarctica – to observe never-before-explored regions. We’ll be able to gain much-needed information in a region that’s experiencing rapid + drastic climatic changes.”

Next-CAM
Project lead: Ronald Clark, University of Oxford
Team: Ed Gryspeerdt, Imperial College London

Ronald + Ed are collaborating on the Next generation Cloud and Atmospheric Modelling using 3D vision (NextCAM) project. They’re aiming to develop advanced computer vision AI for creating detailed, real-time models of the sky from visible and infrared camera arrays. The ultimate goal is to develop a unified, high-resolution model of the atmosphere and cloud states, which will serve as a powerful tool for advancing atmospheric science.

“Bringing together this range of high-risk, high-reward projects is one of the first steps to solving one of the greatest challenges of our time: climate change.”

Clouds Decoded
Project lead: Jacqueline Campbell, Asterisk Labs

Clouds Decoded is the first project undertaken by Jacqueline’s new research laboratory. Jacqueline sees enormous value in data sources that have long existed, but long been neglected: namely clouds, which are viewed by Earth observation scientists as an obstacle to be avoided or removed. However, the millions of cloudy images left to gather dust in the archive are, in fact, a goldmine of information. The goal of this project is to revolutionise our understanding of turbulence and phase heterogeneity in clouds in order to better understand the most pernicious and critical unknown in climate forecasts.

“Being selected has allowed us to start a mission-driven, not-for-profit research organisation, operating in a way that’s entirely different from what would’ve been possible in a traditional academic or industry setting.”

WAVECLIM
Project lead: Serge Guillas, University College London
Team: Christine Gommenginger, Ben Timmermans, + David McCann, National Oceanography Centre | Jack Dignan, UCL | Frederic Dias, ENS Paris-Saclay

Serge, Christine + team are collaborating on a project that builds on novel observations of coastal wave breaking, fitting a machine learning model to the input-output relationship and including this in a climate model. They highlight that while ocean wave breaking is a crucial process in the climate system, the area has been underserved because coastal seas are complex, diverse, and considered too small to influence the global climate. Characterising coastal wave breaking is challenging and observations are rare because these often harsh environments require specialised rugged sensor technology. This project seeks to better observe and model wave breaking at the coastline to determine its potential impact in global climate models.

“The topic is audacious because it challenges the idea that coastal-specific processes have negligible impacts on global scales. Outside ARIA, funding for audacious + risky research is scarce.”