Chat

[Randi]

I was at a friend's for dinner and his son was visiting. The son knows I work on Old Weather, so he was asking me what I was working on. I started talking about Lakawanna's adventures, and I didn't realize I was saying we did such and such until he commented on it

[Michael]

Sign of OW Addiction???

[Michael]

Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis

Sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent continues to be exceptionally low. Antarctic ice extent as of mid-July is more than 2.6 million square kilometers (1.00 million square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average, an area nearly as large as Argentina or the combined areas of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. It is 1.6 million square kilometers (618,000 square miles) below the previous record low extent for the date, set in 2022 (Figure 4a). Low ice extent is present nearly everywhere, but particularly in the northern Weddell Sea, western Ross Sea, and southern Bellingshausen Sea (Figure 4b). Above average extent is prevalent in the Amundsen Sea.

The research community has been discussing the causes for the sudden turnabout in Antarctic sea ice extent, from a weakly positive linear trend from 1978 to 2015 to a strongly negative trend since 2016; and the events of 2022 and 2023 have garnered much attention. Many recent studies point to changing conditions in the upper ocean layer. Warm water from the north has mixed into this layer, which tends to increase the stratification of the ocean. This appears to coincide with when sea ice went from record high extents to low extents beginning in September 2016, and still lower extents in 2023.

[Morgan]

Stuart- I had also hear of the Greenland ice core. I spend lots of my "downtime" (time when doing dishes or watering garden...) thinking about OW issues. The ice core was one I spent some downtime reviewing when I first heard of it... talking to myself about storing the core. The conversation went something like this:
1. Researcher complaining to Administrator: "We are running out of room for storing samples." Reply "Can't you just get rid of that huge chunk of ice and make yourself lots of room.
2. Caterer to anyone, "Let me just go get some more ice or the retirement party."
3. Janitor to himself- "Hmm, where should I plug in the vacuum cleaner? Ah, I can just unplug this freeze for a while- I will need to remember to plug it back in."

[pommystuart]

Nice one Morgan.

Our ABC has some good in depth articles.
Unfortunately most of the ones which have some connection to OW not bearing good news.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-24/ ... /102635204

[Randi]

The last of the Thames barges race to save British maritime history

[Michael]

[pommystuart]

Nice, I hope they keep going.

[studentforever]

Oh dear. What can happen when men are isolated, in this case in Alaska on Coast Guard cutter Pioneer, summer 1924

12.15am, a fight occurred between JE Johnson, Ship’s Cook 1 class, and J Wells, Seaman, in which Johnson struck Wells with his fist and after Wells had stabbed Johnson with a penknife also hit Wells over the head with a coal shovel. Both men had been drinking. Wells bruised about face with cut over eye. Johnson a four inch cut on chest wall.

Both men on sick list until further record.

[Michael]

[Michael]

We anchored in one of 18 Mud Bays...

Code: Select all

$ ak -tg mud bay
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ID       | Country             | Location                           | Lat    |     Long| Feature   |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5863566  , United States       , Guyot Bay                          ,  59.954, -141.695, BAY
                                 -> Mud Bay
5555866  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  59.160, -135.376, PPL
5555867  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  55.417, -131.765, BAY
5555869  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  55.084, -132.627, BAY
5555870  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  57.179, -135.608, BAY
5555871  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  58.202, -135.996, BAY
5555872  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  56.453, -132.604, BAY
5555873  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  56.694, -133.761, BAY
5869377  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  55.349, -160.497, BAY
5869378  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  55.913, -160.947, BAY
5869379  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  55.803, -160.451, BAY
5869381  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  59.635, -151.491, BAY
5869382  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  56.312, -158.430, BAY
5869380  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  59.317, -158.417, BAY
                                 -> Doris Bay
5555865  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  59.157, -135.350, BAY
                                 -> Flat Bay;Nachk'u
5869383  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  60.554, -145.839, BAY
                                 -> Hyde Bay
5555868  , United States       , Mud Bay                            ,  55.421, -131.768, PPL
                                 -> Totem Lodge;Totem Village
5555874  , United States       , Mud Bay River                      ,  58.176, -135.959, STM
                                 -> Hyde Bay River

[Randi]

Clear as mud

[Michael]

[pommystuart]

Burton Island. 14/03/1954. Long Beach Cal.

0005 Discovered LCVP and punt missing from pier forward of the ship.
Ingram, J.G. 55 21 63 BM3 USN and Epperly J.J. 372 40 11 SN USN was missing from ship.
Sent MAA and duty OOD to look for the boats and missing men.
0015 Ingram,J.G. 55 21 63 BM3 USN returned on board drunk and in improper uniform, was placed on report for breaking restriction and stealing government property. Was sent below and a watch posted on his bunk.
0025 Boats were found adrift and returned to their moorings.
Epperly was brought aboard drunk, dirty and disorderly in custody of Aderkin, R.L. EMC USN was turned over to duty hospital corpsman and duty MAA after being placed on report for breaking restrictions and stealing government property.

[Either a long time noticing the boats missing or the sailors hit some strong drinks.]

[Michael]

[Randi]

“The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.”

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

[pommystuart]

Not sure if I am an optimist or pessimist after reading this.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/oceans ... s-century

I wonder if this line refers to our OW contribution??

"Their modelling of the AMOC collapse draws on 150 years of Atlantic sea surface temperatures from 1870 to 2020, as a “fingerprint” for the process. "

[Randi]

Celebrate the US Coast Guard's birthday with these fun facts

[Michael]

We received this note from a researcher at the National Archives. You may be want to listen to the podcast she mentioned...

Hi everyone,

I thought I would mention something that is not directly related to the study of past weather observations, but involves digitized whaling logbooks and transcriptions, most likely done by Old Weather volunteers.

Yesterday I was listening to Freakonomics, a radio program on NPR, and heard a segment on how two professors used the data pulled from digitized logbooks of whaling ships to study racial diversity and team performance on those ships. If interested, you can listen to the podcast here, starting at around the 17:50 minute mark.

I know that Old Weather volunteers transcribe not only U. S. logbooks but also whaling logbooks, so I thought the Old Weather team would be interested to know that their work was featured in an economics research paper and a popular radio program. That podcast made me wonder whether there are any stories of using the data pulled from U.S. logbooks (Navy, Coast Guard, and Coast and Geodetic Survey ships) for purposes other than the study of past weather records. The only such story I know of is about researchers at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK, who are using digitized U. S. Navy muster rolls (from the NARA-NOAA partnership) to study race, class and ethnicity in the United States Navy during the Civil War period.

[Maikel]

Hi everyone,
...

That podcast made me wonder whether there are any stories of using the data pulled from U.S. logbooks (Navy, Coast Guard, and Coast and Geodetic Survey ships) for purposes other than the study of past weather records. The only such story I know of is about researchers at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK, who are using digitized U. S. Navy muster rolls (from the NARA-NOAA partnership) to study race, class and ethnicity in the United States Navy during the Civil War period.

You might be interested in reading Old Weather and More.

Though not related to the US logs, and not very scientific, but Old Weather related nonetheless, we also know of a person who visited all the ports his grandfather had visited while serving in the Royal Navy during World War 1.
To plan his trip he used information from the edited logs published at naval-history.net and Journey Plotter.