Steve Bloom reporting from 2014 AGU FM

A while ago, commenter and now guest blogger Steve Bloom offered to visit the 2014 American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting, starting tomorrow and ending on Friday, and report for the ASIB on interesting presentations concerning the Arctic.

Unfortunately the AGU Public Information Office has turned down our request for a press pass, even though the Arctic Sea Ice Blog seems to fulfil all the requirements for press credentials. This was somewhat surprising, disappointing even, also given the AGU's wish to "convey understanding clearly and accurately, both to decision makers and to the general public", as expressed in last year's AGU position statement on climate change. What better way than letting the general public report on their Fall Meeting? Or at least the Arctic part of it.

I figured it would be a real shame to miss out on Steve's offer, especially as winter is a quiet time on the ASIB, and so I decided to pay for his entry to the entire meeting, hoping the good folks of the AGU Public Information Office change their minds in the meantime and issue a press pass après la lettre.

It seems their major objection is that Steve hasn't written any official guest blogs yet for the ASIB, despite his comments sometimes amounting to the same, and despite Steve being a veteran and prolific commenter in the climate blogosphere, always linking to relevant science. In short, it's a case of chicken and egg.

Well, that egg is showing its first cracks. Steve will start reporting on the AGU Fall Meeting, as of tomorrow, and then follow that up with some summaries in weeks to come. In the meantime he has asked me to post the following text:

Hi folks, as previously discussed I will be attending and covering the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting to be held this week in San Francisco. This annual meeting is the largest scientific conference in the world, in particular for the topics of interest to ASIBers. 

The plan is to focus on material consistent with this blog's focus, i.e. not just Arctic sea ice but polar climate issues generally. As I have a personal interest in circulation changes and paleoclimate, expect some of that as well.

The scientific program can be accessed here, so please have at. Direct Arctic sea ice material will all be in the cryosphere listings. But even with the constrained material I want to focus on, there's a firehose of information available. I'm inevitably going to miss a lot of important and interesting stuff, but I'd like help from ASIB readers in order to prioritize. So please look through the program and put your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

TBC, my plan is to not do any detailed science posts during the week, but instead do daily summary posts of what I saw and heard and gather material for maybe a half dozen posts to be written and posted in the month or so following the conference.

Important note: I expect to be able to look at the comments here only at night (Pacific time) since with 20,000+ attendees there will be tremendous competition for wifi.

Thanks in advance to all!

Thanks, Steve. Good luck and have fun.

Comments

[Werther]

....
C11A-0341Effects of the Sea Ice Floe Size Distribution on Polar Ocean Properties and Air-Sea Exchange Christopher Horvat and Eli Tziperman, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States

Hi Steve,
Good luck and have a great time! I started to sort through the monday sessions and this contribution above caught my interest. It seems to relate to the quality of the ice-pack, to what I've been checking on MODIS for some years now. If mean floe size is diminishing, I'd be very interested in the feedback that has on short term volume and extent numbers. I wonder if it could have had an influence on '13 and '14 low summer melt.

Best,
Werther

[dominik lenné]

This is really exciting! Very good decision!

[D]

Let me know where I can find you Monday or Tuesday morning.

[Realglacier]

I will be at Moscone West 3005 this morning Global Climate change and cryospheric systems

[Ghoti Of Lod]

Clearly the AGU has a long way to go to "convey understanding clearly and accurately, both to decision makers and to the general public" They still refuse to make web streams freely available to the public. All 6 "virtual AGU" streams display:

This entry is only available with a premium ticket.
Please purchase one

I find this particularly rude given that virtually all the AGU funding comes either directly or indirectly from public sources.

The only streams freely available are for press conferences.

[jdallen_wa]

Ghoti, I have to agree. Limiting the distribution of information is absolutely at cross purposes of improving communication.

[Ghoti Of Lod]

On a positive note the restriction meant I watched the press conferences which included topics I'd never have chosen. As a result I learned new and interesting things I'd have missed. Plus there was one on the Greenland melt water situation which was eye-opening to me.

[Werther]

The first video press conference I could find illuminates the work done last summer abord the Polarstern near NE Greenland/Fram Strait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arA98s5nj5I

At app. 13:00 min it gets interesting as Dr Antje Boetius explains the scientific findings. The part 18-20:00 presents some great footage of the underside of the floes. Enjoy!