CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Céline Heuzé

(Dr) Céline Heuzé is an assistant professor in climatology at the University of Gothenburg, in southwest Sweden. She is a polar physical oceanographer primarily focussing on the transport of heat by global deep waters and their interaction with the cryosphere. To study them she uses mostly global coupled models, but also goes at sea to collect new measurements. She completed her PhD in 2015 from the University of East Anglia, UK, and before that studied hydrodynamics engineering in France. She tweets as @ClnHz and blogs on PolarFever when at sea.

Image of the Week — The ice blue eye of the Arctic

February 24, 2017
Image of the Week — The ice blue eye of the Arctic
Ice floe with a melt pond (light blue patch), observed in Nares Strait , in August 2015 from I/B Oden [Credit: C. Heuzé]

“Positive feedback” is a term that regularly pops up when talking about climate change. It does not mean good news, but rather that climate change causes a phenomenon which it turns exacerbates climate change. The image of this week shows a beautiful melt pond in the Arctic sea ice, which is an example of such positive feedback. What is a melt pond? The Arctic sea ice is typically non-smooth, and ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – On the tip of Petermann’s (ice) tongue

January 27, 2017
Image of the Week – On the tip of Petermann’s (ice) tongue
Petermann's ice tongue. [Credit: C. Heuzé]

5th August 2015, 10:30 in the morning. The meeting had to be interrupted to take this picture. We were aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden, and were now closer than anyone before to the terminus of Petermann Glacier in northwestern Greenland. But we had not travelled that far just for pictures… Petermann’s ice tongue Petermann is one of Greenland’s largest “marine terminating glaciers”. As the name ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Allez Halley!

December 16, 2016

On the Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica, a never-observed-before migration has just begun. As the pale summer sun allows the slow ballet of the supply vessels to restart, men and machines alike must make the most of the short clement season. It is time. At last, the Halley VI research station is on the move! Halley, sixth of its name Since 1956, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has maintained a resea ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – What an ice hole!

November 25, 2016
Image of the Week – What an ice hole!
A schematic representation of what causes polynyas to open [Credit: Céline Heuzé]

Over the summer, I got excited… the Weddell Polynya was seemingly re-opening! ”The what?” asked my new colleagues. So today, after brief mentions in past posts, it is time to explain what a polynya is. Put it simply, a polynya, from the Russian word for “ice hole”, is a hole in the sea-ice cover. That means that in the middle of winter, the sea ice locally and naturally opens and reveals the ocean ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — FRISP 2016

October 7, 2016
Image of the Week — FRISP 2016
Group picture of the FRISP 2016 meeting [Credit: Anna Wåhlin]

The Forum for Research into Ice Shelf Processes, aka FRISP, is an international meeting bringing together glaciologists and oceanographers. There are no parallel sessions; everyone attends everyone else’s talk and comment on their results, and the numerous breaks and long dinners encourage new and interdisciplinary collaborations. In fact, each year, a few presentations are the result of a previou ...[Read More]

Water Masses “For Dummies”

September 14, 2016
Water Masses “For Dummies”

Polar surface water, circumpolar deep water, dense shelf water, North Atlantic deep water, Antarctic bottom water… These names pop in most discussions about the ice-ocean interaction and how this will change in a warming climate, but what do they refer to? In our second “For Dummies” article, we shall give you a brief introduction to the concept of “water mass”, explain how to differentiate water ...[Read More]

Image of the week – The winds of summer (and surface fluxes of winter)

July 22, 2016
Image of the week – The winds of summer (and surface fluxes of winter)
Representation of the (a) summer and (b) winter oceanic circulation within the Adélie region, East Antarctica. MGT = Mertz Glacier Tongue (red dot on the Antarctica map); other acronyms indicate different water masses: Antarctic Surface Waters (AASW), Modified Circumpolar Deep Water (MCDW*), Dense Shelf Water (DSW) and Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) explained below. [Credit: reprinted with permission from Snow et al. (2016, figure 4) ]. Click here here to enlarge the image.

Antarctica is separated from the deep Southern Ocean by a shallow continental shelf. Waters are exchanged between the deep ocean and the shallow shelf, forming the Antarctic cross-shelf circulation: Very dense waters leave the shelf as Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) that will then flow at the bottom of all oceans. Meanwhile, relatively warm water from the Southern Ocean, Modified Circumpolar Deep W ...[Read More]