Rodney Forster
@rodneyforster
Professor, Marine Science at the University of Hull.
Side-by-side comparison of North Sea surface temperatures for the end of July last year, a record warm year as a whole, with yesterday. Hashed area is above 18C. Southern North Sea slightly up on last year, northern parts markedly cooler.
it would be hard not to get that, or a similar, shot from any of the tourist beaches in the area. There were two enormous plumes of smoke heading out to sea.
yes. The centre of the very warm water east of Sardinia has a vertical profile like this today. Interesting feature of the Med is that the bottom waters at 2000m are warm compared to other deep ocean basins.
we got out to sea today, but were met by clouds over our transect line of three stations. Yesterday's SST image shows a large drop in temperature compared to the peak of 10th July. The hashed area is the remaining part warmer than 17C.
We are out measuring chlorophyll and temperature under the cloudy bit.
Tonight we head out to measure sea temperatures off the Yorkshire coast. We'll start off Whitby in the early hours, where the water looks to be 16-17C at the surface, then work our way south through the cooler patch off the Holderness, to finish Friday evening in the warm water off the Humber.
Scarborough always delivers on the views. Moonrise last night after a long day at Rememare conference. Tomorrow, we are at sea to take measurements of temperature and plankton along the Yorks coast.
some of this morning's temperature rises in northern France / Brittany are just incredible. Sarzeau has water on both sides but jumps from 25 to 35C in three hours.
@huubeggen.bsky.social the yellow surface streaks are evident in the North Sea again. A friend spotted some on a flight near Helgoland. They are spread over a wide area of the German Bight. Lots to see in today's S2 image.
This may well be the end of the line for the diminishing patch of intertidal fucoids that I have been tracking since 15 years. Low tides in the afternoon with full sun and punishing air temperatures for five days.
we should be out sampling next week. I talked to an angler on the beach at Spurn last week and they had problems with the brown 'weed' on the line. Sat image from two days ago still shows a strong Norfolk bloom presence and mainlyu south of the Humber.
Lovely 70km Dales loop with some heavy rain but mostly good and we raised our bird count for the weekend to 69.
Big Dales day. Part of the reason I moved to Yorkshire, watching TdF 2014. We did Buttertubs, Fleet Moss and Cote de Park Rash. Bird life incredible with curlew, lapwing, oiks, SEO, ring ouzel, dipper.
These blue beasties were swimming right at the surface in our offshore sample today.
Tracking Alister and Ben who have dodged the bank holiday traffic chaos and are out at sea collecting samples on the Scarborough line. Will they break last year's Secchi disc record at Station 1? I'll go into the lab later to work up the productivity samples when they arrive.
End of another middling #FPL season with 2,216 points for 736,501 place. Social media influence comes in around 2015 with algorithms and @bencrellin.bsky.social planners making it easier to stay in the top 10% and ending my up and down swings. Same tools make it very hard to break into the top 1%.
fascinating image of the Shetlands today with the little island of Ham leaving a wake in the large-scale internal wave field.
Cheeps coming through the office window this morning means a successful hatch. @ecoevoenviro.bsky.social 13 ducklings.
Easter Sunday tradition observed of watching Flanders, then a couple of hours fishing at the Lifeboat Quay. Nice bass came along at sunset.
Humber sampling day with a clear blue sky. Following the salinity gradient from Hull to Grimsby.
First day of this year's Humber oceanography course with a shake-down station inside Spurn then a run out to the windfarm, taking samples and doing CTDs along the way.
A good demonstration of how small the past few days of neap tides have been. Tidal calculators show this set to have the smallest tidal range of the 21st century!
here is today's #crapbirdpic. The mystery bird was singing merrily at the top of a bush on the bank of the Humber estuary.
the focus is on environmental impacts of offshore wind here at #osm26 this afternoon. Please come along to Ben Whitcombe's poster at 16:00 to hear about measurements around the world's largest offshore windfarm.
Repost with a photo of yours that would make a good album cover.
The brackish water boddens of north-eastern Germany are frozen in this Sentinel-2 image from last week. Ice break-up in the Spring was often followed by a short and intense bloom of crytophyte cells. Had some fun trying to sample water from under a metre of ice, back in the day.