Rob Larter
Polar marine scientist. UK Science Lead in Science Coordination Office of International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration. Views are my own.
On Mastodon @PoLaRobs@fediscience.org
- 🧵🧪🌊 It's the start of winter in Antarctica, and at last new sea ice has started forming on the Bellingshausen Sea continental shelf (lower left in sea ice concentration images here). This ice growth is later than last year, and later even than that following the record low sea ice extent in 2023.
- Reposted by Rob Larter🔥 "The Reform company, sorry party, has already seen four of their new cohort announce that they can’t or won’t represent them in the council chamber, decisions that in some cases will cost local government tens of thousands of pounds."
- How on Earth was Richard Tyce just allowed to spout a bunch of nonsense on a "political slot" by @channel4news.bsky.social without any fact checking? Just because someone has registered a political party and some people have voted for them doesn't absolve them of an obligation to tell the truth.
- Just spent a couple of enjoyable days walking along the Norfolk Coast Path between Wells-Next-The-Sea and Blakeney and observing the extensive saltmarsh. The saltmarsh is an important wildlife habitat and a valuable natural defence against sea-level rise.
- Reposted by Rob LarterA victory for the federal scientific workforce! We could not stand by while this irreparable harm continues at NSF, NOAA and all our scientific agencies. TODAY the judge granted our request to temporarily HALT the mass firings at federal agencies under Trump’s Executive Order.
- Reposted by Rob Larter🚨Since 1976, Earth's glaciers have lost 9000 billion tonnes of water, contributing 25 mm to global sea-level rise. Over 40 % of this loss has happened in the last decade... ...and 6 % occurred in 2023 alone!!, in a record-shattering year of glacier ice loss essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...
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- Reposted by Rob LarterA reinsurance industry group began pushing to protect NOAA's billion-dollar disaster list back in February -- because it helps convince “the public and public officials to embrace resilience," driving down insurance costs. Story w/ @weathersullivan.bsky.social (free link):
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- Travelling today by train for a meeting tomorrow and Friday in Bonn. First stage is the 10.44 from Cambridge to London King's Cross.
- Reposted by Rob Larter"Data product" is science language for a processed dataset that is organised, checked and ready for sharing. This announcement from the USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration means they're ending snow/ice data sharing. Globally critical data streams on the polar regions will just stop.
- This is horrible. I don't even know what to say. Some of our most key polar data. "As a result, the level of services for affected products below will be reduced to Basic—meaning they will remain accessible but may not be actively maintained, updated, or fully supported." nsidc.org/data/user-re...
- Reposted by Rob LarterPotentially no updates to sea ice indices coming from the US for a while... this is horribly damaging to global climate science. Yes, there are EU and Japanese alternatives to some of these, but multi-dataset inter-comparisons are a critical part of assessing reliability and confidence in the data.
- This is horrible. I don't even know what to say. Some of our most key polar data. "As a result, the level of services for affected products below will be reduced to Basic—meaning they will remain accessible but may not be actively maintained, updated, or fully supported." nsidc.org/data/user-re...
- Reposted by Rob Larter5y ago! youtu.be/XeU7xLhiVj8?... feat an angle of repose of geoscientists incl @seismatters.bsky.social @chrisdclark.bsky.social @janinekrippner.bsky.social @geophysichick.bsky.social @volcanojess.com @phaneritic.bsky.social @xenolith.bsky.social @bedforms.bsky.social etc & a wicked bassoon solo 🧪⚒️
- Two instances of tragic idiocy. The Earth's climate won't stop careering towards dangerous thresholds just because people are stopped from measuring and reporting on what is happening. nsidc.org/data/user-re... thebulletin.org/2025/05/how-...
- Reposted by Rob LarterGlobal atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 426.13 in February 2025, 3.32 ppm higher than a year ago. At this rate it will exceed 450 ppm in the early 2030s. This reverses the Earth system’s cooling trend of the past 16 million years, since the Miocene climate optimum gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/...
- Five of the thirteen wind turbines that make up the Wadlow Wind Farm, a few km to the southeast of Cambridge, in full flow yesterday in 15 mph winds. At this wind speed these five turbines would have been generating a combined output of about 10 MW, enough to power several thousand homes.
- Having walked along Devil's Dyke recently, this Sunday I walked along the southern half of another, similar Saxon earthwork, the Fleam Dyke. This lies just a few km southeast of Cambridge, between Balsham and Fulbourn.
- Reposted by Rob LarterReform UK says it’ll ‘reset’ Britain inch by inch. But to what? Smog, slums and Section 28? Their nostalgic fantasy hides a dangerous truth. 👉 Read The Bear's clear-eyed breakdown of what’s really on offer:
- 🧵🧪🏆🥇We've done it! We've raised atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to the point where, for the first time in human history, they have exceeded 430 ppm every day for a full week. It had become fairly certain that we'd reach this landmark sometime this month, but even so it's a fairly sobering moment.
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- Reposted by Rob LarterI think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.
- 🧵🧪🌊 Further to my post yesterday about the lack of new sea ice formation in the Bellingshausen Sea (lower left in maps here), the region has now been almost ice free for more than three months. Map on left shows sea ice concentration on 1st Feb. Map on right shows concentration on 1st May.
- This is almost unbelievable. It's now May and there is still virtually no new sea ice forming in the Bellingshausen Sea (lower left region in image). Image showing sea ice concentration derived from AMSR satellite data is by Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen, Germany.
- It turns out there was a small, local tsunami wave. It measured 14 cm height when it reached a research station with a tide gauge on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula (the Ukrainian Vernadsky Station, which once upon a time was the @bas.ac.uk Faraday Station).
- Large (M7.4), shallow (~10km) convergent earthquake at 12:59 UTC today off southern tip of South America. Tsunami warnings have been issued. Hope these turn out to be precautionary. Map and moment tensor from USGS.
- It's been a busy week at #EGU2025 - stimulating, enjoyable, challenging and exhausting. I've seen a lot of interesting presentations and no doubt missed a larger number I should have attended, but now it's time to head home.
- Reposted by Rob LarterLooking up ... Yesterday marks the first *daily* Mauna Loa reading above 431 ppm since record keeping began in 1958. The Climate Casino put the Over/Under for the *monthly* max CO2 this year at 430.70 ppm. Stay tuned! gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/...
- I didn't expect to see Tony Blair coming out as a fossil fool. Are vested interests involved or is he just poorly informed? Climate plan based on phasing out fossil fuels doomed to fail, says Tony Blair www.theguardian.com/environment/20 www.theguardian.com/environment/...
- Excellent presentation this morning at #EGU2025 by Marie Cavitte on the many reasons to safeguard the polar regions from dangerous geoengineering, based on the in-review paper by Martin Siegert and co-authors. www.researchgate.net/publication/...
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- I think this post on Mastodon tells a truth that may be uncomfortable for many on this platform to hear. mato.social/@josemurilo/...
- On my way to #EGU2025, where I'll present some of the multibeam swath bathymetry and sub-bottom acoustic profiler data we collected in the Bellingshausen Sea two years ago as part of the CoReBell project on RV Polarstern expedition PS134. meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/EGU25-... 1/n
