When Science is as Science must be

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No hace falta recurrir al latín para entender que la ciencia (del latín scientĭa 'conocimiento') debe aumentar el conocimiento de todos. Es por ello, y aquí me repito como siempre, que a los científicos se nos exige que publiquemos en revistas especializadas los resultados de nuestro trabajo, lo cual como también os he contado no es una empresa tan fácil como uno pueda pensar en principio. Del hecho de que la ciencia deba suponer un avance del conocimiento también se deriva el que por ejemplo uno de los requisitos que debe cumplir la sección de Métodos de un artículo científico (para los que no estén familiarizados con el tema, en esta sección se cuenta cómo se ha llevado a cabo el estudio, es decir, con que datos, qué formulas o hipótesis de han aplicado, etc.) es que debe estar explicada de tal modo que el procedimiento aplicado por los autores puede ser puesto en práctica de nuevo por cualquier científico que lea el artículo. Aunque a veces uno piensa que está muy claro lo que ha hecho, siempre puede faltar algún pequeño detalle que le complica la existencia de una manera infinita al que quiere repetirlo. 

It is not necessary to resort to Latin to understand that Science (from latin scientĭa, meaning ‘knowledge’) must increase the knowledge of all of us. For this reason, and here I repeat myself –as usually-, scientists are required to publish their research in international research journals, which is not always an easy task as I have also told you. From the fact that science must conduct to an advance in knowledge, the ‘Methods’ section of a scientific article (for those not familiar with the topic, this mean the section that describes how the study was carried out, which data were used, which formulas or hypothesis were applied…) is required to be written in such a way that any other scientist will be able to repeat the procedure. Sometimes one can think that in her/his article is clear as water what she/he did, but just a small detail missing makes extremely difficult to repeat the experiment.

 

Sin embargo, ese no ha sido el caso en un artículo que he leído recientemente y que me ha permitido añadir otra pieza al puzzle que estoy tratando de resolver para el trabajo titulado ‘A downwards heat and salt injection mechanism linking mid-latitudes and Polar Regions in the North Atlantic’ del que ya os he hablado aquí y que presentaré dentro de un mes en la Conferencia IAPSO: 'North Atlantic and ClimateChange’.  

However, that was not the case of a paper that I recently read and that has allowed me to add another piece to the puzzle that I’m trying to resolve for the work ‘‘A downwards heat and salt injection mechanism linking mid-latitudes and Polar Regions in the North Atlantic’ –I told you about it here- and that I present presented in the Conference IAPSO: 'North Atlantic and Climate Change’. 

The Zenit, the Nadir and the Moon at its Perigee.

Fig. 1. Detail of a nautical chart of the Arctic Ocean. Source: Raquel Somavilla

Hay algo romántico, supongo que por eso de la aventura o de poder encontrar un tesoro pirata, en una carta náutica. Siempre me han encantado, pero más aún desde que estudie Navegación Marítima en la Universidad. Sí, eso es algo que se estudia en la Universidad también, como cualquier otra carrera, y como digo en mi pequeña introducción del blog he hecho un montón de cosas. Y lo cierto es que antes de estudiar Ciencias del Mar y hacer mi doctorado en Oceanografía, también estudie Navegación Marítima. Es algo que nunca estuvo en mis planes, pero las cosas surgieron así, y el hecho es que me gustó. Entre las asignaturas que más me gustaron está Navegación Astronómica. ¿Por qué me acuerdo ahora de esto? Pues porque hace tan sólo un par de días la luna ha estado es su perigeo, lo cual significa que ha estado a la distancia más corta de la tierra a la que se encuentra durante el año. De ahí, que al estar más cerca nos haya parecido visiblemente más grande. 

There is something very romantic in a nautical chart. I guess it exudes some kind of adventure feeling or that if you follow correctly you will find the Pirate’s treasure. They have always attracted me, but even more since I studied Maritime Navigation in the University. Yes, that is something that you can also study in the University as any other bachelor degree, at least in Spain. The point is, as I say in the short introduction of the blog, that I have done a lot of things, and this is one of them that I did before to study Marine Science and do my PhD in Oceanography. In fact, it was never in my plans, but things went like that, and the true is that I liked. Among the subjects that I liked the most is Astronomical Navigation. Why do I suddenly talk about this? Well, because just a pair of days ago the Moon was in its Perigee. It means that it was in its closer position to the Earth during the year. Because it was closer to us, we could have the impression that it was bigger than normally. 

About ‘NYT: Global Warming Taking a Break’

These are some brief comments to a post posting the New York Times article 'Global Warming Taking a Break'. Here, the link to Daily KOS where you can read the comments to this article. I would be happy to leave my comments directly there, but, to be honest, I have not been able to do so.

First, I agree completely with you, marsanges, that a very important paragraph of the article is ‘So the real question is where all that heat is going, if not to warm the surface. And a prime suspect is the deep ocean. Our measurements there are not good enough to confirm it absolutely, but a growing body of research suggests this may be an important part of the answer’.  By the way, marsanges, many thanks for leaving the link to my blog. I think you were especially thinking to leave the link to the post ‘High motivation’ where I wrote a pair of months ago about this topic.

Coming back to the NYT article, it is also important to note, as the article also points, that modeling work suggest that pauses in warming lasting a couple of decades should not surprise us. The work titled 'Model-based evidence of deep-ocean heat uptake during surface-temperature hiatus periods' by Meehl  et al (2011) and published in Nature Climate Change is a very good example.

I’m sorry MGross but I don’t agree with your comment ‘deep ocean temperatures have barely moved, and the data set isn't very good (due to the difficulty of collecting samples)’. There are plenty of recent works describing the rising temperatures of the deep ocean. About deep waters in the southern Ocean, I would recommend any of the papers published by Purkey and Johnson since 2010. I have a paper under review now in GRL on the same topic but for deep waters of the Arctic Mediterranean. I hope it will be accepted, and if it is the case it will be published with open access and I will be happy to leave you here the link.

It will be a pleasure if I can answer any question or comment that you can have both here or in the post previous High motivation.

Dedicated to marsanges: R.V. Polarstern in the last ice station close to the North Pole during the Arctic Cruise XXVII/3.  Source: Raquel Somavilla