In a little more than a month, we’ll be joining Melita and Ariadna in Croatia for the second ARAMACC Summer School, held at the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries in Split.  As you’ll see from the pictures below, the Institute has found a prime situation for itself right at the end of the promontory with stunning views across the bay to the offshore islands.  Right, that’s the end of the travelogue – now skip past the pictures for what we’ll be doing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As before, there will be two parts to this summer school, a sclero-specific part and a workshop on general skills associated with research.

The sclero-specific part this time focuses on “Sclerochronology and Numerical Modelling”; we’ll be discussing how to use sclerochronological time series as a tool for constraining and validating numerical climate models.  Trainers will be two experienced climate modellers from within ARAMACC, Eduardo Zorita from the Institute of Coastal Research and Odd Helge Otterå from the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Bergen.  We will also welcome as guest trainers Paul Halloran from University of Exeter (Paul is the supervisor of Sarah Holmes who you met at NIOZ) and Ivica Vilibić, a physical oceanography expert who is based at IOF.

Our general workshop is about “Dissemination, Communication and Public Outreach”.  This aspect is increasingly important with the plethora of communication tools now available, and communication of science has moved a long way from the old model, with publication of results in blogs and open access journals making publication a much more fluid and interactive process than it used to be.

We’ll discuss the wide range of media that are now available for communication of science, presentation of science at outreach events, presentations to general non-specialist audiences and the importance of ensuring public access to data as soon as possible after publication.  Trainers from within ARAMACC will include our host Melita Peharda, James Scourse with his famous presentation on the various Ming controversies, Michael Carroll from Akvaplan-niva, and myself (yes, really!!) on the use of social media and, I hope, Eduardo again talking about the blog he is involved with, Die Klimazwiebal.  Our guest trainer will be Ana Bedalov who organizes the annual Researchers’ Nights in Split (see 20 seconds into the clip).  In addition, Carin will be joining us from Bergen to help with all parts of the workshop.

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Outline of programme

Below is the outline schedule for the various parts of the Summer School and the main people involved in each part.  Dissemination in green, modelling in orange, presentations in blue.  Carin, Melita and myself will also be around for the week to assist as required

 

Monday 9/5 morning         

Writing a press release, led by James

Monday 9/5  afternoon

Talk by Paul Halloran on epistemological questions about modelling

Presentations of their own records by Amy, Fabian, Tamara, Stella and Juan

 

Tuesday 10/5

Ivica Vilibić on regional ocean models

Model-proxy comparisons using students’ data
 

 

Wednesday 11/5 morning 

Odd Helge on global ocean models and decadal variability

Eduardo on global climate models and climate iof the past millennium

Wednesday 11/5 afternoon

Interactive exercises using the press release

Talk by Ana Bedalov 

 

Thursday 12/5 morning      

Science communication horror stories (James on Ming and Michael on the Bermuda Triangle)

More interactive exercises

 

Thursday 12/5 afternoon

More interactive exercises

Social media (led by Paul B, Michael and Eduardo)

 

Friday 13/5 all day    

Student Presentations (led by Melita)

Each student will give two short presentations:

(i) focusing on the administration side, presenting your strategy for completing your PhD

(ii) focusing on the science, presenting a first version of your talk for Portland for discussion and a short overview of any other findings.

 

Looking forward to another exciting week!

Paul

Posted by Paul

The next ARAMACC training event isn’t just a workshop.  It isn’t even a double workshop.  This time we are offering us a TRIPLE workshop featuring “Ecology of long-lived bivalves”, “Attracting funding” and “Introduction to R”.  With Rob Witbaard leading, this will take place at the world-famous Netherlands Institute of Sea Research (NIOZ) on the breezy and bracing North Sea resort island of Texel.  With this workshop happening in the last week of October, it could well be exceptionally breezy!

The workshop takes us from the welcome dinner on Sunday 25th through to Friday 30th October – or the following Monday for those who are braving the optional “R” workshop: the full schedule is here.

The workshops will feature some exciting and distinguished guests:

Dr Bryan Black from University of Texas at Austin, dendrochronologist, sclerochronologist and proven expert in the integration of ecological variables to build multicentennial climate reconstructions.  Bryan will be introducing us to the use of multivariate analysis in ecology and leading an exercise in the application of multivariate methods to existing datasets.

 

 

Dr David Reynolds from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Cardiff, who is currently aiming to publish the first 1,000-year annually resolved marine temperature record and who has just obtained funding from NERC for a pan-Atlantic sclerochronology project (CLAM – Climate of the LAst Millennium).  David will be contributing to the grant capture workshop.

 

Dr Marc Lavaleye, a specialist in the ecology of cold water coral reefs, will give the keynote talk at the start of the workshop on Monday.

 

 

 

 

In addition some of the ARAMACC regulars will be offering their expertise, with Julian introducing us to taxonomy and bivalve identification (useful as I suspect some of us can only identify about two species), while Chris, Paul and Rob will describe their experiences obtaining – or more often failiong to obtain – grant funding.  We’ll also – I hope (weather permitting) – get out of the classroom, when Rob takes us to sample Cerastoderma on the tidal flat.