If what’s been happening to the ecology of the North Sea had happened in a forest, we’d be shocked, according to researchers writing in the December issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Hidden from view, the ecology has undergone a radical shift in the last half century, with jellyfish and crabs replacing cod and flatfish at the top of the food web.  

Richard Kirby, a University of Plymouth, United Kingdom, marine biologist, and Gregory Beaugrand, an oceanologist at the Lille University of Science and Technology, France, analyzed decades of climate and ecosystem data. They found that upper layers of the North Sea have warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to disrupt aquatic organisms and change the food web. The distribution of species has changed from plankton up to the predators. As a result the ecological roles once played by cod and flatfish have been replaced by jellyfish and bottom-dwelling crabs.

A news story in Wired Science says the North Sea provides about 5 percent of the global fish harvest, down significantly from what it once yielded. While commercial fishing has exerted pressure on the cod and flatfish, the researchers say the small changes in the water temperatures can have an impact as severe as overfishing.

The data was compiled monthly from the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey, a device dragged behind commercial ships. Seawater enters the device and plankton is retained on a band of silk gauze mesh.

Kirby and Beaugrand believe their findings have implications for all oceans as global warming creates shifts in marine food webs everywhere.

The Inuit people living in Canada’s North are transitioning from a diet of fish and caribou to one of prepackaged foods and soft drinks, with a resulting “spike in blood pressure,” according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

Real data and citizen science projects are wonderful ways to engage students, but they often are best conducted during the fall and spring. What’s a teacher to do in the colder months of winter?

 The new Snowtweets Project from the University of Waterloo has one answer. The Snowtweets Project provides a way for people interested in snow measurements to quickly broadcast their own snow depth measurements to the web. These data are then picked up by our database and mapped in near real time. The project uses the micro-blogging site Twitter as its data broadcasting scheme.

Participants can use a data visualization tool called Snowbird that allows them to explore the reported snow depths around the globe. The viewer shows where the reports are located and how much snow there is at each reported site.

How can you participate in Snowtweets?

1. Register for a free Twitter account at www.twitter.com.

2. Measure the snow depth where you live, work, or play.

3. Use your Twitter account to tweet the information to the project.

See more detailed instructions at http://snowcore.uwaterloo.ca/snowtweets/snowbird/.

From now until the end of November, a DC-8 aircraft will make 17 low-level flights over West Antarctica to measure the thinning of the ice sheet. A project of NASA and known as Operation ICE Bridge, the flights carry nearly two dozen scientists and their airborne lab.

At 157-feet long, the DC-8 is too big for runways at Antarctic bases so each flight is round trip from Punta Arenas, Chile.

The mission, according to geophysicist Michael Studinger of Columbia University’s Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and a member of the ICE Bridge team, is “to monitor the change along the edge of the ice sheet, particularly the outlet glaciers that are critical for stability. This is. . . an important process, because the ice that melts there ends up in the ocean.”

The aircraft will fly as low as 300 meters (984 feet) over the ice, using gravimeters, laser altimeters, and radar to measure the thickness of ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice. Studinger notes that instruments on the airplane will make it possible for the first time to plot the geometry and depth of ocean waters under the ice shelves. Many scientists believe warm ocean currents may be the main force pulling the ice sheets seaward and thus allowing more land ice to move to the ocean.

Operation ICE Bridge will fill in for the satellite ICESat 1, which is down to its last three lasers and will be replaced in 2014. According to NASA, it was critical that the series of laser measurements established by ICESat-I be interrupted as little as possible. Therefore the agency converted an “in-house” airplane and pressed it into action. Both the aircraft and the satellite provide a record of changes in the ice, but the aircraft adds a new bit of information—the shape of the terrain below the ice.

The first flights of the operation took the airborne lab over Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. When the researchers wrap up with the end of the field season in Antarctica this fall, the flights will go back to the northern regions. In all, ICE Bridge is expected to be a six-year series of flights at both poles.

The operation was recently the subject of an NPR news story. Thomas Wagner, a cryosphere program scientist for NASA, told the interviewer that data on Antarctica are especially important because the continent has been studied less than Greenland and because it’s so big. “You’re talking about something the size of North America covered with miles of ice.” That land ice contains enough water to raise sea level dozens of feet.

The researchers aboard the plane provide running commentary on their Twitter page (http://twitter.com/icebridge) and send amazing, close-up scenes of the ice and sea from the aircraft windows. The team members are also available on their Earth Institute, Columbia University, blog  (http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/blog/category/ice-bridge/)

Sun-Earth Day, the annual culmination of programs and events from NASA’s Sun-Earth Connection, will be celebrated in 2010 on March 20. The theme is Magnetic Storms.

In weeks leading up to the event, NASA provides resources for schools and the public to learn more about solar storms, including space activities and demonstrations. 

At the Sun-Earth Day web site you’ll find instructions for setting up a Space Weather Action Center in the classroom. There students can access and analyze NASA’s online satellite and observatory data to predict which sunspots may be a source of solar storms. They can also measure disturbances to earth’s magnetic field and know when to watch for auroras.

The site has information about magnetic storms in the past. Some in recent years have disabled satellites, endangered astronauts, and burned out land-based transformers. Earth’s own magnetic field protects from the worst solar storms, but storms that cause fluctuations in our field are called magnetic storms and can do extensive damage. The Great Solar Superstorm of 1859 is covered in some detail on the web site.

You’ll also find a downloadable brochure about Sun-Earth Day to publicize the event in schools and communities. (Resources prepared for past Sun-Earth Days can be accessed from the web page.) 

On March 20, NASA will sponsor a Sun-Earth Day webcast from the exhibit floor of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conference in Philadelphia.

Register to receive monthly updates from NASA between now and March.