 Karin Kvale with the winning poster. |
Karin's PhD transformed by SOLAS Summer School06 October 2011 PhD student Karin Kvale was recently selected to take part in the prestigious 5th International Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) Summer School, which is held in Cargese, Corsica every second year. This summer school, hosted by SOLAS, brings together 71 selected young scientists to teach them the broad skills and background knowledge needed for study of atmosphere-ocean interactions. Students at the summer school participate in both lectures and practicals covering a range of disciplines from modelling atmospheric chemistry to sampling and measurement techniques for oxygen in seawater. During the summer school, the students present their own work in the form of both a poster session as well as an oral presentation. Karin was one of six students to be awarded Best Poster by the summer school lecturers, for her poster Implementing Calcifiers in a Global Climate Model: A Recipe. Karin said the highlight of the summer school was the informal interaction with other students and lecturers, which provided invaluable feedback on her thesis and placed it (for her) in the context of concurrent work at other institutions. “I came away from the summer school with methods for including organisms in the ocean climate models that makes the role they play in the carbon cycle far more realistic,” Karin said. “Most climate models base the action of organisms on size but I include these organisms based on their function. The hope is that this approach allows the model to run more efficiently, the trick is to do it in a way that maintains model flexibility and realism.” After the summer school, Karin spent one week playing tourist in Corsica. She walked a three-day section along the famed GR20, a rugged long-distance walking path high in the Corsican mountains that takes two weeks to traverse the full length. Slideshow of images from SOLAS 2011. Photo credits: Karin Kvale. The trek provided a nice contrast to the busy summer school schedule and the heat of the coastal zone, with days starting and ending with the sun and nothing to do but walk and think. She also visited Corte, a crumbling university town in Corsica, and then Paris en route to her final destination. “Corte is at the foot of a spectacularly placed 15th Century citadel and is considered a culinary capital of Corsica,” Karin said. “I had an opportunity to sample many of the local cheeses and sweet white wines which are a delightful staple of the region.” After her brief holiday, Karin visited the Leibniz-Institut fur Meereswissenschaften an der Universitat Kiel (IFM-GEOMAR), a German oceanography institute in Kiel. The institute was working in a similar area to Karin’s PhD, so she travelled to “make sure our research areas didn’t overlap too much” and to open the doors to a possible collaboration. There she met with the Biogeochemical Modelling group headed by Andreas Oschlies, a collection of researchers working on various aspects of modelling the biology, chemistry and physics relevant to carbon and nutrient cycling through the global ocean. The group was working on additions to the UVIC model, which helped enhance ecosystem interactions that made its seasonal processes even more realistic. Collaborations resulting from this meeting and the input from participants at the summer school have had a profound effect on the remainder of Karin’s PhD thesis work. The cost of travel to the Travel summer school and institute was supported by CoE, IFM-GEOMAR, and the PRSS (UNSW student support scheme). Links: |
Latest news
|
|
Privacy statement - Copyright and Disclaimer - Accessibility - Site map |
