My Research: Cristian Florindo-Lopez
Hello everyone,
My name is Cristian Florindo-Lopez and this autumn I will be part of the “Exploring our Oceans” MOOC’s mentors team. On a regular day, I am a PhD student on my third year at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.
In today’s post I would like to share with you what my research is about. Briefly, I could say it is framed in the dynamics of Polar Regions, specifically the Arctic Ocean. I look at how freshwater is being stored up there and how it is eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean.
Have you ever seen the Arctic “from above”? We are used to see Earth projected on a map centered at the Equator, but this is how the Arctic would look like as seen from atop.
The Arctic Ocean itself is undergoing rapid changes; for instance it is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe! Another change we have seen over the last years is a huge accumulation of freshwater. The Arctic Ocean, despite engulfing only a 1% of the total area of the oceans, it is the watershed for about the 10% of the globe’s river runoff! Together with enhanced melting and more precipitation (snow or rain) than evaporation, it is the least salty ocean in the planet. For reasons we still don’t fully understand, freshwater is building up at the surface faster than it is naturally flowing to the Atlantic Ocean. It is believed that a rapid release of that water to the Atlantic Ocean could have important implications in the oceanic circulation and in the European climate; therefore it is essential to gain a better understanding of Arctic Dynamics.
However, Arctic monitoring is very challenging. It is a remote and harsh environment; taking measurements in the region is very hard and expensive. Thus, we do not have time series that are long enough to fully understand how the Arctic varies. Fortunately, since the polar basin connects to the Atlantic Ocean, those changes can be tracked further south. So, the goal of my PhD is to study observations at the Labrador Sea, near Canada, to see how they relate to the Arctic variability. Then, we could use those measurements taken over many decades to evaluate how the Arctic Ocean has changed over that time and gain a better understanding of the magnitude of present changes.
Arctic Melt Ponds, formed when sea ice starts melting in the summer. Freshwater is collected in depressions which enhance melting until they break through and reach the ocean below. Image by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
As a polar researcher, I am fascinated by the physics of those regions, from the Arctic sea-ice to the Antarctic continent. They are two similar environments but altogether completely different. I am also concerned about climate change and its consequences. Finally I am greatly interested in all sorts of adventures, fieldwork and the development of new oceanographic instrumentation and new technologies. Feel free to ask and chat about any of those topics!
I hope you have a great time exploring the wonders of our oceans throughout the next weeks. I am very excited to be part of the MOOC team and look forward to start soon with the course and discussions.