NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre
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Relativistic electrons in the Earth''s outer radiation belt are a significant space weather hazard. Satellites in GPS-type orbits pass through the heart of the outer radiation belt where they may be exposed to large fluxes of relativistic electrons. In this study we conduct an extreme value analysis of the daily average relativistic electron flux in GPS orbit as a function of energy and L using data from the US NS41 satellite from 10 December 2000 to 25 July 2020. The 1 in 10 year flux at L=4.5, in the heart of the outer radiation belt, decreases with increasing energy ranging from 8.2x10^6 cm^-2s^-1sr^-1MeV^-1 at E = 0.6 MeV to 33 cm^-2s^-1sr^-1MeV^-1 at E = 8.0 MeV. The 1 in 100 year is a factor of 1.1 to 1.7 larger than the corresponding 1 in 10 year event. The 1 in 10 year flux at L=6.5, on field lines which map to the vicinity of geostationary orbit, decrease with increasing energy ranging from 6.2x10^5 cm^-2s^-1sr^-1MeV^-1 at E = 0.6 MeV to 0.48 cm^-2s^-1sr^-1MeV^-1 at E = 8.0 MeV. Here, the 1 in 100 year event is a factor of 1.1 to 13 times larger than the corresponding 1 in 10 year event, with the value of the factor increasing with increasing energy. Our analysis suggests that the fluxes of relativistic electrons with energies in the range 0.6 <= E <= 2.0 MeV in the region 4.25 <= L <= 4.75 have an upper bound. In contrast, further out and at higher energies the fluxes of relativistic electrons are largely unbounded. The research leading to these results has received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grants NE/V00249X/1 (Sat-Risk) and NE/R016038/1.
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Measures of feeding activity in 17 species of shallow water marine benthos, as assessed visually by SCUBA divers. The aim of the study was to determine the seasonal and interannual variability in feeding activity. Data were taken once or twice a month over the period from October 1997 to May 2005. Not all species were monitored for the entire duration of the study, and the number of observations per species ranged from 21 to 133.
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The dataset comprises of analyses of two sediment cores (LC12 and LC7), extracted from Blaso, a large epishelf lake on the margin of 79 degrees N Ice Shelf, NW Greenland in July-August 2017. The data are used to constrain ice shelf dynamics over the last 8500 calibrated years before present (cal. years B.P., where present is A.D. 1950). Data for the LC7 and LC12 sediment records consist of radiocarbon (14C) chronology data. Overlapping 2 m-long sediment cores were recovered with a UWITEC KOL ''Kolbenlot percussion piston corer to a total sediment depth of 3.74 m (LC7) and 5.24 m (LC12). Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) was used for radiocarbon (14C) dating. Core LC7: 87 m water depth; 79.589 degrees N, 22.494 degrees E. Core LC12: 90 m water depth; 79.5948 degrees N, 22.44233 degrees E. This project was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through Standard Grant NE/N011228/1. We thank the Alfred Wegner Institute, and particularly Angelika Humbert and Hicham Rafiq, for their significant logistic support through the iGRIFF project. Additional support was provided from Station Nord (Jorgen Skafte), Nordland Air, Air Greenland and the Joint Arctic Command. Naalakkersuisut, Government of Greenland, provided Scientific Survey (VU-00121) and Export (046/2017) licences for this work
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The datasets are ice tilt time series from strings of accelerometers, each located at a discrete depth within one of three boreholes into Khumbu Glacier, Nepal. Ice deformation can be derived from this tilt data, but has not yet been calculated. Boreholes were drilled in May 2017 and 2018 to investigate the internal properties of Khumbu Glacier, specifically ice thickness, temperature, deformation and structure, as part of the NERC-funded ''EverDrill'' research project. Supporting borehole information is provided as a related dataset. Funding was provided by the NERC grant NE/P00265X/1 and NE/P002021/1.
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Monitoring whales in remote regions is important for their conservation, using traditional survey platforms (boat and plane) is logistically difficult. The use of very high-resolution satellite imagery to survey whales, particularly in remote regions, is gaining interest and momentum. However, development is hindered by the lack of automated systems to detect whales. Such a system requires an open source library containing examples of whales and confounding features in satellite imagery. Here we present such a database, created by surveying 6,300 km2 of satellite imagery in various regions across the globe, which allowed us to detect 633 whale objects and 120 confounding features. Funding was provided from a BAS Innovation Voucher.
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Images of histological sections of oocytes to quantify oocyte size frequency distributions in Astarte crenata and Ctenodiscus crispatus used in the analyses by Reed et al. 2021 (Ecology and Evolution) from the Western Barents Sea during summer 2017 across a North - South transect intersecting the polar front. Supported by The Changing Arctic Ocean Seafloor (ChAOS) - how changing sea ice conditions impact biological communities, biogeochemical processes and ecosystems project (NE/N015894/1 and NE/P006426/1, 2017-2021), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in the UK.
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The South Orkney Fast-Ice series (SOFI) is an annual record of the timing of formation and breakout of fast-ice in Factory Cove, Signy Island, in the South Orkney Islands on the Scotia Arc in the northern Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Fast-ice formation and break-up has been studied at the South Orkeny Islands since the early 1900s, with this dataset covering the period of 1903 to 2019. This dataset is produced by personnel from the British Antarctic Survey, in efforts to study sea-ice variability in the Southern Hemisphere. Data was collected using various methods over the reporting period, namely an offset date from Laurie Island''s fast-ice, direct observation, and with camera equipment. This is an updated version (2.0) of the dataset, that includes data from 2008 to 2019.
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As part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) ~4432 km of new radar depth sounding data was acquired over the Thwaites Glacier catchment by the British Antarctic Survey. Data was collected using the PASIN-2 polametric radar system, fitted on the BAS aerogeophysical equipped survey aircraft "VP-FBL". The survey operated from Lower Thwaites Glacier camp, and focused on collecting data in regions of ice >1.5 km thick between 70 and 180 km from the grounding line. Additional profiles from the coast to the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) divide and over the eastern shear margin were also flown. Ice thicknesses between 418 and 3744 m were measured, with a minimum bed elevation of -2282 m imaged. Our Twin Otter aircraft was equipped with dual-frequency carrier-phase GPS for navigation, radar altimeter for surface mapping, wing-tip magnetometers, an iMAR strapdown gravity system, and a new ice-sounding radar system (PASIN-2). We present here the full radar dataset consisting of the deep-sounding chirp and shallow-sounding pulse-acquired data in their processed form, as well as the navigational information of each trace, the surface and bed elevation picks, ice thickness, and calculated absolute surface and bed elevations. This dataset comes primarily in the form of NetCDF and georeferenced SEGY files. To interactively engage with this newly-published dataset, we also created segmented quicklook PDF files of the radar data.
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This dataset contains quality-controlled georeferenced occurrence records of three Arctic Calanus species (Calanus finmarchicus, C. glacialis and C. hyperboreus), downloaded from the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) databases. Records span about 150 years of sampling (1870-2017), are located between 30 and 90 degrees north, and are distributed between the surface and 5000m deep. Physical (bathymetry) and environmental (temperature and sea-ice concentration) parameters are matched to each occurrence record. An html file provides the annotated source code for the data processing, analyses and figures produced for the publication: Freer JJ and Tarling GA (2023) Assessing key influences on the distribution and life-history of Arctic and boreal Calanus: Are online databases up to the challenge? Front. Mar. Sci. 10:908112. This work was funded by DIAPOD (NE/P006213/1) and CHASE (NE/R012687/1) projects as part of the Changing Arctic Ocean Programme, with the former funded by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the latter, jointly by NERC and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Further support was provided by BIOPOLE National Capability Multicentre Round 2 funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/W004933/1).
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A map of changes in ice surface speed in metres/year for Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, between January 2012 and January 2021. Speeds based on feature tracking of satellite synthetic aperture radar data. The work was funded by NERC projects NE/P011365/1 and NE/S006605/1.