In-situ aircraft observations of ice concentrations within clouds over the Antarctic Peninsula and Larsen Ice Shelf

In-situ aircraft observations of ice crystal concentrations in Antarctic clouds are presented for the first time. Orographic, layer and wave clouds around the Antarctic Peninsula and Larsen Ice shelf regions were penetrated by the British Antarctic Survey's Twin Otter aircraft, which was equipped with modern cloud physics probes. The clouds studied were mostly in the free troposphere and hence ice crystals blown from the surface are unlikely to have been a major source for the ice phase. The temperature range covered by the experiments was 0 to −21 °C. The clouds were found to contain supercooled liquid water in most regions and at heterogeneous ice formation temperatures ice crystal concentrations (60 s averages) were often less than 0.07 l−1, although values up to 0.22 l−1 were observed. Estimates of observed aerosol concentrations were used as input into the DeMott et al. (2010) ice nuclei (IN) parameterisation. The observed ice crystal number concentrations were generally in broad agreement with the IN predictions, although on the whole the predicted values were higher. Possible reasons for this are discussed and include the lack of IN observations in this region with which to characterise the parameterisation, and/or problems in relating ice concentration measurements to IN concentrations. Other IN parameterisations significantly overestimated the number of ice particles. Generally ice particle concentrations were much lower than found in clouds in middle latitudes for a given temperature. Higher ice crystal concentrations were sometimes observed at temperatures warmer than −9 °C, with values of several per litre reached. These were attributable to secondary ice particle production by the Hallett Mossop process. Even in this temperature range it was observed that there were regions with little or no ice that were dominated by supercooled liquid water. It is likely that in some cases this was due to a lack of seeding ice crystals to act as rimers to initiate secondary ice particle production. This highlights the chaotic and spatially inhomogeneous nature of this process and indicates that the accurate representation of it in global models is likely to represent a challenge. However, the contrast between Hallett Mossop zone ice concentrations and the fairly low concentrations of heterogeneously nucleated ice suggests that the Hallet Mossop process has the potential to be very important in remote, pristine regions such as around the Antarctic coast

Building Strategic Capacity and Collaborative Leadership in Blue Light Organisations

It is increasingly considered that an organisation’s ability to form and manage strategic partnerships significantly contributes in enhancing its overall performance. Coordination, communication and ability to develop interpersonal relationships (bonding) are considered as three critical components of collaborative capabilities. The collaborative capabilities develop over a period of time, and they enable the organisation to purposefully create, extend or modify existing organisational routines that underpin the activities pertaining to coordination, communication and relationship building. Development of collaborative capabilities necessitates exploring alternative approaches to leadership in organisations. Emergency services leadership has been characterised as ‘top-down’, hierarchical, ‘heroic’, with a command and control approach prevalent in the organisations. There has been reliance on historical and hierarchical models of ‘heroic’ and ‘top-down’ leadership and absence of a distributive and pluralist approach to leadership. Current thinking and models are often based around individual services without much joined-up approach. Greater collaboration entails an approach different from leadership development, which needs to be facilitated at multiple levels within the organisations. Development of collaborative culture in organisations will necessarily involve cultivating future leaders, who will encourage greater collaboration within and amongst the collaborating organisations

The Iceland Greenland seas project

The Iceland Greenland Seas Project (IGP) is a coordinated atmosphere–ocean research program investigating climate processes in the source region of the densest waters of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. During February and March 2018, a field campaign was executed over the Iceland and southern Greenland Seas that utilized a range of observing platforms to investigate critical processes in the region, including a research vessel, a research aircraft, moorings, sea gliders, floats, and a meteorological buoy. A remarkable feature of the field campaign was the highly coordinated deployment of the observing platforms, whereby the research vessel and aircraft tracks were planned in concert to allow simultaneous sampling of the atmosphere, the ocean, and their interactions. This joint planning was supported by tailor-made convection-permitting weather forecasts and novel diagnostics from an ensemble prediction system. The scientific aims of the IGP are to characterize the atmospheric forcing and the ocean response of coupled processes; in particular, cold-air outbreaks in the vicinity of the marginal ice zone and their triggering of oceanic heat loss, and the role of freshwater in the generation of dense water masses. The campaign observed the life cycle of a long-lasting cold-air outbreak over the Iceland Sea and the development of a cold-air outbreak over the Greenland Sea. Repeated profiling revealed the immediate impact on the ocean, while a comprehensive hydrographic survey provided a rare picture of these subpolar seas in winter. A joint atmosphere–ocean approach is also being used in the analysis phase, with coupled observational analysis and coordinated numerical modeling activities underway