Snowpatches and satellites

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, Science.

Overview For many years, the extent of snow cover in the Scottish Highlands has been recorded and documented by groups of ground-based observers from a volunteer community of ‘citizen scientists’. This winter snow cover melts in the spring and summer months, leaving behind remnant snowpatches, some of which have shown themselves to be ‘perennial’, lasting… Read more »

What is the “truth” in COVID-19 data?

Posted by & filed under Data, Science.

1. Truth in Data In a blog posting from April 2020, I discussed the development of a visualisation of data related to the global COVID-19 pandemic. In the comments below the blog posting, I mentioned that there are several issues with the data in terms of accuracy and what the ‘truth’ of the data actually… Read more »

GIS MSc – part two

Posted by & filed under IT & the Internet, Mountains & hills, Personal, Science, Software engineering.

The three-year part-time remote learning UNIGIS UK MSc course I recently finished had two very different components – the first two years consisted of teaching modules of learning materials and assessed assignments (see my earlier blog posting about this here), and the third year involved the planning, development and writing of a dissertation, which is… Read more »

A new look for my blog

Posted by & filed under IT & the Internet.

My blog is now over seven years old and it was time for a revamp, so I’ve updated it to the latest version of WordPress and redesigned the theme, which is based on WP-Bootstrap, developed by 320 Press. The design also integrates with the rest of my website, which uses the Drupal Bootstrap theme, so… Read more »

Were there glaciers in the mountains of Scotland as recently as the mid-19th century?

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, Science.

New research Two academic papers have been published recently in the journal ‘The Holocene‘: Harrison S, Rowan A V, Glasser N F, Knight J, Plummer M A, Mills S C. 2014. Little Ice Age glaciers in Britain: Glacier-climate modelling in the Cairngorm mountains. The Holocene 24. 135-140. Abstract: http://hol.sagepub.com/content/24/2/135. Full text of paper (PDF; access… Read more »

A Zoologist on Baffin Island, 1953

Posted by & filed under Books, Mountains & hills, Science.

I have been interested in the Canadian island of Baffin Island since ‘Frozen Fire: a Tale of Courage‘ by James Houston was a set text when I went to school. Baffin Island, which straddles the Arctic Circle in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is in many ways the archetypal ‘Arctic’ location – it has sea ice,… Read more »

Garbh Choire Mòr

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, Science.

For several years now, there has been a secretive and remote location in the Scottish mountains that I have been trying to get to. This location is Garbh Choire Mòr, a corrie at the western end of the larger An Garbh Choire in the Cairngorm mountains, between Braeriach and Cairn Toul, and it is notable… Read more »