The National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB) Professional Webinar Series is a development opportunity for middle and high school educators nationwide. All educators are welcome to register, and NOSB coaches are highly encouraged to participate.
The free online webinar series will focus on the 2021 NOSB competition theme of ‘ Plunging into Our Polar Seas.’
Each of the presenters will give a one hour live webinar presentation on their current research or topic of interest, followed by a 30 minute Q&A session.
All participants logged into the meeting will be able to listen and follow along with the presentation, as well as type questions for the presenter during the live presentation. The NOSB national office staff will read the questions to the presenter.
Questions? Please contact us at nosb@ucar.edu.
Date of Webinar: January 21, 2021 at 5 pm Eastern
Topic/Title: Earth’s frozen oceans: properties and importance of sea ice
Sea ice forms a frozen lid on much of the earth’s Polar oceans. The properties of this ice play a large role not only in the ocean, but also the global climate. In this presentation, we’ll introduce the unique and interesting features of sea ice, including its high reflectivity (“albedo”). We’ll introduce the ways we measure these properties in remote polar oceans and use these observations to improve computer climate models.
Dr. Bonnie Light
Dr. Bonnie Light is a Principal Scientist at the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington in Seattle. She studies sea ice in the Arctic basin through a combination of laboratory work in a walk-in freezer, computer modeling, and field studies. Her primary research interests lie in understanding the optical, structural, and chemical properties of sea ice. These interests have led to collaborative projects involving direct measurements of the partitioning of sunlight by sea ice, the physics of very cold sea ice on Snowball Earth, structural properties of melting sea ice in the context of its habitability, and freezing chemistry in soils on Mars. She has participated in six field campaigns on Arctic sea ice and frequently engages in educational outreach opportunities.
Dr. Maddie Smith
Dr. Maddie Smith is a postdoctoral scholar at the Polar Science Center. She first dreamt of exploring the polar oceans while learning about Fridtjof Nansen’s transpolar drift as an undergrad at Bowdoin College in Maine. Her research now combines observations taken in the Arctic and Antarctic with modeling approaches to better understand the interactions of sea ice with the ocean, and the implications in climate models.
