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Robbie Mallett

@robbiemallett.bsky.social
154 followers 66 following 84 posts

I study sea ice at the Arctic University of Norway. www.robbiemallett.com

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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Recent page view history for the wikipedia article on Pituffik Space Base, apropos of nothing.
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Some eye-opening work out by my erstwhile colleague Amy Macfarlane today in Elementa, looking at the environmental impact of the MOSAiC expedition. online.ucpress.edu/elementa/art...
online.ucpress.edu
Environmental impact assessments of scientific fieldwork as a path to sustainability: A case study from the MOSAiC expedition
Polar environments are increasingly important to study as they are some of the regions most dramatically impacted by climate change. However, large field campaigns in these remote and sensitive region...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
Something that I did not hear discussed at the time (and have not heard since) is the symbolism of the Russians sending their icebreaker RV Akademik Federov to assist RV Polarstern at the start of the 2019/20 MOSAiC sea ice drift campaign. They had newer & more powerful ships, so why pick Federov?
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
New blog post: "What would Thomas Kuhn think about me?" In it I consider incremental science, paradigm shifts, CryoSat-2 radar waves, and me. www.robbiemallett.com/researchblog...
robbiemallett.com
What would Thomas Kuhn think about me? — Robbie Mallett
Alternative titles included “WWTKD” and “Am I precipitating a crisis?” The March edition of Nature featured an interesting perspective by Tiffany Shaw and Bjorn Stevens entitled “ The other climate ...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Up close and personal with one of the Arctic's infamous boundary layer inversions!
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Updating a figure with 2025 data for a research proposal. The shift in conditions around 2016 are becoming starker by the year...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
As my PhD came to a close in 2022 I was lucky to join an icebreaker campaign in the Weddell Sea. TLDR: lots of very hard, very coarse snow. Rosie Willatt then led a very nice analysis of the radar data we collected, and it's out today in GRL. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
Paper out today led by @aliduffey.bsky.social where we compare the atmospheric boundary layer in climate models to 7000 vertical profiles from Soviet ice stations + ~500 from the MOSAiC & SHEBA campaigns. More forays into the world of polar meteorology to come! dx.doi.org/10.1029/2024...
dx.doi.org
Representation of Arctic Winter Atmospheric Boundary Layer Stability Over Sea Ice in CMIP6 Models
A cloudy state, without strong low-level stability (LLS), is often observed over winter Arctic sea ice but is absent in most Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) models CMIP6 models show...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Fun to speak to the Blue Compass conference in Tromsø today about Arctic sea ice decline: it's strongly confined to shallow waters and exclusive economic zones, posing an immediate governance challenge.
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Some new work out today on salt movement in snow covered sea ice, led by Anton Komarov at U Manitoba. Anton ran with the lab approach I used with Vishnu Nandan, but eliminated some of methodological uncertainties to produce much more compelling results. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Bridging the gaps: Unraveling the impact of snow properties on brine wicking and runoff | Journal of Glaciology | Cambridge Core
Bridging the gaps: Unraveling the impact of snow properties on brine wicking and runoff - Volume 71
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
already in an early career catastrophe research role but thanks
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Really happy to be one of two finalists for "Best popular article written by a scientist" this year at the ABSW awards. Particularly poignant to be considered for the Katharine Giles Award. I never met Katharine, but I was often steered by her legacy while working for @cpom-uk.bsky.social
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Wrote about the myth of an empty, distant Arctic for @geographical.co.uk geographical.co.uk/news/the-arc...
geographical.co.uk
Don't care about the Arctic because it's empty and distant - care because it's busy and close
An Arctic resident's view of the row about Camilla Hempleman-Adams' trek across Baffin Island
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Another blog post, this time about the recent ICARP IV Summit in Boulder, CO. I've written about the townhall meeting that I helped run with other co-chairs of Research Priority Team 2. www.robbiemallett.com/researchblog...
robbiemallett.com
The ICARP IV Summit — Robbie Mallett
The Arctic science community undergoes a planning exercise every ten years. This process is known as the International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP), and we’re currently on its fourth...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
New blog post about my SCAR Fellowship experiment at the Churchill Marine Observatory. Oxygen isotope data now back from the lab, and all looking good! www.robbiemallett.com/researchblog...
robbiemallett.com
A SCAR fellowship adventure — Robbie Mallett
I was received a fellowship award from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). The unlike its sister fellowship from IASC (which I’ve also written about, and more on that soon), the SCA...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Thirty years later (2022 vs 1992) I was in the same basket, in the same Weddell Sea, also looking at pancake ice. The more things change...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Short critique of my own work out today in J Glaciology. Five years ago I made a back-of-envelope calculation of seasonal densification rate of snow on sea ice. It unexpectedly became quite popular! Here I show it was roughly right even if the method was a bit dodgy... doi.org/10.1017/jog....
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Reposted by Robbie Mallett
Erich Fischer @erichfischer.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Can climate models reproduce observed trends? The answer can be challenging. Our new review paper in Science Advances led by Isla Simpson and Tiffany Shaw @drshaw.bsky.social discusses challenges and ways forward in confronting climate models and observations. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Inspired by @zacklabe.com to put my invited talk slides online. www.robbiemallett.com/presentations One thing you'll notice is that I'm fond of the animated GIF! A thread of my favourites, starting with not-graphs. [Divers surfacing from under Antarctic sea ice at Rothera]
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Very sceptical that an ice floe could be 3m wide and 10m thick. Not least because it would float in a way that would make it 10m wide and 3m thick....
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Exciting to see U Waterloo's CryoSAR on the Calgary airport runway last night. Side-looking Ku- and L-band radars mounted in a Cesna caravan. Sadly no passenger seats for today's flight over Fortress Mountain 😭
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
A real and sad loss for American climate science. Zack has inspired me since the beginning of my polar science journey. If I turn out to be half the scientist he is, I'll be happy. This move is disrespectful to him, but also to the public.
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
We successfully simulated a sea ice flooding event inside the Churchill Marine Observatory today! We sawed out our snow covered slab from the ice sheet and achieved a negative freeboard, taking a suite of geophysical & isotopic observations before and afterwards.
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Excited to start my SCAR Fellowship adventure!
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
This week in "ideas I thought were new but actually aren't". In the final sentence of her 2005 PhD thesis, Katherine Giles stressed that it would be really neat to steer ICESat onto a CryoSat ground track. It took 15 years and a second iteration of both missions for Cryo2Ice to happen!
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
New blog post: Hyping the mission: the tensions between the public-facing comms of space agencies and scientists. www.robbiemallett.com/researchblog...
robbiemallett.com
Hyping the mission: the tensions between the public-facing comms of space agencies and scientists. — Robbie Mallett
Space agencies like ESA need to constantly justify their budgets to governmental funders. They need to "hype" their Earth Observation missions and the associated data sets. If they stop hyping the mis...
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Reposted by Robbie Mallett
Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 02/02/2025
January 2025 was quite unexpectedly the warmest January on record at 1.75C above preindustrial, beating the prior record set in 2024. This is despite the presence of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific, with the El Niño event of 2023/2024 long faded. www.theclimatebrink....
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Good day to be a snow scientist
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
IASC Newsletter now out! Congratulations to friend & colleague @aliduffey.bsky.social, who will be this year's Atmosphere fellow. Also well done to incoming Cryosphere Fellows Ellie Miller and Leena Leppänen - I look forward to passing the baton in Boulder! iasc.info/news/iasc-ne...
iasc.info
2025 IASC Fellowship Program Recipients Announced - International Arctic Science Committee
The International Arctic Science Committee, is a non governmental organisation that aims to encourage, facilitate and promote cooperation in all aspects of arctic research in all countries engaged in ...
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
Good day snowshoeing today
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
Found out last week that my PhD project won the annual faculty prize for postgrad research. Couldn't have even handed it in without the support from supervisors Julienne Stroeve & @micheltsamados.bsky.social, many other mentors, friends, APECS and the ICCI, but most of all... @es-ucl.bsky.social
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
New paper out on satellite-based snow depth estimates. doi.org/10.1038/s415... As flattered as I am to have an equation named after me, I would have preferred the authors to have cited the paper in which I wrote this equation (rather than the URL of some random CCI report).
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
One of the main factors that makes me want to leave academia: Seeing senior colleagues who I respect list themselves as coauthor on papers that they don't believe in, and would probably reject as a reviewer or editor.
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Snow acts a lot like a sponge, and soaks up salty brine where it's present. This helps salt move up from the sea ice into the snowpack itself. Here's a video from the lab experiments we did at Rothera research station in Antarctica.
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Robbie Mallett @robbiemallett.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
The full paper looking at salt migration in snow on sea ice is out now! We dyed sea ice pink (with a lake ice control experiment), and showed salt moving upward into the snow. Why not just download & read now just to be safe? www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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