24 November 2014

First BRITICE meeting

It wasn't the first BRITICE meeting at all! But for me it was. And the BRITICE-CHRONO project, as is its full name, has in my mind started to be synonymous with the cruise we did, but the project is a lot bigger. And it was time to be reminded of that! And pretty much all BRITICErs would come to Buxton for that purpose, to a lovely Victorian hotel.

 Our posh venue

It was a nice little outing; I didn't have to present, and therefore didn't have to prepare anything. And it was nice to see my fellow cruisers back, and it was nice to meet the other people involved. That included some people I had met during other parts of my career, and people I only knew the name of, and was pleased to finally get to be introduced to. Including, for instance, the chap to whom I have been sending my 14C samples for many years. I was glad he confirmed they had arrived in good order! I am always a bit nervous to send 14C samples off. In the UK I never had bad experiences, but back in the Netherlands I seemed to have bad karma, and my samples seemed to always get lost, get damaged, or otherwise compromised. Fortunately, back in the days it was generally possible to replace a sample! The material I date these days is a lot harder to come by...

 Colm presenting an overview of our cruise

Anyway. Our project boils down to us trying to sample for dates of deglaciation around the British Isles, along transects perpendicular to where we think the path of the ice was. And then really get a grip on how the last ice cap over this region vanished. It will teach us about how ice caps and sheets go about such business; the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has already started its way out and we want to know how that will develop. 

All the transects we designed have a transect leader; these brought us all up to date. Interesting to see! One doesn't really have time to keep up with the other transects, so this meeting was really nice to keep the overview. And there were all sorts of talks as well on other things. What will we do with the dates? What are the caveats? What will we do next year? 

And after the main meeting the steering committee met a bit more. But we went back. There was more to do! And now we see our work again in a slightly bigger context. That is always good!

The whole group

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