Remember the experiment on Nansen’s observation of “dead water” that Elin & myself set up as part of GEOF213? Our movies of this experiment are now featured in a brilliant Youtube video by my friend, the german science communicator Doktor Wissenschaft! Check it out! (English subtitles available)

I feel so proud to have contributed to such a cool video! :-)

P.S.: Doktor Wissenschaft also has an Instagram profile which is totally worth checking out. He posts interesting physics, chemistry and biology facts in twice daily. And occasionally he includes cool ocean and climate facts, supplied by yours truly. If you have fascinating facts that should be featured on Doktor Wissenschaft, please feel free to let me know and I will happily forward them!

One of Doktor Wissenschaft’s facts on Instagram: “If all Antarctic ice did melt, sea level would rise by approximately 58 meters”

What I find really fascinating about the planetary Rossby wave experiment is to look from the side and see the columns develop and move around the tank.

Here is a side-view camera plus the top view, both cameras rotating with the tank. The movie is sped up 20x so in about 22 seconds, you will have a good idea of what happens:

And here is the same movie in real time. Here you can really beautifully watch the plumes of dense water sinking to the bottom while the whole column is rotating.

One thing to avoid when running this experiment: Don’t put the ice cube too close to the side of the tank, otherwise it will get stuck there. I don’t know if it was surface tension keeping it so close to the wall or if, since it couldn’t rotate, it decided not to move at all, but in any case: If the ice cube is too close to the wall, it will get stuck. In our case, the dense water then sank down in the small gap between the sloped bottom and the wall of the tank (as you see in the picture below, which is looking under the sloping bottom towards the deep end of the tank).

You still see columns forming underneath the sloping bottom, but that wasn’t quite what we were aiming to do…

And now we have arrived in the part of Norway that, to me, feels like home rather than “oh wow, impressive landscape”. Even though the landscape is still impressive! But also very familiar now.

And very beautiful!

Especially with these low clouds randomly hanging out above the fjords.

And are you going to be disappointed if I tell you that I will be taking the night train on my way back home?

I love the little meandering river in the picture above!

We are now approaching the west coast of Norway and all prejudices when it comes to weather over there are being confirmed. It’s grey and overcast. Still, there is a lot of cool water watching to be done on this train ride!

I think it was around this point of my 7 hour train ride, from which I sent a minutt for minutt live broadcast to my friend Kristin, that she pointed out that she had just noticed the common thread in the pictures I was sending: Water!

What a surprise… ;-)

Anyway, it’s getting darker outside, so the quality of the pictures is rapidly decreasing, but I will still show you some rapids in the rivers.

Because they just look super awesome!

And again, waves breaking upstream because the river is flowing so fast, it’s ripping their bases away from underneath them.

And some impressive gorges!

…and very low-hanging clouds.

But the landscape is a lot lusher and greener again!

And I love water falls.

And rapids.

And more water falls!

Yes. Sometimes I kneel in front of puddles. And I think it was worth it!