Lindsey Nicholson

Astonishing: When I was born we were 4.8 billion strong, and 55% of the land was classified as ‘wilderness’. Today we are about 7.8 billion, and less than 35% of the planet is wilderness. Relatedly, this is what the composition of mammals on earth looks like (curiously displayed by weight thanks to xkcd):

We far outnumber our wild mammal cousins, and a huge weight of mammals is taken up by our lovely big beautiful bovine friends, almost exclusively kept for meat or milk. So what does it take to feed the humans of this world? lets have a look at this graphic of the environmental impacts of agriculture:

As you can see producing our food is a massive pull on the global resources, and there is therefore a strong motivation to make radical changes in this sector. Food production is something we definitely cannot divest from but we can change the way we do it!

You can explore more population and agriculture data from Our World in Data here:

• https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
• https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
• https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

Go on! Click on those links and have a look at these datasets and figure out how you can tweak your own eating and food buying habits to make a contribution. You can also try growing your own as much as your space or setting allows!

Ah, the glories of Twitter led me to this marvellous short handout by David Schulz titled “How to improve upon common errors in student science writing“. At only 7 pages long theres little excuse not to read this document and it helps me answer my colleagues questions on scientific english as well. So many small editorial aspects that I was never formally taught.

“For Critical Literature Reviews, dissertations, and other research papers, rather than just mentioning in passing the lack of consensus in the literature or the gap in the literature, motivate it in the introduction by describing how the lack of consensus is affecting the science. If there is a debate, provide enough evidence for and against to motivate your reader. The reader should understand your concerns. Can you provide an example? Can you quantify what the failure to address this issue is doing? Otherwise, readers may not get the sense from what you’ve written what the debate is all about and why they should care.”

David M. Schultz is a Professor of Synoptic Meteorology at the Centre for Atmospheric Science of the University of Manchester, Chief Editor for Monthly Weather Review, and author of “Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker, and Atmospheric Scientist“. His website http://eloquentscience.com is full of other tips and tricks.

How interesting!

Every year, the World Economic Forum analyzes the top risks in the world in its Global Risks Report. Risks were identified based on 800+ responses of surveyed leaders across various levels of expertise, organizations, and regional distribution. But look at the danger zone in the top right:

Totally dominated by environmental factors. If this is the opinion of the World Economic Forum, I’m curious to see how and when this will translate in to prioritised action. The main message is though that in principle environmental campaigners and those they are lobbying to make changes actually appear to be on the same side, no?

I recently came across this striking graphic from Visual Capitalist illustrating the partitioning of Earths surface:

It made me think of regenerative agriculture … and wonder which countries we should focus on? If the largest 6 countries would change their agricultural or land use practices would it be sufficient to make a planetary impact? All have quite large areas of non-agricultural land, but for example in Brazil there is concern that deforestation of the Amazon basin will reach a point where it can no longer support a rain forest. And what about making seaweed our staple food … seems reasonable?

It also nicely illustrates a fact that many of us know: that the Earth surface is about 70% ocean.  A lesser known ocean fact is that about 90% of the excess energy accumulated by the climate system from 1971 to 2010 due to human greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the ocean. After the ocean, the extra energy has been consumed by melting ice and warming the continental land mass. Atmospheric warming comes next. What this means is that the rising atmospheric temperatures are just the “tip of the iceberg” of energy change in our climate system, as is well illustrated in IPCC graphic 3.1:

The plot shows the energy in Zeta Joules (1 ZJ = 10²¹ J) that has been accumulated in different components of the Earth’s climate system from 1971 to 2010 unless otherwise indicated. Ocean warming (the change in heat content) dominates, with the upper ocean (light blue, above 700 m) contributing more than the mid-depth and deep ocean (dark blue, below 700 m) because it takes time to stir the water to greater depth. Uncertainty in the ocean estimate also dominates the total uncertainty (dot-dashed lines about the error from all five components at 90% confidence intervals).

You can explore more data on landuse from Our World in Data here: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

In the german-speaking world in order to progress in an academic career it is important at some point to complete something like a second PhD thesis in the form of a Habilitation thesis. This generally consists of a collection of your post-doctoral scientific research publications and an assessment of your teaching activities, with the purpose to demonstrate that you are a successful working research/teaching academic. Its an alien concept to me as a Brit, but I submitted by Habilitation in 2019 and was successfully awarded it in 2020.  I can now apparently call myself ‘Priv.-Doz. Dr. Assistant Professorin Lindsey Nicholson B.Sc., Ph.D.’.

Many thanks to the generous reviewers Tad Pfeffer, Andy Kääb, and Andrew Mackintosh, scientists and humans for whom I have the greatest respect, for taking the time to review it, and for providing me with very encouraging reviews of my work so far. It is much appreciated. My habilitation thesis can be accessed at the University of Innsbruck library here: https://diglib.uibk.ac.at/ulbtirolhs/content/titleinfo/5255142

The Habilitation thesis consists of 11 peer reviewed publications completed between 2012 and 2019 that all address aspects of understanding debris-covered glacier systems. These papers (i) lay out conceptual frameworks for understanding debris-covered glaciers systems, (ii) use detailed field observations to identify the significant controls on small to medium scale processes operating on debris covered glaciers, (iii) integrate debris covered glacier surfaces into coupled surface-atmospheric models, (iv) use satellite data to understand glacier scale processes affected by debris cover and (v) develop advanced numerical modelling tools for furthering our process-understanding of debris-covered glaciers.

“One aspect of Dr. Nicholson’s scientific career to date stands out with particular prominence, and this is the breadth of her expertise and interests.” Its so rewarding to see this attribute commended, as I sometimes feel like a ‘jack of all trades and master of none’, although I also realise my broad experience helps me collaborate well in interdisciplinary science.

“… to a large extent thanks to Dr. Nicholson’s work, effort and success, debris cover on glaciers is currently one of the main research topics within mountain glaciology worldwide.” I never saw my contribution this way, although I certainly love the topic and enjoy seeing the resurgence in interest in researching debris-covered glaciers.