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The climatic effects of El Niño have strong socioeconomic and environmental implications all over the planet. The heavy rains that occur approximately every four years in the eastern equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean are attributed to this meteorological phenomenon that causes an increase in sea surface temperature. However, El Niño is not the only phenomenon that alters the atmosphere general circulation, causes changes in humidity and regulates the rainfall regime in tropical regions. Something similar happens with the Atlantic Niño –named like this for its similarity with El Niño-, that is characterized by the appearance of warm sea surface temperature anomalies in the eastern equatorial Atlantic. When it attains its full strength, the phenomenon increases rainfall and the frequency of extreme...

The Institut de Ciències del Mar (Institute of Marine Sciences) coordinates the European project Cos4Cloud, an ambitious project that will create cutting-edge technology services to improve citizen science platforms. Among other services it will include: integrating observations from different citizen science platforms into a portal, artificial intelligence tools that help citizens recognize species when they send an observation and standardize data from different platforms. These technological services will be available in the new European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), so that each new or existing project will be able to choose and install the ones it needs and improve its functionalities.   Cos4Cloud (Co-designed citizen observatories for the EOS-Cloud) aims to develop ten technological services so that citizen science pl...

On Tuesday, July 23rd, a delegation from the National Ocean Satellite Application Service (which belongs to the Ministry of Natural Resources of China), led by Prof. Jianqiang LIU (Deputy Director of NSOAS), visited the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC). The aim of the visit was to promote the Chinese ocean satellite programme and to seek strategic collaboration with the Barcelona Expert Centre (BEC) on remote sensing activities. The Chinese ocean satellite programme includes ocean colour (HY-1 satellite series), ocean dynamic monitoring (sea surface wind, ocean surface topography, and sea surface temperature and salinity from HY-2 series), and synthetic aperture radar (SAR, HY-3 series) missions. BEC has indeed wide experience in scatterometry/SAR (winds) and L-band radiometry (salinity) and is eager to collaborate with NSOAS on...

On Thursday, July 11th, the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) hosted a meeting between a Chinese delegation, led by Prof. Chunli BAI, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and CSIC, to sign a collaboration agreement to promote remote sensing research in China and Spain. This agreement between the National Space Science Centre (NSSC-CAS) and CSIC aims at defining and promoting the cooperation between both Parties, in the common interest research areas of satellite remote sensing and related applications. ICM-CSIC, which hosts the Barcelona Expert Centre (BEC) on Remote Sensing started collaborating with NSSC already a few years ago. The signed agreement will not only boost such collaboration but also offer the opportunity for other CSIC remote sensing groups to collaborate with our Chinese partners. Another releva...

From April 24 to 26, more than 70 people from the International Ocean Vector Winds Science Team (IOVWST) have met at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona. The IOVWST is an international research group focused on satellite-derived ocean surface wind retrievals and related applications. The group counts with the participation of NASA, EUMETSAT, NOAA, the Indian (ISRO) and Japanese (JAXA) space agencies and the Chinese National Satellite Ocean Application Service (NSOAS) as main entities, meteorological centres such as the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the Portuguese Institute for the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA); and oceanographic centres around the world, including the Institute of Marine Sciences (CSIC), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Instit...

Scientists from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in collaboration with the University of Vienna have studied how marine plastic debris affects the lower levels of the oceanic food web, microorganisms, and the results revel that they release dissolved organic carbon into the seawater, up to 23,600 metric tons per year. The most of it is rapidly taken by marine bacteria stimulating their growth. The details of the research, funded by the Austrian Science Foundation and the CSIC under the MODMED project, are published today in the journal Nature Communications. On behalf of the CSIC in Catalunya this study was led by Cristina Romera Castillo, JdC postdoctoral researcher-incorporation into the Department of Physical Oceanography. From the Marine Research Institute (Vigo), Xosé Antón Álvarez Salgado, Rese...

The fifth edition of the "Ramon Margalef Summer Colloquia" (RMSC) will begin on Monday 3 of July, organized by the Institut of Marine Science (ICM-CSIC) and the Catalan Association of Oceanographers (ACOIO). Since its first edition in 2013, every summer the RMSC gathers junior and senior oceanographers to exchange ideas on ocean research. This year's colloquium, coordinated by ICM oceanographers Josep Lluís Pelegrí and Celia Marrasé, will focus on " spatial and temporal patterns in physical-biological ocean processes". The objective is to promote an interdiciplinary approach to the physical and biological factors that favour the energy fluxes in ecosystems at all spatial and temporal scales, exploring how the network of interactions traduces in much more than the lineal addition of the facto...

On June 19, the Barcelona Expert Center of Remote Sensing (BEC), will celebrate a day to commemorate its ten years of existence. It will take place in the Institute of Marine Sciences of ​​the CSIC in Barcelona. The day will be attended by the CSIC researcher Jordi Font, founder of BEC and one of the principal investigators of the SMOS mission; Susanne Mecklenburg of ESA and Mission Manager of SMOS; Cristina de la Puente, Vice-President of the CSIC; Andrea Pérez Carro, CDTI, Spanish delegate at ESA; And Meritxell Serret, Councilor for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Researchers from the CSIC and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) involved in the SMOS will also participate, along with representatives of companies (Airbus, Tryo Aeropace, Deimos) and other scientific ins...

The ICM Instrumentation Service has recovered two of the buoys that were let out in 2013, in thre frame of the SPURS campaign. The project’s objective was focused on the processes responsible for the formation and maintenance of the salinity maximum associated to the North Atlantic subtropical gyre. During the campaign, researchers from de ICM together with NASA members, let out a sum of 50 buoys, 10 Spanish and 40 North Americans, to study the atmosphere-ocean interphase.  The Spanish buoys were initially designed in the ICM by Agustí Juliá with the collaboration of Pere Fernández, responsible of electronics and telecommunications, and Kintxo Salvador, in charge of mechanic design and programming, with the support of diverse project developed along a decade before. This buoys are prepared for measuring ...

Inscriptions for the online course “Oceanography: a key to better understand our world” are now open. This course is organized by the University of Barcelona and participates as a teacher Jordi Salat, from the Physical Oceanography and Technology department, together with Jordi Serra from the Group of Marine Geosciences. This free course is available in Coursera, a web platform specialized in Masive Open Online Courses (MOOC). In this course, students could learn the basic knowledge about oceanography: how are the fluxes of ocean water, how oceans are studied by satellites, what is ocean chemistry and how has the Earth’s crust evolved to give birth to the oceans and continents. The MOOC has 7 modules including videos, quests and forums to debate between students and teachers. The contents present the basic useful k...

From 20th to 22nd of July, the fourth Spanish Physical Oceanography Meeting (EOF2016) was celebrated in the University of Alicante, organized by the universities of Alicante, polytechnic of Catalunya, Las Palmas of Gran Canaria and Vigo, together with the State Harbour and the Institute of Marine Science. This event gathers together the oceanographic Spanish community to discuss about the progress in this field and reinforce the relationships between them, to promote the participation in European and international projects. Besides, this year it has coincided in time and space with two other events related to Marine Science, being an ideal meeting point for students and professionals in this topic. Among the 70 reports presented, 15 were from ICM researchers. In this edition, colleagues from this institute have organized a special s...

On December 14th, a Chinese delegation led by Professor JIANG Xingwei, director-general of the National Satellite Ocean Application Service (NSOAS, State Oceanic Administration of China), and Professor DONG Xiaolong, assistant director-general of the National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSSC, Chinese Academy of Sciences) and director of the CAS Key Laboratory of Microwave Remote Sensing (MiRS), visited ICM. The purpose of the visit was to establish a collaboration with ICM in the framework of the recently approved Chinese Ocean Salinity Mission (to be launched in 2019). During the visit, Mr. ZHOU Wu, deputy chief of the CAL/VAL department, presented the NSOAS ocean satellite mission programme, Professor DONG Xiaolong gave an overview of the history of NSSC and its major role in designing and developing instrument...

More than a hundred scientists and experts from Europe, USA and Australia met from 28th to 30th October in Barcelona to celebrate the third edition of the General Assembly of the European Association of Citizen Science (ECSA), and to discuss the most important challenges of this field for the coming years. The meeting was organized by the same ECSA, the OpenSystems research group at the Universitat de Barcelona, the Barcelona Lab of the Citizen Science Office of the Barcelona City Council and the ICM. The event also had the collaboration of the Museu del Disseny, the Museu Blau and the same ICM, whose facilities were the venues of the meeting. The Citizen Science is a rising practice that involves citizens to participate in research activities. They actively contribute to research whether with intellectual effort, knowledge, tools or r...

With the title of Citizen Science or How kayakers can contribute to scientific research past 30 and 31of May took place in Llançà (Spain) the IV Kayaking and Environment Workshop 2015, organized by the Pagaia Kayak Club. At the event participate scientists form ICM, to explain some of the activities and Citizen Science projects being developed at the center. The first day of activities were centered around the plankton and more specifically the gelatinous plankton. During the trip with kayaks, participants learn how to collect plankton organisms that were observed later under the microscope. Participants also received information on how the monitoring jellyfish methods carried out in the Catalan coast, within the context of projects Medjelly i Jellyrisk headed at ICM by Veronica Fuentes.      ...

Today starts in Barcelona the third edition of the Barcelona World Race 2014/15. All of the boats participating in the regatta are taking part in scientific projects with the Institute of marine Science, coordinated by the UNESCO-IOC. The results collected by the skippers will represent an important contribution to efforts being made by the scientific community and will play a fundamental role in the Barcelona World Race educational activities. Four projects will be developed: 1) The measurement of salinity levels and sea temperature Involvement: IMOCA 60 One Planet One Ocean, the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM) and the Fundació Navegació Oceànica Barcelona (FNOB) This project involves collecting valuable data on sea salinity levels and the temperature of the surface seawater in areas for which little dat...

The 1st General Assembly of the European project “Ice, Climate, Economics – Artic Research on Change” (ICE-ARC) took place from Nov 19 to 21 at the ICM. This 4-years long FP7 EU-project will look into the current and future changes in the Artic sea ice but also will investigate the consequences of this changes both on the economics of the area, and it social impact on the indigenous people living on the Artic. ICE-Arc brings together physicists, chemists, biologists, economists, and sociologists from 21 institutes  of 11 countries across Europe. With a total budget of 11,5 million euros, ICE-ARC is currently one of the largest research investments of Europe in order to understand and quantify the multiple stresses involved in the change being experienced by the Artic marine environment. ICE-ARC places a particul...

Jaume Piera and Raul Bardají, from the Department of Physical and Technological Oceanography, were invited last October at the center "Living with Lakes" of the "Laurentian University" in Sudbury (Ontario, Canada) to present the European Citizen Science project Citclops (www.citclops.eu) and more specifically the low cost buoys developed in this project called KdUINO. To demonstrate the capability of this type of buoys, several measurements were taken in lakes with different levels of water transparency according to their trophic status. The measurements were carried out with buoys made by students from two schools in Terres de l'Ebre, the “Institut de Deltebre” and the “Escola de Capacitació Nàutico-Pesquera de l'Ametlla de Mar”, within workshops of the outreach ...

From July 24 to 26, ICM is hosting in Barcelona the 3rd meeting of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). GOOS is a permanent global system for observations, modelling and analysis of marine and ocean variables to support operational ocean services worldwide. This system provides accurate descriptions of the present state of the oceans, including living resources; continuous forecasts of the future conditions of the sea for as far ahead as possible, and the basis for forecasts of climate change. It is made of many observation platforms including 3000 Argo floats, 1250 drifting buoys, 350 embarked systems on commercial or cruising yachts, 100 research vessels, 200 marigraphs, and more than 200 moorings in open sea. GOOS is sponsored by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, the World Meteorological Organization...

The Marine Science Institute (ICM-CSIC) opens its laboratories to Catalan students to build an oceanographic buoy. The activity is part of the project "MARduino: my buoy, our data and the sea", co-financed by the FECYT (Fundación Española para la Ciencia Y la Tecnología) and led by Carine Simon from the Biooptic group of the Marine Science Institute. From today, the 2nd of June and during 3 more sessions (3,10 and 11 of June), students of High School (bachillerato) will realise these workshops at the ICM where they will learn how to build an oceanographic buoy with the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) philosophy  and with home and very low cost components. These buoys will allow to measure the transparency of the sea water, a parameter indicating its quality. The MARduino project will  also be part of th...