VIRTUAL MEETING | Recovering Observations From a Whaling Wreck in Baffin Bay
LOCATION
UPDATE: Registration has now closed.
SPEAKER: Dr Matthew Ayre, University of Calgary
BIOGRAPHY: Dr Matthew Ayre is a historical climatologist at the Arctic Institute for North America. He specializes in the history and climate of the 19th century Arctic with a particular focus on the Arctic whaling trade. He completed his BSc in geography at the University of Sunderland where he went on to complete his PhD under the Leverhulme Trust funded ARCdoc project. Matthew spends as much time in the field as he does in the archives, conducting fieldwork seasonally in the Canadian Arctic and Yukon territory. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2018 for the discovery of Nova Zembla.
ABSTRACT: The extant documents from the nineteenth century British Arctic whaling trade provide a rare and unique window into the past climate of the Arctic regions. With predictions of sea ice free summers in the Arctic within the next 50 years, it is vital to contextualise this fundamental shift within a longer historical record. That record, however, is difficult to construct, with natural proxies for sea ice being too coarse in resolution to capture short term changes. It is only through serendipitous past observations that a more detailed picture of historical Arctic conditions can be gleaned. Whalers, in their pursuit of the mercantile bowhead whale, inadvertently tracked the ice edge as it retreated through the summer months. By mining the observations made by these intrepid sailors, it is possible to extend our understanding of historical sea ice extent back throughout the nineteenth century.
At 10:20 pm on 18th September 1902 during a blinding snowstorm, the veteran Dundee Arctic whaler Nova Zembla struck a reef on a remote coastline high in the Canadian Arctic. Here she lay until historical climate research using the extant logbooks from this once industrious trade uncovered clues to the location of Nova Zembla's final resting place. This discovery, along with further historical investigation, has so far lead to two high Arctic expeditions (2018 and 2019) to search for and identify the wreck of Nova Zembla: the first Scottish whaling wreck to be discovered in the Canadian Arctic.
This was a 45 min talk followed by a 15 min Q&A. The meeting was open from 5:50 pm for attendees to join and the event started promptly at 6 pm. Please register for the event on www.rmets.org and join the meeting using Google Chrome. Please note that joining instructions will not be provided unless you have registered.
VIRTUAL MEETING | Recovering Observations From a Whaling Wreck in Baffin Bay | Recording
UPDATE: Registration has now closed.
SPEAKER: Dr Matthew Ayre, University of Calgary
BIOGRAPHY: Dr Matthew Ayre is a historical climatologist at the Arctic Institute for North America. He specializes in the history and climate of the 19th century Arctic with a particular focus on the Arctic whaling trade. He completed his BSc in geography at the University of Sunderland where he went on to complete his PhD under the Leverhulme Trust funded ARCdoc project. Matthew spends as much time in the field as he does in the archives, conducting fieldwork seasonally in the Canadian Arctic and Yukon territory. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 2018 for the discovery of Nova Zembla.
ABSTRACT: The extant documents from the nineteenth century British Arctic whaling trade provide a rare and unique window into the past climate of the Arctic regions. With predictions of sea ice free summers in the Arctic within the next 50 years, it is vital to contextualise this fundamental shift within a longer historical record. That record, however, is difficult to construct, with natural proxies for sea ice being too coarse in resolution to capture short term changes. It is only through serendipitous past observations that a more detailed picture of historical Arctic conditions can be gleaned. Whalers, in their pursuit of the mercantile bowhead whale, inadvertently tracked the ice edge as it retreated through the summer months. By mining the observations made by these intrepid sailors, it is possible to extend our understanding of historical sea ice extent back throughout the nineteenth century.
At 10:20 pm on 18th September 1902 during a blinding snowstorm, the veteran Dundee Arctic whaler Nova Zembla struck a reef on a remote coastline high in the Canadian Arctic. Here she lay until historical climate research using the extant logbooks from this once industrious trade uncovered clues to the location of Nova Zembla's final resting place. This discovery, along with further historical investigation, has so far lead to two high Arctic expeditions (2018 and 2019) to search for and identify the wreck of Nova Zembla: the first Scottish whaling wreck to be discovered in the Canadian Arctic.
This was a 45 min talk followed by a 15 min Q&A. The meeting was open from 5:50 pm for attendees to join and the event started promptly at 6 pm. Please register for the event on www.rmets.org and join the meeting using Google Chrome. Please note that joining instructions will not be provided unless you have registered.