I welcome you to this website.

It will be the end of an era when RRS Charles Darwin arrives at the Centre’s Empress Dock later this month. She will have completed her last voyage as an oceanographic Royal Research Ship after 180 research cruises. RRS Charles Darwin will be replaced by RRS James Cook, which arrives later this summer. This month RRS James Cook begins sea trials prior to delivery. The ship represents a £36 million investment by her owners the Natural Environment Research Council.

It is difficult to imagine that the Arctic Ocean was once a tropical environment. But NOCS scientists, Drs Heiko Palike and Ian Harding, are contributors to research featured in Nature this month that show 55 million years ago this was the case. The change from greenhouse to icehouse demonstrates the Earth’s capacity for change. This research examines a 430 metre core that was recovered during the ACEX drilling expedition in 2004.

The Arctic also features in a new book Burning Ice: Art & Climate Change, which documents an expedition to the High Arctic by a group of artists joined by NOCS scientists Drs Simon Boxall and Valborg Byfield. Launched at the Natural History Museum, the book accompanies the BBC programme Art from the Arctic.

June is exam month for our students and we wish them well. On the 4th and 5th July the School of Ocean and Earth Science will be holding an Open Day for prospective students. I am confident that these scientists of the future will be impressed by the work that is taking place here.

Professor Ed Hill, Director