David Marshall

Hello from Cambridge!

We've just finished our Climate Modelling Summer School. It is an exciting two-week programme of lectures and practical work on climate models.

Thank you to everyone who came along to learn and network with our experts and with like-minded peers!

🤣

Agree with all of this, except we had a positive experience with bikes on trains - guess we got lucky … The lack of wind turbines was particularly striking despite a persistent and welcome tailwind!

Impressions of Ireland * Beautiful country * Lovely people (really, the best) * Too many cars on narrow lanes going too fast, and not enough of them are EVs * A few drivers slow down to pass; some even give a whole lane (which is 1.5 m and the law) * Too many cows * Could have more vegetarian food * Well signed cycle ways on roads with 100 km/h speed limit and no shoulder 😬 * Windy, yet not many wind turbines. * Challenging to take bikes on trains

My impression of Ireland after cycling around for a few days is that it’s a beautiful country with really lovely people. It’s too bad about the smell of cow poop and car exhaust.

Also, @hannahdaly.ie and her Dad are awesome.

Nice chance meeting on the ferry from Dublin-Holyhead this morning after both bike touring in Ireland!

A smiling man wearing a dark sweater stands outdoors near a body of water, with a cityscape and cloudy sky in the background. The image is in black and white.

@dmarshallocean.bsky.social is a professor of climate physics at @ox.ac.uk. He studies how things that happen on small scales (turbulence and eddies) affect the large scale (ocean circulation). In our parlance, he studies geophysical fluid dynamics.

I recommend checking out the profiles and records of the people that went through this program while you still can:

cpo.noaa.gov/fellowships/

They are a testament to how a small amount of federal funding can seed a tremendous increase in knowledge and understanding.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

A new editorial by me on the global implications of Trump's war on science - apart from the devastating cuts to global health, we must urgently build a more distributed science infrastructure.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

And remember, GFDL is whee Suki Manabe did his Nobel-prize winning work establishing the physics of CO2-induced global warming. It is a gem in the crown of US federal laboratories, and now it is about to be irretrievably tossed on the trash-heap.

Excellent post by @dinahvp.bsky.social‬ on the plan to devastate NOAA research, with quotes from @franklinjamesl.bsky.social @wxmanms1.bsky.social. "Only a small fraction of NOAA Research would remain and be transferred to the NWS, including portions of the weather, tornado and technology research."

Hmm … my personal experience is that my highest quality research (I appreciate highly subjective!) has been the hardest to fund. Meanwhile I’ve seen recent calls for large programmes of dubious quality.

I can confidently say that I would not still be doing physical oceanography without MPOWIR. The termination of MPOWIR's NSF grant is soul-crushing to me. Let's celebrate the success of this 20 year program and get to work continuing its legacy. 🌊 ⛴️ 🧪

www.advancejournal.org/post/3227-ce...

I can't overstate how scary this is.

If the state did this to pretty much *any* UK university, it would go bankrupt

Looking forward to another season of Grand Challenge Seminars, organised by our @oxfordenvres.bsky.social and DTC students. Kicking off today with Tightening the Green Belt: Labour, Housing and Biodiversity.

Grand Challenges 2025 commence this evening, May 8th @ 5pm with a discussion around the conflict (or not?) between housing a growing population and protecting biodiversity. The free public seminars are followed by drinks and nibbles & organised by DTC first year PhD students. bit.ly/4jvMLDF

White House Proposal Could Gut Climate Modeling the World Depends On Potential funding cuts for NOAA and its research partners threaten irreparable harm not only to climate research but to American safety, competitiveness, and national security.

More about threats to NOAA/GFDL.

Keys today

About to play a set at the Tap Market with Short Notice Jazz. Wonderful setting in the centre of the Oxford Covered Market with excellent beer on tap from the Tap Social.

Portraits of dismissed scientists personalize US government cuts to science A hurricane researcher. An invasive-insect entomologist. An e-cigarette toxicologist. A biomedical librarian. Those are some of the people included in Silenced Science Stories, a visual storytelling p...

A science communicator launched an effort to pair artists with scientists whose jobs were eliminated or whose research funding was halted by the Trump administration. The result? Powerful portraits of researchers and their work. ⚛️🧪
doi.org/10.1063/pt.f...

White House Proposal Could Gut Climate Modeling the World Depends On Potential funding cuts for NOAA and its research partners threaten irreparable harm not only to climate research but to American safety, competitiveness, and national security.

They simply want to cancel an entire field of science because they don't like the answers it has come up with. It's like the burning of the library of Alexandria. www.propublica.org/article/trum...

For years conservatives and some liberals complained incessantly about ‘cancel culture’ and the lack of ‘free speech’ on campuses. None of that stuff comes even close to what the right is now doing in power, in terms of the open bullying and pressuring of colleges and censoring of curricula.

When the physicists need burner phones, that’s when you know America’s changed | John Naughton US academics, fearing persecution by their own government, are becoming ideological refugees. Europe, and Britain, must offer them sanctuary

A chilling thought:

"So if the aloof trustees of Harvard, Princeton, Yale et al think that their august institutions lie beyond his reach, perhaps they should understand that Trump looks on them much as Henry VIII looked on the rich monasteries of his heyday."

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving More than 1,600 readers answered our poll; many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada.

We polled Nature readers to ask if they were thinking of leaving the US for jobs abroad. Three-quarters of them (who said they were US-based scientists) said yes. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Trump's attacks on universities get ever darker, with the shadows reaching our shores The US has become a hostile and authoritarian state to foreign scientists and is choosing ideology over science.

Colleagues are cancelling their US work trips. I worry that international colleagues in the US are at risk if they collaborate with us on certain topics.

I've written a new post about the increasing danger of being a foreign scientist in the US.

christinapagel.substack.com/p/trumps-att...

Rare opportunity.... a permanent observational oceanography position on offer at GEOMAR, one of the world's leading oceanographic centers

www.geomar.de/en/karriere/...

Britain issues travel warning for US The change comes amid President Donald Trump's large-scale crackdown on illegal immigration.

"Britain Issues Travel Warning for U.S."
www.newsweek.com/britain-issu...

Personally, I would not risk it ... nor would I want to go to the USA right now.

Yes, but …

Why would you want to?

“International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5 percent this year”

Only 5 percent? I can’t imagine why anyone would want to travel there right now!