Hi,
Feels like forever I sat down to write a few lines here. I guess ”forever” is a relative term, but anyways, here I am again with a couple of photographs and some more or less well formulated thoughts on life in general.

It’s ben raining in San Diego lately. A lot. A lot for being this place anyways. The water has been rushing down the hill to Scripps, and in one of my courses I’m taking this quarter I’m writing a paper on how rainfall relates to the water quality in the ocean. All the studies I’ve read about what the runoff carries with it have made me quite hesitant to jump in the water right after the heavens have opened.

I barely even noticed at first, but all this water kind of kicked off spring over here. The tree by the neighbourhood pool that all of fall and winter have been dropping its leaves into the pool (to the dismay of the pool keeper) is now suddenly covered in tiny white flowers. The rosemary bush on the path behind the house is purple, as is the unidentified tree next to it. On the way down to Scripps I’m suddenly seeing burgeoning fresh grass on what used to be dust, and where I thought nothing could grow. It’s February already and I guess these signs of spring are similar to finding snowdrops on the ground back home. It’s pretty anyhow.

Four weeks of this quarter have already passed and I’m taking four quite different courses. The first is about the cryosphere and the climate system. The cryosphere is what you call the parts of Earth containing frozen water, that is, sea ice, glaciers, snow and permafrost. It’s very interesting, but the articles we get to read are not very uplifting. Melting ice, disrupted precipitation patterns that will effect millions (California for example is heavily dependent on snowfall i the High Sierras for its water supply), enormous amounts of green house gases (carbon dioxide and methane) that will be released from thawing permafrost as the world warms. Ironically, it’s extremely cold in many places in the US right now. The Midwest have experienced temperatures of almost -30°C and a certain president that doesn’t seem to understand that this is also a part of climate change (the polar vortex is disrupted by abnormal high pressure zones) tweets ”bring back global warming!”. Sometimes you start wondering where the world is going.
(The picture is from Riksgränsen, Northern Sweden, I’m missing the snow a little bit.)

The second course I’m taking is a course where we’re looking at instruments used in marine research. My group is focusing on a pH meter that we’ve brought back from deployment in a lagoon just north of San Diego. We get to pick it apart, clean and service it, build new battery packs for it, and the calibrate and test it before we put it back out there. Very hands on, which I enjoy. 

The third course is a programming course where we’re learning Python (yep, it’s actually named after Monty Python). Also very hands on, that’s the only way to learn how to programming, and much more fun than I thought it would be.

Last but not least I’m also taking a course called ”Climate Change and Global Health”. Our professor is from France and sometimes a little hard to understand, but it’s such an interesting course. We’re people from a bunch of different programs and majors (but I’m the only Earth Science student), and the class discussions are always good. We learn about different aspects of climate change, toxicology, epidemiology and look at different studies and how they’ve used statistics. The main conclusion we’ve reached is that climate change definitely is a socioeconomic issue. In each and every area we’ve looked at, heat waves, food security, vector and water borne diseases et cetera it’s always the already vulnerable that will be hit the hardest in the future. Climate change will primarily cement the gaps that already exist.

It’s interesting to realise that not everyone has realised what issues we are facing. I feel I’ve had this explained to me about a gazillion times and I believe that you could ask any fifth grader in Sweden what the green house effect is and they’ll explain it to you. It’s been an eye opener to come here and realise some people are not necessarily seeing it the same way. Some are hesitant to wether it’s really as bad as they say, drive their car 500 me to the grocery store to get milk and won’t sort their trash (I mean it is messy and smelly, right?), and maybe think that this is a problem for future generations, or that it won’t matter whet the individual does (there are so many people who are s much worse). It’s definitely a more convenient way of thinking about it than actually scrutinise your habits and make those changes (sort your trash, drive less, change your diet etc).

You could feel a little angry and disappointed for less I believe. Sometimes it seems like people just don’t get it and lack respect for nature, and by extension themselves and everyone around them. This weekend I was supposed to be going to Joshua Tree National Park on a camping trip organised by the sports club at school. But as there’s been a government shutdown (Mr T does it again…) all the government employees that normally work in the park haven’t been payed, and for the past month the gates have been open. People have been running all over the park, littering, cutting down trees, and destroying roads and campgrounds. It’s going to take years for the park to recover and our trip there was cancelled. Tragic.

Instead I’ve been home in San Diego all weekend studying with the rain pouring down outside the window. Maybe not as fun, but productive and I had time to sit down and write a few lines here.

As always, thanks for reading and take care!