Ann Daniels was born in Bradford, but now lives near Exeter. In this video recorded at TEDxExeter 2014 she explains how her first visit to Dartmoor led her from being a mother of triplets to becoming a leader of Polar exploration expeditions as well:

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According to the Russian language web site "TV Star" (with the aid of Google Translate, plus a bit of poetic licence on my part):

On the personal order of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu troop ships of the Northern Fleet, led by the cruiser "Peter the Great" are making a trip through the Arctic. They have already passed the Kara Gate – between the islands of Novaya Zemlya and Vaygach. During the trek the crews of the missile cruiser and of the large amphibious ships "Olenegorsky miner" and "Kondopoga" will be improving seamanship and getting trained in rescue operations in the Arctic regions.

The Northern Fleet have just missed a great training opportunity, since according to the Barents Observer they have just sailed strait past the stricken diesel tanker Nordvik, accompanied by no less than four nuclear icebreakers!

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Although their "Trip Tracker" doesn't reflect this as yet, the Mainstream Last First expedition have just reported on their Facebook page that the Arctic Joule is currently:

Beached at Dew Line Station under the Arctic eagle's watch

at Cape Parry. They've also posted a picture of themselves rowing in the Arctic twilight:

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We've been following the approaching cyclone in the Arctic for a few days, and this morning the predictions are starting to come true. Out of all the various forecasting models we've looked at so far only ECMWF offers a "nowcast". That's the model's idea of what's happening in real time in the real world, and here's how it looked over the Arctic first thing this morning, as visualised by the Danish Meteorological Institute:

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Here at econnexus.org.uk we're used to tracking hurricanes, but so far there's been a fairly quiet start to the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. The strongest tropical storm so far has been Andrea, whose winds reached a maximum speed of 65 mph (100 km/h) around a minimum central pressure of 992 mbar. The National Hurricane Centre currently reports "No tropical cyclones at this time" for both the Eastern Pacific and the North Atlantic. Despite that an "extra-tropical" cyclone looks like it's on its way next week, far to the north of both those oceans.

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Roland Emmerich's "The Day After Tomorrow" is a BAFTA award winning action/adventure movie in which, according to the Internet Movie Database:

A sudden international storm plunges the planet into a new Ice Age.

A large team of scientists have spent the last four years investigating how close to the truth the movie is, under the auspices of the European Union's "Thermohaline Overturning – at Risk?" project (or THOR for short). The project web site states that their objectives are to:

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In the good old days I used to pore over atmospheric pressure charts kindly provided online by the likes of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF for short) before making a decision on exactly where and when to go surfing.  Here's what they are revealing to me today:

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