Abstract: Paris school of mines engineer thesis report
Abstract: Precipitation in the interior of the Antarctic continent plays a crucial role in the mass balance of the ice-sheet. Nevertheless, few observations have been made to quantify the snowfall and it is not clear how accurately the phenomenon is reproduced by climate models. For these reasons, a disdrometer (VPF-730, Biral) was set up on the Antarctic Plateau in 2009 at the French-Italian station Concordia. The observations were compared to a limited area model and a meteorological reanalysis. To account for the important dierences between observations and models, a cluster analysis was performed on the disdrometer data. This method allowed to separate artefacts from actual snow events and to distinguish snow events among themselves. If the artefacts are excluded from the dataset, the agreement with the models is improved, at least in terms of the timing of events. A recalibration for specic snow types could potentially yield information on the magnitude of the events as well.
Can be downloaded at http://www-lgge.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/~christo/calva/reports/Rapport_AmbroiseDufour.pdf

Abstract: Seeing the ocean through the eyes of seabirds could help meet the challenges of managing common-pool marine resources both in protected and unprotected areas. First, seabirds are top-predators, exposed to all threats affecting the oceans, and this makes them ideal sentinel organisms for monitoring changes within marine ecosystems. Second, seabirds cross both ecological and political boundaries, and following their movements should help making interdependencies within and between marine ecosystems more visible. Third, seabirds are conspicuous and often charismatic animals, which interact differently with different groups of stakeholders and provide the opportunity to acknowledge and discuss each other's values and interests. In this paper, we present these research avenues using a seabirds’ view, for tackling marine conservation and management issues, and we give operational examples of implementation based on our work in the English Channel.