WESTBROOK, MAINE ICE DISK WEBCAM -
The City of Westbrook is excited to announce that in cooperation with Brown University and climate scientist Christopher Horvat, a webcam was installed overlooking the massive ice disk in Westbrook, Maine. This will enable scientists at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, the University of Washington, and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Science in Wellington, NZ, to monitor it.
The City has set up a web page on their website at this link: http://www.westbrookmaine.com/596/Ice-Disk-Webcam
You can also view archived time-lapse video on that page which pieces together a full day of imagery. The camera is set to snap one photo per minute. The archived time-lapses show the amazing rotation end evolution of the ice disk.
Last week Westbrook's Marketing and Communications Manager, Tina Radel, was contacted by Christopher Horvat about the possibility of installing the webcam for research to watch the ice disk’s growth, evolution, and eventual breakup. On Saturday, January 19, 2019 the webcam was installed atop a nearby building by Mike McCormack of IP Timelapse.
We are happy to say that we were able to pull this off in a short period of time through the coordination of Tina Radel, building owner Rob Mitchell, Ethos Marketing & Design, who provided network and internet connection, Michael McCormack of IP Timelapse who installed the camera, Christopher Horvat, and Brown University.
Christopher Horvat (www.chrv.at, @chhorvat) is a NOAA Climate and Global Change Fellow at Brown University. Christopher studies connections between Earth's sea ice, oceans, climate, and life.
According to Horvat, “We will be using this massive river-ice "floe" to test tools used for remote observations of sea ice. It is also just a really interesting natural phenomenon. Why not record what it does?” Horvat’s work is the subject of the documentary Enduring Ice http://enduringice.com/.
For inquiries related to the webcam, please contact Tina Radel, City of Westbrook tradel@westbrook.me.us or Chris Horvat, Brown University christopher_horvat@brown.edu