It's hotter than now! Romantic stories told by three marine academicians to over a thousand campers of Shanghai Science Camp, without the ocean, this hot storage mountain | Ocean | Shanghai

The ocean not only covers 71% of the Earth's surface area, but also 97.5% of the world's water bodies. The highest seamount exceeds 10000 meters, higher than Mount Everest. Currently, what is more noteworthy is that the ocean, as a heat and carbon reservoir, absorbs 90% of the heat released by humans and 40% of carbon dioxide. Faced with the young campers who have been coming to Shanghai with temperatures exceeding 35 degrees Celsius in recent days, Zhou Meng, founding dean of the School of Oceanography at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, admitted that without the ocean as a large heat reservoir, it would be even hotter than it is now.

On the 18th, the 2023 Youth University Science Camp Shanghai Science Camp, hosted by the China Association for Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education, opened. More than a thousand campers from more than 30 regions in China, including Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and major provinces, visited 6 famous universities and enterprises in Shanghai from online to offline, sensing the dreams of technology, youth, and China.

In the gymnasium of Shanghai Jiao Tong University Minhang Campus, Professor Zhou Meng not only popularized the ocean in his eyes as a scholar, but also talked about the "most romantic things" of the three academicians he knew during the "first lesson" full of Shanghai and school characteristics. For Zhou Meng, his most significant choice after graduating from high school, attending a technical school, becoming a worker, self-taught in advanced mathematics, recovering from the college entrance examination, and entering Tsinghua University was the choice of his major direction. The letters replied by Academician Mao Hanli to him, who was still an undergraduate at the time, ultimately led him to successfully embark on the path of marine scientific research.

"Entering the ocean, a romantic life." In 1951, the US government issued a ban, prohibiting all Chinese scientists in the US from returning to their home countries. In order to return to his homeland, Mao Hanli resolutely hired a lawyer and fought a lawsuit against the US government, which lasted for three years. Afterwards, Mao Hanli, along with Qian Xuesen and others, became a returning scientist after the lifting of the ban on New China. Later, Academician Mao Hanli became one of the founders of physical oceanography in China. Zhou Meng said that Academician Mao Hanli's over 30 handwritten letters, along with the handwritten envelope "received by Zhou Meng," have been cherished by him to this day.

During Zhou Meng's graduate studies in the United States, another academician Su Jilan leaked important information, hoping that he would "return to China" to establish his own ocean academy for Chinese people and successfully "recall" him. Zhou Meng told the young campers that Academician Su Jilan returned to his home country after the reform and opening up. In 1979, he gave up his high salary in the United States and returned to his homeland, where he moved from a garden villa to a tube shaped dormitory. Later, Academician Su became a professor at the Second Institute of Oceanography and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and also became the former chairman of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Su Jilan said, "Our generation of intellectuals, influenced by patriotic literary works by writers such as Lu Xun, Mao Dun, and Ba Jin, have a sense of responsibility towards our motherland, which is to make China prosperous and strong."

Another academician, Qin Dahe, wrote a romantic story in Antarctica when he was still a researcher. As early as July 1989, Qin Dahe participated in an international hiking expedition across the Antarctic continent, covering a distance of 5986 kilometers. Along the way, he passed through the South Pole and the "inaccessible area" and arrived at the final destination of the expedition, the Soviet Union Peace Station, on March 3, 1990. He became the first person in China to hike across the Antarctic continent. Zhou Meng said that while others were sleeping and resting, Qin Dahe dug deep pits on the ice sheet and collected over 800 precious ice and snow samples that run through Antarctica, making it the only one to date. Academician Qin Dahe later became the co chair of the first working group of the fourth assessment report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2002. He was also an honorary member of the American Meteorological Society and a recipient of the Volvo Environment Award.

The Xuelong 2 is in Shanghai. Photo by Xu Ruizhe

Zhou Meng stated that science, especially marine science, is full of romance, as well as risks and hardships. He himself was once hit by an iceberg on the Chinese polar scientific research ship "Xuelong", and personally participated in breaking Shaved ice with a pick and shovel, and together sent about 400 cubic meters of ice accumulated in the bow back to the Southern Ocean. "The ocean is one of the origins of human civilization, waiting for you to create another civilization; the ocean is the guardian god of human civilization, waiting for you to protect; there are many unknowns in the ocean, waiting for you to explore." Zhou Meng hopes that excellent high school students on site will be full of curiosity about life and the world, learn your skills well, and build a better world in the future. "

The reporter of Jiefang Daily Shangguan News learned that this year, the Shanghai Science Camp will last for one week. It will be jointly organized and implemented by the Shanghai Association for Science and Technology, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Tongji University, East China Normal University, East China University of Science and Technology, and CSSC Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. The six branches will invite famous masters to give special lectures, arrange campers to visit State Key Laboratory, and carry out disciplinary theme inquiry learning, scientists' spiritual education practice activities, and cultural and peer exchange activities.