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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: UNH Scientist Helps Show Collapse of Antarctic Ice Shelf is “Unprecedented” ENVIRONMENTAL ALERT** UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space UNH Scientist Helps Show Collapse of Antarctic Ice Shelf is “Unprecedented” Contact: David Sims mailto:david.sims@unh.edu 603-862-5369 Science Writer Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space Aug. 3, 2005 DURHAM, N.H. -- A paper to be published in the August 4 issue of the journal Nature asserts that the recent collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea of Antarctica is “unprecedented” in recent times. The ice shelf – the third largest in the Antarctic – has undergone catastrophic decay in recent years. A total of about 3, 250 square kilometers of the shelf area disintegrated in a five-day period in the winter of 2002. Over the last five years the ice mass has lost some 5,700 square kilometers and is currently 40 percent the size it was previously when stable. Using marine sediment cores from the ocean floor formerly covered by the ice shelf, scientists found no evidence for “episodes of open marine conditions” indicating that the ice shelf has been in existence for last 8,000 years – a period of time referred to as the Holocene Epoch. “Our unique observation, that for the first time the Larsen B is involved in collapse, indicates that the current warming trend in the NW Weddell Sea has exceeded past warm episodes in its magnitude,” states the paper, whose lead author is Eugene Domack of Hamilton College. University of New Hampshire scientist Michael Prentice, one of the article’s authors, is an expert in the paleoceanographic technique used to extract past ocean properties from the seafloor sediment. The technique involves analyzing the chemical composition of the remains of tiny, one-celled animals called Foraminifera or “forams.” The technique, according to Prentice, is technically challenging in polar regions but highly accurate at giving a clear picture of past water temperatures and salinity levels. Says Prentice, “Some of the forams in the cores lived and died in the surface water adjacent to the ice shelf before settling to the seafloor to be incorporated into the sediment that we recovered. A pristine record of ocean surface water can be had from analyzing them.” Prentice calls forams the “workhorse” in the field of paleoclimatology. The method involves dissolving the carbonate shells of the tiny forams and, using a mass spectrometer, measuring the oxygen isotopes contained within the carbon dioxide gas that comes from the shells. Because the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the shells is controlled by the water conditions at the time the forams were living, forams from layers of accumulating sediment give a clear record of water conditions from the present back deep into the past. “We got a pretty good fix on what the longer history of ice shelf extent and melting has been,” Prentice says. This fix, in turn, gives scientists a context for judging the significance of the current collapse. Prentice adds, “These data are the first good isotopic record adjacent to a crumbling ice shelf.” And that isotope record, he says, suggests that there has been a progressive slow melting/thinning of the ice shelf over the last 8,000 years. “This is due in part to climate warming. But melting over the last 8,000 years was never close to what it is today, and so the current collapse and glacier surge that it has unleashed are unprecedented.” He adds, “The Larsen B is considered a harbinger for the massive ice shelves to its south, which, for now, dam the large majority of the world’s ice. “ UNH credentials: related links: http://www.eos.sr.unh.edu/ The Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS) at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a multidisciplinary scientific research institute dedicated to understanding the integrated behavior of the Earth and its surrounding universe. Established in 1985, the Institute has become a world leader in the fields of space science, terrestrial ecosystems, oceanography, atmospheric science and global climate change. About the Institute . . . UNH is a "high-impact university" (in the company of Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton). The Institute for Scientific Information ranks UNH third in geoscience research citations and fourth in environmental science citations. EOS is the University of New Hampshire's largest research enterprise, receiving more than $30 million each year in external research support. UNH is a world leader in Gamma-Ray telescopes. EOS was the American center for development of the Compton Telescope (COMPTEL) on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, one of NASA's "great observatories." UNH Receives $38 Million From NASA for Sun-Earth Mission http://www.eos.sr.unh.edu/About/News/Articles?NEWS_ID=454 DURHAM, N.H. – The University of New Hampshire has received the largest, single research award in the history of the institution – $38 million from NASA to build instruments for the space agency’s Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission. As part of an international team from 12 institutes, space scientists at UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS) will construct instruments for MMS’ four identical solar-terrestrial probes, which will study little understood, fundamental processes in the Earth’s magnetosphere -- the magnetic shield that protects the Earth from solar and cosmic radiation. Over the next eight years, UNH scientists, engineers, graduate and undergraduate students will help construct two Electron Drift Instruments, (EDI) for each of the four spacecraft. EDI is designed to measure electric fields and electron drifts using a controlled beam of electrons. In addition, UNH will construct the central electronic controls for all the instruments being built to measure the spectrum of electromagnetic fields around the spacecraft. This “FIELDS” instrument suite will be comprised of six sensors per spacecraft. “The expertise of the UNH Space Science Center in space instrumentation was critical to forming our excellent international FIELDS team on MMS, which will contribute many of the new observations for this exciting mission,” says physics professor Roy Torbert, director of the EOS Space Science Center and UNH’s principal investigator for the mission. James L. Burch of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, is leading construction of the mission’s $140 million instrument suite. The MMS spacecraft are slated to launch aboard an 86-foot, 225,000-pound Delta II rocket in July 2013. The mission is designed to explore the plasma processes that govern the interaction of the Earth’s magnetic field with the highly charged solar wind. Plasma is a highly ionized gas sometimes described as the “fourth state of matter.” Plasmas occupy 99 percent of the observable universe. However, only in the Earth’s magnetosphere – a multilayered, comet-shaped magnetic shield that, in its tail, extends as far as 60,000 kilometers away – are these important plasma processes readily accessible for sustained study through in situ measurements. One of those processes is magnetic reconnection, in which magnetic fields reconfigure themselves and release energy. Reconnection, a main focus of the MMS mission, is the basic mechanism by which energy from the sun and the solar wind is transferred into the Earth’s magnetospheric system. Reconnection is widely believed to play a crucial role in space and astrophysical phenomena such as magnetospheric substorms and solar flares. It is a crucial process to understand in order to be able to predict “space weather” conditions. For example, a blast of this energy from substorms or solar flares can affect satellites, Earth-based instruments and power grids, shower astronauts and aircraft flying over the Earth’s poles with deadly radiation, and light up the sky with aurora. “In a sense, MMS represents a culmination of the extensive work done in space science at the university,” Torbert says. “It is based on previous successful NASA and European Space Agency missions in which UNH has participated, such as the CLUSTER, SOHO, ACE, WIND, and POLAR satellites, as well as our theoretical and numerical simulation work, where the process of reconnection has been observed and simulated, but never studied as rigorously as will be done on MMS.” Other plasma processes that MMS will study include charged particle acceleration, and turbulence in key boundary regions of the Earth’s magnetosphere. Along with magnetic reconnection, these processes control the flow of energy, mass, and momentum within and across plasma boundaries, occur throughout the universe, and are fundamental to our understanding of astrophysical and solar system plasmas. Despite four decades of study, beginning with the early Sputnik and Explorer spacecraft, much about the operation of these processes remains unknown or poorly understood. MMS and its multiple spacecraft approach will provide a much more detailed picture of the region. Each of the four satellites, flying together as a tightly coordinated fleet through the magnetosphere, will carry identical instruments and will thus be able to gather a multi-dimensional view of these processes that have eluded previous studies. Along with UNH, co-investigators include the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the French Center for Terrestrial and Planetary Environments, the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, the Technical University of Braunschweig, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Iowa. Scientists Gather at UNH to Discuss Initial Findings From Massive 2004 Air Quality Study DURHAM, N.H. -- Last year at this time, seacoast New Hampshire was the hub of an unprecedented atmospheric science field campaign involving hundreds of scientists from around the world. Beginning Tuesday, August 9 at the University of New Hampshire, preliminary data from the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation (ICARTT) will be shared for the first time since the six-week-long field experiment drew to a close in mid-August 2004. “This was a really complex experiment, with so many people and so much logistical integration that it took a year for people to pull their data together,” says UNH atmospheric chemist Robert Talbot, director of AIRMAP– a joint National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/UNH program aimed at understanding climate variability and the source of persistent air pollutants in New England. AIRMAP’s four regional state-of-the-art atmospheric observatories served as the foundation for the field experiment. U.S. Senator Judd Gregg helped secure funding for the AIRMAP program and facilitated NOAA's role in ICARTT. Adds Talbot, “This campaign was the first time we’ve been able to make a concerted effort, using airplanes, a ship, satellites, and balloons, to better understand regional air quality, intercontinental transport of polluted air masses, the role that nighttime chemistry plays, and the effects of pollutants on atmospheric cooling and warming. So, there should be some important information coming out of this meeting.” For example, there will be insights into the possible role that sea-borne compounds called halogens, like chlorine or iodine, play in creating or destroying ground-based ozone levels. When polluted continental air meets up with halogen-rich coastal marine air, the chemistry gets complicated and is not well understood. A better understanding is important if scientists are to calculate the global ozone budget much like they are trying to ascertain the world’s carbon budget vis-à-vis climate change and global warming. Tropospheric ozone (as opposed to the stratospheric variety that helps protect the Earth from ultraviolet radiation) is generally considered to be a pollutant and can cause respiratory problems and damage plants. At the same time, this ozone plays a dual role in helping to cleanse the Earth’s atmosphere, and so keeping a healthy balance of the compound is important in the overall, global state of our atmosphere. At the workshop, ICARTT scientists will also for the first time be able to compare notes on what was discovered about the effect aerosols or particulate matter have on the cooling or warming of air masses. The “radiative” properties of these particles play a critical role in regional and hemispheric temperatures. Additional insights, based on what was observed last summer, will be provided into how well current forecast models are able to simulate the chemistry and transport of pollutants. Talbot notes also that, like the university’s prominent role in ICARTT itself, UNH’s hosting of this meeting is a feather in its cap because scientific gatherings of this size and importance are generally reserved for special sessions of the American Geophysical Union meetings or the like. This will be the first meeting of some of the finest minds in atmospheric chemistry well before next fall’s AGU meeting in San Francisco. And, says Talbot, “Until you hear what everybody’s found it’s really hard to develop any answers, until you can see how the whole thing fits together it’s hard to pull out the real simplified gems.” Editors: The ICARTT meeting will be held in the Granite State Room of the Memorial Union Building on the Durham campus beginning Tuesday, August 9, and running through Friday morning on August 12. Scientists will be available for reporter’s questions Wednesday and Thursday. There will be nearly 100 posters graphically displaying the ICARTT data. By David Sims Science Writer Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (603) 862-5369 david.sims@unh.edu Sia's comments: UNH's science department is not a "lightweight" source. We'd do well to HEED the alerts our nation's scientists are sending us about what we are doing to the environment with our pollution. Our air quality, our water safety, and our very LIVES can depend on it. If the Artic shelf melts down, we are SCREWED whether we realize it or not. The flood of fresh water into the salty oceans will kill billions of sea creatures essential to Earth's ecology... nevermind flooding our land masses, warming the globe even MORE, and most likely, triggering an ice age. All these things are NORMAL occurences to happen to the earth and all have happened before but NOT due to human pollution and not over a period of 150 years of "triggers" due to POLLUTION. We won't LIKE Mother nature if we don't start listening. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 36.
#9. To: siagiah (#0)
I agree they are normal and have occured before and this time there could be man-made changes (although that is far from certain). But even so, why does that matter? I have a book in front of me that I pull off the shelf for times like this. It's by John Gribben called "Forecasts, Famines and Freezes". Among the items on the back cover is Item: we have just lived through the worst winter in a century. Dr. John Gribben predicts that savage winters will continue for the next 30 years. On the front cover is this quote: "Likely to become of classical importance" --The Washington Post
The data we now have on CO2 levels and average mean temperature is pretty good for the last 5000 years. The CO2 level was almost constant until the start of the industrial age. It then took off, as did the average mean temperature. The average mean temerature has dipped a few times in the past 5000 years, e.g., 1400, but it's never been as high as it is now. We are now seeing changes that clearly have not taken place for 8 to 10 thousand years. The melting of the Russian permafrost, the collapse of the ice shelf discussed above and the retreat of the glaciers world wide are these sorts of events. It's also wrong to assume that a cold winter in one place negates the fact that the entire world has warmed up an average of one half of a degree. The model now in use predicts this. It predicts the weird cold winters that the UK is seeing. It predicts that the eastern seaboard will become like the UK and the UK will become like Sweeden. This is in the New Yorker article I referenced above.
The actual claim is that the temperature is the highest in the last 1000 years, not 5000. In the case of the 1000 year claim, there were plenty of warmer years in the warm period in medievil times. The only way to get rid of that evidence is to smooth it out the way Mann did. But inconveniently for him there were a few warmer decades in the last thousand years than the 1990's decade. His "hockey stick" chart relies on smoothed, selected temperature proxies before 1900 and then uses ground temperature measurements from then on: apples and oranges.
But I have never seen any support for ths outside of Newsmax and Limbaugh. The only reports of this that I have seen are from the hired think tanks that I mentioned above. I don't think there are any peer reviewed scientific journal articles that come out and say this. By the way, the New Yorker reports did say the temperature is higher now than in the past 5000 years.
Then the New Yorker is out on a limb. The only way to know that is to use proxies for temperature measurements (e.g. tree ring growth, sediment cores, etc) which are difficult to precisely relate to temperature. The proxy resolution is usually pretty bad (trees have rings each year, but cores generally only yield decade or multi-decade resolution. There's an FTP site with tons of data: ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/contributions_by_author/ which has many data sets that contradict the New Yorker. For 5000 years, look for data sets showing proxy measurements for that span such as demenocal2000 (ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/contributions_by_author/demenocal2000/658_sst.txt) showing anomalous warming 1000 years ago, 1300 years ago and about 4000 years ago. For the last 1000 years, there are data sets like briffa1998 which show anomalous years sych as 1026 to 1033, but also quite a bit of anomalous warming since WWII. So, while there is warming over the last century as both of our charts demonstrate, it is not true to state that the 1990's had the warmest years in the last 1000 or 5000, but it is true that the 1990's had the warmest years in the last 200 or so.
When Rush and Newsmax say they have a "report" from a respected "institute" that contradicts the world wide scientific community, what they mean is that somewhere there was an unstable professor in some earth sciences department that did pretty good until he got into the bottle. The guy then molested a coed and got fired. Given that it's really hard to find earth science teaching positions, and given that everyone in academia knows everyone else, the guy was on the skids. GM then came along and set him up with a $200k per year salary and an office in Santa Monica. The guy now does really well as long as the stuff he pumps out of the "intitute" makes GM happy. On top of it all, the alcoholic molester probably feels victimized by the established scientific community and is happy to be a pain in the ass to them. I have seen this sort of thing with my own eyes. This same guy soon finds out he can make a few bucks on the side as an expert witness. You run into herds of these types when you practice law.
Which I ignore, as we all should. I also ignore articles in the New Yorker since that is not a peer reviewed journal. The web site I provided was set up by NOAA to allow any published scientist to post the data from their articles. This includes all scientists, pro or con, as long as the data corresponds to an article in a peer reviewed journal. I look at that same data and make up my own mind rather than take the word of Rish Limbaugh, the New Yorker or the Washington Post.
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