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SCAR Newsletter: Issue 7, July 2006
SCAR Business News
SCAR Makes Progress at Antarctic Treaty Meeting
The 29th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, from June 12-23, 2006. SCAR presented 4 Working Papers and 6 Information Papers, all of which can be accessed from http://www.scar.org/treaty/atcmxxix/. The papers were well received by the ATCM and by its Committee on Environmental Protection (CEP). In addition there were many references to SCAR in the discussions of other papers, and a number of requests for assistance from SCAR. It looks as if SCAR will be busy producing papers for the 30th ATCM. At the Edinburgh meeting the proposal to delist Arctocephalus species from Annex II generated considerable discussion, but the CEP accepted the scientific advice from SCAR and the ATCM delisted A.gazelle and A.tropicalis at the final plenary meeting. The report from SCAR's Cadiz Workshop on marine acoustics was well received and broke new ground in discussing the natural marine noise environment within which additional anthropogenic noise needs to be considered. The proposal for the SCAR Antarctic Climate Assessment met with almost universal support and it is possible that several countries will be willing to provide some limited support to enable this to be done on a reasonable timescale. The proposal to list Southern Giant Petrels as Specially Protected Species under Annex II could not be taken forward at the Edinburgh meeting, because new information from the very recent ACAP meeting (which had arrived subsequent to preparation of the SCAR paper) suggested from data outside the Antarctic region that the global status of the species might be less vulnerabe than the population may be in the Antarctic region. SCAR has been asked to contact Birdlife International over the reassessment of global status, and also to conduct a regional status assessment of Antarctic populations, for revision of the paper and its re-submission next year. One day was devoted entirely to IPY and the ATCM agreed an IPY Declaration. IPY will remain on the agenda for reporting and discussion until at least 2009. The ATCM noted the central role being played by SCAR and its scientific community in helping to develop, manage and provide leadership for the IPY programme in the Antarctic. A detailed report of SCAR's involvement in the ATCM and CEP meetings will be made available for the SCAR Delegates meeting in Hobart (July 2006).
The SCAR lecture was again a highlight of the meeting, with an excellent presentation by Valerie Masson-Delmotte explaining the importance of ice cores to climate change studies. This lecture was repeated in the evening for a public audience. The text of the lecture, and the PowerPoint slides are now available on the SCAR website at: http://www.scar.org/communications/.
SCAR Awards its first Medals for Achievement
On July 12, 2006, as part of the opening ceremony for the SCAR Open Science Conference, in Hobart, Tasmania, the President, Professor Jörn Thiede will award the following three SCAR medals: (i) to Dr. Peter Barrett (NZ), the SCAR President's Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Antarctic Science; (ii) to Dr. Paul Mayewski (USA) the SCAR Medal for Excellence in Antarctic Research; and (iii) to Dr. David Walton (UK) the SCAR Medal for International Scientific Coordination. The full citations will be made available at the meeting. SCAR Secretariat team congratulates the Awardees and wishes them all the best in the future.
Climate Change News
NASA Survey Confirms Climate Warming Impact on Polar Ice Sheets
In the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken of the massive ice sheets covering both Greenland and Antarctica, NASA scientists confirm climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth's largest storehouses of ice and snow. The survey was published in the Journal of Glaciology (H. Jay Zwally and 7 others, 2005. Mass changes of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and shelves and contributions to sea-level rise: 1992-2002. J. Glaciol. 51(175), 509-527).
Contact e-mail for Dr. H. Jay Zwally: jayzwally@icesat2.nasa.gov
NASA Press Release
More information about the research and images on the Web
Global warming risk 'much higher'
(Extract from Challenger Wave, newsletter of the Challenger Society for Marine Science, June 2006)
Global temperatures will rise further in the future than previous studies have indicated, according to new research from two scientific teams. A team of European scientists have found that climate change estimates for the next century may have substantially underestimated the potential magnitude of global warming. The scientists say that the actual warming due to human fossil fuel emissions may be 15% to 78% higher than warming estimates that do not take into account the feedback mechanism involving carbon dioxide and Earth's temperature. They both used historical records to calculate the likely amplification of warming as higher temperatures induce release of CO2 from ecosystems.
The latest evidence comes in two papers to be published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. They challenge the consensus view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global body charged with collating and analysing climate science. It predicts that the global average temperature would rise by between 1.5ºC and 4.5ºC if human activities were to double the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. That figure, known as the climate sensitivity, results from a combination of two factors:
1. The direct impact of rising CO2 on the greenhouse effect
2. Various "feedback" mechanisms, which amplify the rate of warming, such as changes in the Earth's reflection of sunlight as ice melts. The new research adds a third component, by calculating the likely contribution of carbon dioxide released from natural ecosystems such as soil as temperatures rise. This would add to the CO2 produced through human activities, raising temperatures still further. The research is explained in a paper 'Positive feedback between global warming and atmospheric CO2 concentration inferred from past climate change' published in Geophysical Research Letters, 26 May 2006.
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/publications/latestpressrelease/2006-32br-climate.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5006970.stm
For climate studies: A Report on the joined SCAR/CliC/ICPM Workshop on High Latitude Reanalyses is available
A SCAR/CliC/ICPM Workshop on High Latitude Reanalyses was held at the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, 10-12 April 2006. Some troubling issues were listed during the workshop:
- Many of the fields are poor in the SH before 1979 when no satellite data are available. The output needs to be used with care, which is a question of education
- Before 1973 in the SH no actual sea ice data are used, only climatological values
- The reanalysis systems are not set up for data sparse areas
- Some early data are missing and still in hardcopy form
- The systems have poor snow cover
- Some of the polar parameterisation schemes are poor, such as the handling of Arctic shortwave radiation and polar clouds
- There are surface pressure trends and a poor SAM trend in the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis
- There is a lower tropospheric cold bias over the Arctic Ocean in ERA-40 reanalysis apparent in winter over 1979-97
- Polar precipitation.
- There is no correlation between storms in the pre-satellite era in ERA and NCEP
- Trend differences between NCEP and ERA over the Southern Ocean and Antarctic.
- Energy budget residuals needed?
- Mass budget corrections required
Antarctic Science & Services
Secret rivers found in Antarctic
Antarctica's buried lakes are connected by a network of rivers moving water far beneath the surface, say UK scientists.
Read the whole sory on the BBC News
New ice thickness and subglacial topography results from West Antarctica are available on-line
The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have completed a collaborative effort to survey the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica. This was the largest single aerogeophysical campaign ever undertaken in Antarctica, with two multi-instrumented geophysical aircraft operating from two field camps 500 km apart. The first outcome is the two papers, published in GRL, describing the subglacial topography results. The data will be available on the NSIDC website but before it happens you can download ice thickness and bed topography data (along with sample figures) at: http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/agasea
The papers can be seen at GRL's site:
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0609/2005GL025561
and
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0609/2005GL025588
The Polar View programme is now extending services to the Southern Hemisphere.
Polar View is part of the joint European Space Agency and European Commission programme called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), which is developing a range of environmental information services primarily from satellite earth observations. The Antarctic Node of Polar View will initially focus on delivering near real time information to contribute to safe and efficient ship navigation in sea ice. Operational services will start in October for the 2006 season.
More Information about Polar View can be found at:
http://www.polarview.aq/ and http://www.polarview.org/
Photos of Antarctic marine specimens needed - The SCAR Marine Biodiversity Information Network (MarBIN)
SCAR-MarBIN compiles and manages existing and new information on Antarctic marine biodiversity by coordinating, supporting, completing and optimizing database networking. SCAR-MarBIN integrates these efforts, giving a single and easy access to relevant marine biodiversity information and maximizing the exploitation of these resources. SCAR-MarBIN is the sister-project of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML), and is equally an IPY core initiative (#83).
SCAR-MarBIN is currently in its implementation phase, concentrating essentially on taxonomic and distribution data. In this context, we are also working on a variety of complementary projects, such as an Antarctic marine gazetteer (based on the SCAR composite gazetteer, and other data sources), which is now available online (http://www.scarmarbin.be/SearchGazetteer.php). We are also developing an expedition section, and other useful integrative tools such as vizualisation maps, bibliography,....
We are trying to populate a photo gallery at SCAR-MarBIN. We are specifically looking for pictures of Antarctic marine specimens, including some "not-so-sexy", unusual species. If you would like to contribute to this part of the project, just go to this page: http://www.scarmarbin.be/photo_gallery.php. You can easily upload your pictures there. When uploading the pictures, you can enter metadata (your name, your email address, description, notes, the corresponding ID of the specimen in the Register etc.). This metadata will help us link the picture with corresponding information (e.g. expedition, taxonomy) and acknowledge you properly.
Don't hesitate to make use of this tool!
Any enquiries should be addressed to Dr Bruno Danis, MarBIN Scientific Coordinator at: bruno.danis@scarmarbin.be
International Polar Year
IPY recommendations from a data management workshop for the International Polar Year (IPY) are now available.
NSIDC and the IPY Programme Office hosted the data management workshop at the the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, on March 3 and 4, 2006. More than forty participants from thirteen countries participated in the workshop, which followed the first meeting of the IPY Data Policy and Management Subcommittee.
Participants developed specific recommendations on engaging archives, data discovery and access methods, standards and interoperability, and ways to ensure that all IPY data are captured and readily available. Workshop participants aimed to develop an implementation plan for the IPY Data and Information Service (IPYDIS). A final workshop report, Glaciological Data Report 33, is now available at:
http://nsidc.org/pubs/gd/Glaciological_Data_33.pdf
For additional information and follow-up details from the meeting, see the workshop Web site (http://nsidc.org/events/ipydis)
Progress with SCAR's Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML)
Education & Outreach
A new Antarctic education website has been developed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), UK
Obituaries
Obituary for Tore Gjelsvik
Tore Gjelsvik (1916-2006)
Former SCAR President from 1974-1978, Tore Gjelsvik, died 23 January 2006 at the age of 89.
Tore Gjelsvik was born in Bodø, northern Norway on 7 September 1916. He completed his Cand Real. in geology at the University of Oslo in 1942, while he was playing an increasingly important role in the Resistance movement. Towards the end of World War II he had a central role in the movement and he later wrote two books on his wartime experiences. As a student he attended lectures by docent Adolf Hoel, a Svalbard geologist who led the institution that later became Norsk Polarinstitutt (the Norwegian Polar Institute, NPI).
Tore married Anne-Marie soon after the war and they had four children. He was research fellow at Harvard University in 1946/47, and then completed his dr.philos. degree in Norway in 1953. He worked for the next seven years with the Geological Survey of Norway and for the UN in Turkey and Burma. In 1960 he was appointed director of NPI, a position he held until retirement in 1983.
Tore had a high intellectual and working capacity, and a burning engagement for polar issues. He was result-oriented, and unpretentious on his own behalf. Combined with an extensive national and international network this gave him much influence. There is no doubt that Norwegian polar activities today owe much to the foundations he built. He worked incessantly for the institute, and those of us who worked at NP under Tore remember him as a informal, approachable leader with high integrity and loyalty.
In 1972 Tore started a process to bring Norway back with its own expeditions to Antarctica. He mustered both his own private channels and his influence in the relevant Ministries to ensure fresh funding so that national expeditions could be sent, which then started in 1976. No doubt it was his status as a polar leader, and his engagement for Antarctic affairs, rather than Norway's own efforts, that led to his election as SCAR president in 1974. At this time SCAR was moving from the period of the IGY-generation and the "Old Boys" who all knew each others, and it was educational for a relative youngster like myself to be his right-hand man in this evolution. I still remember his comments at the SCAR Meeting in Mendoza in 1976 when he spoke about bringing more women scientists to Antarctica!
Tore was also active in the Antarctic Treaty meetings, including the early discussions relating to mineral resources in Antarctica. With his geological background he was always very clear that the ideas that were afloat from the late 1970's on commercial activities in this area were not realistic in any foreseeable future.
Tore was chairman or member of many national and international committees and societies. He was honoured with the Swedish Nordstjärna order and the Polish Copernicus Medal in 1982, and the Norwegian Commander of St Olav order in 1984. He received the German Georg von Neumayer Service Medal in 1988 for his contribution to developing German polar research. He continued with polar activities after his retirement, including geologic field work at Svalbard and working up his material at NPI. Around 1990 he led an important effort to upgrade the Fram Museum in Oslo, of which he was chairman 1985-96.
Olav Orheim,
Head of Antarctic Research at NPI from 1972-1993, Director of NPI 1993-2005
An obituary for John Heap
John Arnfield Heap
5 February 1932 - 8 March 2006
John Heap was Head of the United Kingdom Delegation to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings during the 1970s and 1980s. In that capacity, he was known to many people in SCAR who attended those meetings.
While an undergraduate reading geography at Edinburgh University he led an expedition to Arctic Norway and so started his polar career. He sailed south with Sir Vivian Fuchs' Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1955-58) as the sea-ice observer. This work was published as an atlas of sea-ice distribution maps for the Weddell Sea region and led to the award of a PhD by Cambridge University. After two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Ann Arbor, Michigan, he returned to Britain and exchanged a career in glaciology for one in polar diplomacy in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, under the guidance of Brian Roberts.
He became a familiar and respected figure at Antarctic Treaty Meetings where his skilful diplomacy often showed a way through a difficult negotiation to reach consensus, a state that he would often describe as one where "everyone agrees not to disagree"! His knowledge of the Treaty and its instruments, particularly the rules of procedure, was supreme but then he had been involved in drafting so many of them. It was only natural that he should compile and edit the first eight editions of the Handbook of the Antarctic Treaty System. He was a firm believer in the importance of scientific research in the Antarctic and was a strong supporter of SCAR.
When he retired from government service he was appointed Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute where he committed himself to the daunting prospect of raising money for building an extension to the Institute. He was successful, and the ever-growing collections of the library should be assured of a good home for the next 30 years. He was a driving force for establishing the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust, a charity devoted to the conservation of Britain's heritage in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Ross Sea regions. He also served as chairman of the Trans-Antarctic Association, a charity that arose from the profit made by the Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
With the death of John Heap, Britain has lost one of her most illustrious polar advocates and supporters. He will be sadly missed by his many friends and colleagues, both in Britain and around the world. We extend our deepest condolences to his wife and family at this sad time.
SCAR pays tribute to Dr Sayed El-Sayed, the Antarctic marine biologist
Sayed El-Sayed (1926 - 2005)
With the death of Sayed El-Sayed, Antarctic oceanography has lost one of its pioneers, and most enthusiastic supporters. Sayed was born and educated in Egypt, graduating in Zoology and Geology from the University of Alexandria in 1949, where he was also awarded an MSc in Oceanography in 1951. In 1953 he moved to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the leading oceanographic institution in the US, as a biologist in the Marine Life Programme, USA. His work on the English Sole populations of Saratoga Passage, Holmes Harbour and Penn Cove gained him a PhD from the University of Washington in 1959. He joined the staff of the Oceanography Department at College Station, Texas A & M University in 1963, and remained there until his retirement in 1997, on which he was awarded Emeritus status.
Early on in his time at Scripps, Sayed became interested in the ecology of marine phytoplankton and Antarctic marine ecosystems. From 1962 to 1967 Sayed participated in nine Argentinean cruises in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean, and nine American cruises in the Pacific sector. He presented a synopsis of this work at the Second SCAR Biology Symposium held in Cambridge UK in July 1968.
A significant outcome of this SCAR meeting was the recognition of our lack of knowledge of the fundamental ecology and dynamics of the entire Antarctic marine ecosystem. Coupled with the rapidly developing Antarctic fisheries for fin-fish and krill, this gave rise to great concern. Following a series of international meetings, in 1976 the BIOMASS (Biological Investigation Of Marine Antarctic Systems and Stocks) Programme was formulated under the aegis of the newly formed SCAR Group of Specialists on Southern Ocean Ecosystems and their Living Resources, with support from other international bodies including SCOR, IABO and ACMRR. The main object of the BIOMASS Programme was to gain a deeper understanding of the structure and dynamic functioning of the Antarctic marine ecosystem as a basis for the future management of potential living resources. It was a highly ambitious programme requiring the co-operation of 11 nations, standardisation of methodology and techniques, and pooling of results. To be successful it would require strong and dynamic leadership. That task was given to Sayed El-Sayed, aided by the BIOMASS Executive.
Over a ten-year period there were two multiship, multinational cruises (1981 and 1984-85) leading to 32 international workshops. The research produced an impressive number of publications in scientific journals. In addition there were 68 reports in the BIOMASS Report Series, 23 BIOMASS Handbooks, 10 volumes in the BIOMASS Scientific Series and 25 BIOMASS Newsletters. This represents an enormous scientific legacy, but arguably an even more important outcome from the BIOMASS programme was the establishment of the Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources that now controls the developing fisheries in the Southern Ocean.
That BIOMASS was so very successful owes much to the unremitting hard work of Sayed El-Sayed. His leadership was exemplary. His enthusiasm never wavered and he was ever generous with his time and support, especially to the many young scientists who were just starting their careers in oceanography. His charm and cheerfulness ensured that co-operation between scientists and nations was always total. In spite of this heavy workload Sayed maintained his own research output.
Sayed was awarded the National Science Foundation Antarctic Service Medal, and the 1985 Distinguished Service Award by the American Institute of Biological Sciences. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names named El-Sayed Glacier in recognition of his work in Antarctica. He will be remembered with great warmth and affection by all who knew and worked with him.
Dr R B Heywood
Director BAS 1994 - 1997
Some personal reminiscences
The start of my own research career in Antarctica, working on krill from both shore stations and the RRS John Biscoe, coincided with the BIOMASS programme. Whilst the scientific shape of the programme was set by Dick Laws in the UK and Gotthilf Hempel in Germany, it was Sayed who drove the programme forward with his dynamic running of the BIOMASS Secretariat at Texas A&M University. Infectious in his enthusiasm, it was impossible to refuse him when approached for an article in the BIOMAS Newsletter, or a talk at a meeting. The enormous success of the BIOMASS programme was due in no small way to Sayed's charismatic and charming leadership. It was testament to the enormous affection in which Sayed was held that when he presented his final talk at a SCAR Antarctic Biology Symposium, the lecture hall was filled to capacity. And Sayed did not disappoint; pacing up and down energetically, waving his arms enthusiastically, and with a characteristic disregard for the passage of time, he described his most recent work on the effect of UV radiation on Antarctic phytoplankton and received a huge ovation at the end.
In the more personal surroundings of a smaller meeting in the mountain village of Ravello on the Amalfi coast of Italy, I learned more of Sayed's background and history (between his disappearances for games of tennis, a passion for all of his active life). With a typical Arab sense of hospitality and generosity, Sayed arrived with a small present for all the partners at the meeting, and presented these with style. Sayed was immensely proud of the work he had done in Antarctica, and also in the success of the BIOMASS Programme. However he also spent considerable time working in the Middle East, and he took enormous personal satisfaction in having received medals from both Egypt and Israel for his work furthering scientific cooperation across the religious divide in that troubled part of the world. I shall remember Sayed as a warm, generous character, who always had time for the younger generation of scientists, and who was one of the founder figures of Antarctic oceanography.
Andrew Clarke
British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge
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