SCAR Newsletter: Issue 8, October 2006

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SCAR Business News

SCAR's 29^th meeting a success in Hobart

The organisers of the combined SCAR and COMNAP meetings in Hobart during the period July 8 to 19, 2006, were pleasantly surprised to attract some 850 registrants from 32 countries. Some 750 abstracts were submitted for the SCAR Open Science Conference (12-14 July). Most had been accepted, though some had later been withdrawn due to the inability of people to travel to the meeting. 53% of the papers presented had been oral and 47% posters. There were 13 parallel sessions, and 39 separate themes. 120 students attended, from 15 countries. Ian Allison, Kate Kiefer, and the Australian Antarctic Division were congratulated on the excellent organisation of the meeting.

New SCAR members

At the XXIX SCAR Delegates meeting in Hobart, Delegates welcomed Denmark and Portugal as new Associate Members of SCAR. Delegates also endorsed the move of Bulgaria and the Ukraine from Associate Membership to Full Membership. Finally, Delegates welcomed an additional ISCU Union Member, INQUA - the International Union for Quaternary Science. Membership now comprises 34 national Members (30 Full and 4 Associate) and 8 Union members. This widening of the SCAR family will bring with it an even wider engagement of the scientific community in SCAR's research activities.

SCAR elects new officers

During the 29th SCAR Delegates meeting (17-19 July, Hobart, Tasmania), SCAR elected as new President Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey and a former SCAR Vice President. Chris has recently been much involved in developments surrounding the International Polar Year, having chaired the ICSU/WMO Planning Committee for the IPY, and now being a member of the ICSU/WMO Joint Committee for the IPY, which is charged with implementation. Chris will be joined on te Executive Committee by newcomers Dr. Sergio Marenssi, Director of the Instituto Antartico Argentino, Dr. Antonio Meloni of the Instituto Nazionale di Geofisica, Roma, and Dr. Zhanhai Zhang, Director of the Polar Research Institute of China. Dr. Chuck Kennicutt of Texas A & M University remains as Vice President, and Dr. Jörn Thiede, of AWI, as Past President. Dr. Thiede was elected an Honorary Member of SCAR.

Please click here for further information on Professor Rapley and his appointment as SCAR's new President

SCAR awards 5 new research Fellowships (2006-7)

Under the SCAR Fellowship awards for 2006-7, Stephenie Konfal will go from Ohio State University to the University of Modena, Italy. Nobue Kasamatsu will go from the National Institute of Polar research in Japan to the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart. Olaf Eisen will go from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. Victoria Metcalf will go from the University of Canterbury NZ to Northeastern University in Boston. Barbara Villoslada will go from Cordoba University in Argentina to the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

First SCAR-MarBIN Newsletter - Sept 2006

SCAR MarBIN Team is happy to announce the publication of the First SCAR MarBIN Newsletter. SCAR-MarBIN has now taken off, reaching a growing phase, thanks to its partners worldwide and continuous feedback from its users and collaborators.

Since January 2006, the number of unique visitors has increased exponentially by a factor 6, and the number of hits by an order of magnitude. MarBIN Team would like to thank all for the support and commitment, hoping that its services are beginning to prove helpful.

SCAR signs Letter of Agreement with IASC

SCAR and the International Arctic Science Committee have signed a Letter of Agreement to strengthen the relationship between the two organisations over the next 5 years. SCAR and IASC intend to combine their efforts in selected fields and activities (to be decided by mutual agreement) so as to raise the level of impact of both organisations in terms of making scientific advances and of advising policy makers (for example of the likelihood and likely effects of climate change), as well as to avoid duplication. To facilitate the process, SCAR and IASC agree:

to invite each other to attend the meetings of their major bodies (SCAR Delegates and IASC Council)
to encourage appropriate linkages between the relevant existing SCAR and IASC Scientific projects
to encourage their scientific communities to develop joint bipolar projects and approaches in apropriate fields
to work together in arranging workshops, conferences, and reports on topics of mutual scientific interest
to exchange ideas on best practices in data and information management
to exchange newsletters and advertise each other's newsletters and websites on their own websites
to develop combined approaches to communicating with the wider community on the significance of polar research to the solution of societal issues, including their respective experience in giving advice to the AC and ATCM

SCAR has invited IASC to work jointly on planning a bipolar theme for the next SCAR Open Science Conference, scheduled for July 2008 in St Petersburg, Russia.

Antarctic Science News

Antarctica and Climate Change

In July 2006 the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) published a "Climate Change Position Statement" examining such questions as "why should we study Antarctic climate?"; "how has Antarctic climate varied over the past 50 years?"; "how has recent change impacted on the Antarctic environment" and "what further changes can we expect over the next 100 years?"

The Journal Geophysical Research Letters is about to publish a paper by John Fyfe (Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis) on "Southern Ocean Warming due to Human Influence". It shows that the Southern Ocean has warmed about twice as fast as the world ocean, that the warming cannot be explained by factors other than increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that this warming has been suppressed to a large extent by the incidence of volcanic dust and industrial aerosols in the atmosphere.

In June 2006, 163 scientists from 29 countries attended a workshop on "Understanding sea-level rise and variability". The workshop, hosted by UNESCO and co-sponsored by SCAR, concluded (Workshop Report) that since 1990 sea-level has been rising at a rate of 3.2 +/- 0.4 mm/year, compared with a rate of 1.7 +/- 0.3 mm/year over the previous 90 years. About half of the recent rise is due to the thermal expansion of ocean water; other contributions represent the effects of melting glaciers and ice sheets. It was somewhat surprising that in their analysis the participants did not assign any ultimate cause to the rise, nor to the acceleration. Instead they called for improvements to the sea-level observing systems, especially in the southern hemisphere.

The evidence for global warming is discussed for instance (i) by the UK's Royal Society, which recently issued a "Guide to facts and fictions about climate change"; and (ii) by Wally Broecker of Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, who recently issued a "Business Executive's Guide to Global warming".

2005 ozone hole one of the largest

World Climate News No.29, for June 2006, reports that although the meteorological conditions of the Antarctic stratosphere during the austral spring of 2005 were close to the average of the past decade, in early September minimum temperatures inside the polar vortex were nearly the coldest recorded since 1979. During the first 2 weeks of August the area where total ozone was less than 220 Dobson Units (the "ozone hole" area) was larger than ever before at that time of year. The ozone hole reached its maximum area (27 million square km) on September 19th. This ranks as the third largest ozone hole on record. The hole declined during October, then shrank rapidly in mid November to 3 million square km. The 2005 ozone hole strengthens the tendency towards the Antarctic ozone hole reaching its peak earlier in the season and also breaking down earlier than during the 1990s. All ozone holes since 1999 (except in 2001) declined faster in the mid-October to mid-November period than did those in the 1996-1999 period. The large decrease in the ozone hole area from 2003 to 2004, and the large increase from 2004 to 2005 cannot be attributed to changes in halogen loading, but are due to changes in stratospheric meteorological conditions. The difficulty in predicting these dynamical changes increase the difficulty in forecasting the effects of declines in the inputs of ozone-depleting substances.

A tour of the cryosphere animation

NASA Earth Oberving System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has released the animation, 'A Tour of the Cryosphere the Earth's Frozen Assets'. The eight-minute presentation takes the viewer on a tour of the cryosphere as it exists around the world. From shrinking arctic sea ice to retreating glaciers and collapsing Antarctic ice shelves, this unique global view of cryospheric research is shown with state-of-the-art Earth observing satellite data animations. The movie also highlights the scientific importance of continued collection of Earth science data and how NASA Earth observing satellites are providing scientists with unparalleled insight into how the cryosphere behaves, how it is changing, and what implications these changes have for the Earth's interrelated systems, including weather and climate. This multimedia product was sponsored by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS), Science Operations Office (SOO), and represents a collaborative effort between the NASA EOSDIS Outreach Team at GSFC, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, NASA GSFC's Cryospheric Sciences Branch, and the Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS), located at NASA GSFC. The animation is available in multiple resolutions formats from the NASA SVS website (http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/search/Series/NarratedMovies.html). For more information or DVD inquiries, please contact NASA EOS Outreach (outreach@eos.nasa.gov).

Antarctic ocean found crucial to atmosphere's health

from iNSnet) Circulation in the waters near the Antarctic coast may be one of the planet's critical means of regulating levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, according to researchers from MIT, Princeton and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For more see:

http://www.insnet.org/ins_headlines.rxml?cust=1001&id=2985

http://mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/oceans.html

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

International Polar Year

IPY Consultative Forum

In association with the XXIX SCAR meeting in Hobart, on July 8 the International Polar Year Steering Committee held an IPY Consultative Forum to introduce the wider community to the goals and activities of the IPY and the progress being made, and to give the community an opportunity to ask questions about plans and progress and involvement.

Report from the IPY Consultative Forum in Hobart, Tasmania, 8 July 2006

Obituaries

Obituary for Cam Craddock

It is with sadness that we report the death of Professor Campbell Craddock (1930-2006). Cam Craddock was one of the first geologists to be funded by the United States Antarctic Research Program after the IGY. His early fieldwork was in the Ellsworth Nountains and he made numerous field trips to the Antarctic in subsequent years. He was the co-editor of and contributor to the excellent Geologic Maps of Antarctica (Folio 12) of the Antarctic Map Folio Series published by the American Geographical Society that summarized geological knowledge of the continent at that time. He will probably be best rememebered as the host of the Third SCAR Antarctic Geology Symposium held in Madison, Wisconsin, in August 1977, and as the editor of the proceedings volume Antarctic Geoscience. Cam will be missed by his many friends in the Antarctic earth science community who recognize the major contribution he made to Antarctic geological research.

Forthcoming Events

Events of interest to the SCAR Community are listed at: www.scar.org/events/
Newsletter prepared by Colin Summerhayes and Marzena Kaczmarska, SCAR Secretariat. Please send feedback to info@scar.org

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research

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