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SCAR Newsletter: Issue 9, January 2007
SCAR Business News
XXX SCAR Meeting in Russia
The XXX SCAR Meetings including the 3rd Open Science Conference (organized jointly with IASC) and the Delegates' Meeting will take place in 2008 in Russia:
St Petersburg, Russia:
- 5 - 6 July 2008 - Standing Scientific Groups' business meetings
- 7 July 2008 - Science Workshops
- 8 - 11 July 2008 - Open Science Conference
Moscow, Russia:
- 14 - 16 July 2008 XXX SCAR Delegates meeting
Further information will be available when the first circular is developed.
SCAR Calls on National Committees to nominate people to carry out SCAR business.
The Circular Letters 765 (Programme of Secondments to the SCAR Secretariat), which calls for National Committees to nominate individuals to serve for a time in the SCAR Secretariat, and Circular Letter 766 (SCAR Standing Committee on Antarctic Geographic Information: SC-AGI),which calls for National Committees to nominate individuals to the SC-AGI are published on the website and available to all SCAR Members (to access the Circular Letters the SCAR user name and password are required, these can be obtained from info@scar.org).
An e-mail letter in lieu of a Circular Letter was sent earlier on to the National Committees to nominate representatives to the new SCAR Committee on Capacity Building Education and Training (CBET).
We look forward to responses from National Committees before end of January 2007.
Request for Comments on Draft Report on Cryosphere: Integrated Global Observing Strategy (IGOS)
Comment Submission Deadline: Monday, 15 January 2007
The IGOS Cryosphere Theme is a combined initiative of the World Climate Research Programme, Climate and Cryosphere Project, and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. The intent is to increase support for, and improve coordination of, cryospheric observations conducted by research, long-term scientific monitoring, and operational programs and to enhance data and information systems for the cryosphere.
The draft report is a product of Cryosphere Theme workshops convened internationally to examine observational capabilities and requirements and develop recommendations that will improve IGOS ability to monitor the cryosphere, assess its impact on climate and society, and foster the exchange of cryospheric information. Authored by IGOS, workshop attendees, and other interested scientists, the draft report describes and addresses shortcomings of the current observational systems for all elements of the cryosphere, presents a comprehensive list of recommendations and implementation actions for improving the global cryospheric observing system, and outlines linkages with other programs that are integral parts of the implementation process.
For further information and to access the draft report, please go to: http://igos-cryosphere.org
or contact Jeff Key, Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin Madison, E-mail: jkey@ssec.wisc.edu
Travel Grants available for attending the Antarctic Meteorology Meetings in Rome and Perugia, Italy, June-July 2007
Application Deadline: Friday, 12 January 2007
For further information, please go to:
http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu
or contact: David Bromwich, Byrd Polar Research Center, E-mail: bromwich.1@osu.edu
New SCAR Publications on the web
SCAR Secretariat has published SCAR Report 27 (Nov 2006): SCAR Strategy for Capacity Building (Education and Training) and SCAR Report 28 (Dec 2006): Report on the Workshop for the Antarctic Seismic Data Library System for Cooperative Research (SDLS) as well as SCAR Bulletin 161 covering two issues: Report on SCAR Science Week (8-14 July 2006) and the Report on the XXIX Meeting of the SCAR Delegates (17-19 July 2006). The publications can be found at:
http://www.scar.org/publications/
SCAR Publishes Implementation Plan
One key result of the meetings of the SCAR Delegates and Executive Committee in Hobart in July 2006, was the compilation of a large number of actions into an Implementation Plan for the next 2 years prior to the XXX SCAR meeting in St Petersburg in July 2008. The Implementation Plan demonstrates how the goals of the SCAR Strategic Plan are to be met by the Secretariat and the Executive Committee during 2006-2008. Both plans can be downloaded from:
http://www.scar.org/about/introduction/futureplans/index.html
Antarctic Science News
Antarctic underwater sounds
For one year now, the working group 'Oceanic Acoustics' of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) has been maintaining PALAOA, the 'PerenniAL Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic', located near Neumayer Station. PALAOA (70°31ZS, 8°13ZW), consists of four underwater microphones, so-called hydrophones, which are recording all sounds of the Antarctic Ocean 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Scientists are hoping to gain new insights into communication of marine mammals such as seals and whales. The data will also provide information about the effect of anthropogenic sounds on the behaviour of the animals. A live audio stream of PALAOA can be found on the Internet at www.awi.de/acoustics. This project helps to meet one recommendation of the SCAR Action Group on Acoustics, namely that one of the first things that needs to be done in assessing the effects on cetateans of human induced noise is to start monitoring the Antarctic marine environment for noise. SCAR would like to see more nations carrying out this kind of research.
ANDRILL project delivers first results from the Ross Ice Shelf edge.
Sediments extracted from the Antarctic seafloor show the world's largest ice shelf has disintegrated and reappeared many times in the past. Fluctuations of the Ross Ice Shelf are revealed by an early look at 600 m of the sediment cores being drilled near the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. ABDRILL is linked to the SCAR Scientific Research Project Antarctic Climate Evolution (ACE)
Innovative application of new radar technique proves invaluable in ice-shelf research
Scientists from British Antarctic Survey, led by Dr Adrian Jenkins, have developed a new application of radar technique to measure ice-shelf thickness, bottom melting rate and to investigate its internal structure. The team has recently tested this technique on Filchner-Ronne Ice-Shelf.
According to Dr Adrian Jenkins: "The new technique allows us to measure centimetre-scale changes in the 2-km thickness of the ice. We found that an average of 1 m of ice is melted from the bottom of the ice shelf every year. At this rate, all the ice lost by melting can be replenished by flow of ice from upstream, so that this part of the ice shelf is showing no signs of change. Elsewhere in Antarctica ice shelves and ice streams are thinning and now we have a tool to measure the thinning rates to unparalleled accuracy."
Almost as a by-product of the melt rate measurements, using a phase-sensitive radar technique, the team gained unprecedented insight into the response if an ice shelf to tidal forcing.
Author contact: Dr Adrian Jenkins - tel: +44 1223 221493, email: AJEN@bas.ac.uk
The whole article can be accessed via Journal of Glaciology (Jenkins, A., H.F.J. Corr, K.W. Nicholls, C.L. Stewart and C.S.M. Doake, 2006: Interactions between ice and ocean observed with phase-sensitive radar near Antarctic ice-shelf grounding line. J. of Glaciol., Vol. 52, No. 178, 2006, p. 325-346)
One-to-one coupling of glacial climate variability in Greenland and Antarctica
An article with this title appears in the Journal Nature, Vol 444, 9 November 2006, on pages 195-198. Published by European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) Community Members, the article summarizes key results from EPICA drilling at the Kohnen site in Dronning Maud Land. The abstract tells us that precise knowledge of the phase relationship between climate changes in the two hemispheres is a key for understanding the
Earth's climate dynamics. For the last glacial period, ice core studies have revealed strong coupling of the largest millennial-scale warm events in Antarctica with the longest Dansgaard-Oeschger
events in Greenland, through the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation . It has been unclear, however, whether the shorter Dansgaard-Oeschger events have counterparts in the
shorter and less prominent Antarctic temperature variations, and whether these events are linked by the same mechanism. The authors present a glacial climate record derived from an ice core from the Kohnen station in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, which represents South Atlantic climate at a resolution comparable with the Greenland ice core records. The atmospheric methane signal is used to correlate the two cores, methaen being rapidly mixed by the atmosphere. After methane synchronization with an ice core from North Greenland, the oxygen isotope record from the Dronning Maud Land ice core shows a one-to-one coupling between all Antarctic warm events and Greenland Dansgaard-Oeschger
events confirming that there is a bipolar seesaw. The amplitude of the Antarctic warm events is found to be linearly dependent on the duration of the concurrent stadial in the North, suggesting that both the northern and the southern climatic events result from a similar reduction in the meridional overturning
circulation of the Atlantic. In other words the ocean links the climate at both poles.
Sea swell in the Gulf of Alaska influenced ice shelf break-up in Antarctica, new study reaveals
Data from seismometers deployed by MacAyeal and his team on the Ross Ice Shelf and on various icebergs adrift in the Ross Sea (including B15A, a large 100 km by 30 km fragment of B15, which calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in March, 2000) reveal that the dominant energy of these floating ice masses is associated with sea swell generated in the tropical and extra-tropical Pacific Ocean. In one example, a strong storm in the Gulf of Alaska on 21 October 2005, approximately 13,500 km from the Ross Sea, generated swell that arrived at B15A immediately prior to, and during, its break-up off Cape Adare on 27 October 2005.
"If sea swell influences iceberg calving and break-up, a teleconnection exists between the Antarctic ice sheet mass balance and weather systems worldwide", authors say.
Scientific version: Douglas R. MacAyeal and others. 2006: Transoceanic wave propagation links iceberg calving margins of Antarctica with storms in tropics and Northern Hemisphere. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L17502,
doi:10.1029/2006GL027235, 2006
CNN News article
Record ozone loss during 2006 over South Pole
Ozone measurements made by ESA's Envisat satellite have revealed the ozone loss of 40 million tonnes on 2 October 2006 has exceeded the record ozone loss of about 39 million tonnes for 2000.
Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) News
In October, CAML was awarded renewal funds from The Alfred P Sloan Foundation for three more years, covering the International Polar Year and beyond. Congratulations to the entire CAML team.
Under the umbrella of CAML, the German research vessel Polarstern will explore life under the Antarctic ice and the consequences of the Larsen A & B ice shelf disintegration on organisms close to the seafloor. Julian Gutt of the Alfred-Wegener Institute will lead the team of 47 scientists from 14 countries. The expedition begins on 23 November in Cape Town, South Africa and concludes on 30 January 2007 in Punta Arenas, Chile. You can follow this voyage at: http://www.awi.de/MET/Polarstern/psobse.html.
The CAML Top Predators Working Group met on 11-12 October at the National Institute of Polar Research near Tokyo. The group, which included Diego Rodriguez (Chair), Victoria Wadley, Akinori Takahashi, Akiko Kato, and Yan RopertCoudert, discussed cooperative research on the biodiversity of predators at the apex of the trophic web. Seabirds, penguins, seals and whales were the main groups considered, with squid and large fishes also covered. Initiatives to share data were discussed, with a view to exploring how different species are responding to climate change.
The South American nations have formed a consortium called I Oficina Latinoamericana para el Census of Antarctic Marine Life (I OLA-CAML) to coordinate the Antarctic biodiversity research of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay. The consortium first met on 15 August in Concepcion, Chile, under the leadership of Michael Stoddart, Lucia Campos, Diego Rodriguez and Manuela Bassoi. Together, administrators and scientists discussed common interests, needs, and effective potential collaboration. Several potential links and forms of collaboration were immediately identified, and negotiations started towards projects that can contribute to CAML. South America will play a key role and make significant contributions during IPY through agreements about sharing its science and logistics.
The report from the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) Workshop, held in Hobart on 15 July, is available on the CAML website at www.caml.aq. There is also a link to the PowerPoint presentations from the Workshop. The workshop participants voiced a strong consensus of opinion that developing an observation system for the Southern Ocean is worthwhile. A second workshop will be held within the next year or so to follow up on the recommendations of the participants. An organizing Committee for the next SOOS workshop was formed and includes CAML leaders Colin Summerhayes, Michael Stoddart and Victoria Wadley.
The next CAML Scientific Steering Committee Workshop will be held 4-6 June 2007 in Bialowieza, Poland. The SCAR-MarBIN Workshop will follow on 7-8 June. CAML will present its latest results at the Census of Marine Life All Program Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand 12-18 November 2007. An information day for media and the public will be part of the Census meeting.
All news from CAML can be found on CAML website
SCAR MarBIN News
Full news from SCAR MarBIN can be found on the MarBIN website news page
IPY News
Launch of the International Polar Year (IPY), 2007-2008
It's official: The International Polar Year 2007-2008 will be launched on 1 March 2007 at the "Palais de la Découverte", a famous science museum in central Paris. A press conference is being organized for the event by IPY's co-sponsors, ICSU and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the IPY Programme Office in Cambridge. The event will take place in conjunction with the IPY Joint-Committee meeting being held on 28 February and 2 March. More than a dozen countries are also planning national launch events on or around 1 March and an international IPY group is working hard to stimulate activities in schools and science centres around the globe.
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
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