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SCAR Newsletter: Issue 22, March 2010

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SCAR Business and Policy

XXXI SCAR Meeting Website Open for Registration and Abstracts

The website for the XXXI SCAR meeting is now open for business. The meeting includes (i) SCAR Business week (July 30-August 2) for meetings of the Standing Scientific Groups and their subgroups, and for small workshops; (ii) the 4th SCAR Open Science Conference (August 3-6); and (iii) the SCAR Delegates meeting (August 9-11). The Second Circular with further details is now available. Travel Grants for students and early career scientists are available (application deadline 15 April 2010).

Travel Grants for SCAR Open Science Conference

Applications are sought from students, post-doctoral researchers, and other early career investigators for travelling to and attending the SCAR Open Science Conference. Applications are particularly sought from countries with less developed Antarctic programmes. Travel grants will provide full or partial support for travel and related expenses to attend the Conference to be held at Buenos Aires from Tuesday 3 August to Friday 6 August, 2010.

Applicants must either be current students or early career researchers and successful applicants must present a talk or poster at the Conference. Completed application forms must be submitted by e-mail to Renuka Badhe (rb302@cam.ac.uk). The deadline for applications is 17:00 GMT on 15 April 2010. See our OSC Travel Grants page for more information.

Abstract deadline for IPY Oslo Science Conference extended until 25th January

Meeting of the IPY Conference Planning Group in Oslo on 21 January 2010

The IPY Conference Planning Group Meeting in Oslo on
21 January 2010

More than 2200 abstracts have been submitted on deadline as of 21 January. The conference planning group meeting in Oslo notes that this Conference will be the biggest polar science meeting ever. The steering committee feels that we are a long way towards a great success. To cater for some groups, the committee has decided to accept abstracts submitted up until 25 January.

"We have sufficient content to prepare a very attractive programme", says Dr Olav Orheim, chair of the steering committee. "The turnout is impressive from most disciplines. All together, 850 people have applied for the early career stipends. The committee has devoted a lot of attention to the scientists recruited to polar science through IPY, so this turnout is a remarkable achievement."

The IPY Oslo Science Conference is already twice as large as the last (and up until then largest) global polar science meeting in terms of submissions. "The brief extension of the deadline is a courtesy to some of our partners," Dr Orheim continues. "The submission system has in general been smooth. But in particular some scientists, that have just now returned from Antarctica, need some extra lead time."

The submitted abstracts are quite well distributed amongst the 6 conference themes and in general between the various sessions:

The IPY Oslo Science Conference has so far received abstracts from 58 nations. This largely overlaps with the 60 nations that participated in the International Polar Year. Some regions of the world are underrepresented. This includes parts of Asia/Pacific and South-America. "We will use the extension period to encourage participation from those regions", Dr Orheim says.

Colin Summerhayes leaves SCAR Secretariat

As from April 1, 2010, Dr Mike Sparrow will be SCAR's Excecutive Director, taking over from Colin Summerhayes, who has been with us for six years since leaving UNESCO in 2004. Colin said that "It has been a great privilege and great fun to work closely with the far-flung SCAR science community and its many partners over the past six years as SCAR became reinvigorated following its major external review, and as we went through the International Polar Year making a significant contribution to its success. We are on the right track now, and doing well, thanks to the enthusiasm of our many volunteers and the continuing support of the national academies of science. I wish you all well in the future and look forward to seeing many of you at the IPY polar conference in Oslo in June and at the SCAR Open Science Conference in August."

Colin will be lecturing on "Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment" at the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Science in Goa on April 1, and again at the Antarctic Treaty Meeting of Experts at Svolvaer in the Lofoten Islands on April 6-9, before attending the planning meeting for the 3rd IPY science conference (Montreal 2012) in Oslo on April 9-10. His last day with SCAR is April 9. However, that does not end his polar connection. From April 1, he becomes an Emeritus Associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute, so will be in Cambridge periodically and can still be contacted at his current e-mail address cps32@cam.ac.uk.

SCAR Executive Officer Appointed

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research now has a new SCAR Executive Officer, Dr Renuka Badhe. Renuka is from India, and holds dual Indian (OCI) and British citizenship. She is a marine biologist (PhD from the British Antarctic Survey) but with some policy background (Mphil from Cambridge university in Environmental Policy). Since she completed her PhD in October last year, she has been working with the IUCN on climate change and species in polar regions. She has also been involved in conference organisation, including responsibility for the budgets and has experience of being the treasurer of a small charity.

SCAR/COMNAP Action Group Meets

SCAR and COMNAP met in Baltimore, US for their first SCAR/COMNAP Action Group meeting. The meeting, chaired by Berry Lyons, discussed the TORs of the group, which included:

All agreed the meeting was very useful and opened the way for a more strategic partnership between SCAR and COMNAP. A second meeting will be held on the fringes of the Antarctic Treaty meeting in Uruguay.

Science News

Global temperatures stay warm despite cold north temperate winter

The annual compilation of temperatures by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science shows that 2009 was the second warmest year on record despite the cold temperatures in December across North America, western Europe and Siberia. See Jim Hansen's post on the Columbia University website.

Australia and Antarctica Linked by Climate

A recent study by Tas Van Ommen and Vin Morgan (Nature Geiscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo761) suggests that the 40-year drought that has blighted Australia may be linked to heavy snowfall over Antarctica. The researchers noticed the link after nearly 30 years of studying Antarctic ice cores extracted from Law Dome, an ice field near Cape Poinsett, which lies almost exactly south of the southwestern tip of Australia. There they found evidence that the area had been experiencing abnormally large amounts of snowfall for several decades. They also knew that southwestern Australia had been suffering from severe droughts for approximately the same time.

They compared the 750 year long ice-core records with meteorological records to gauge precipitation patterns in southwestern Australia, as well as atmospheric circulation patterns in the Southern Hemisphere for the past four decades. About 40% of the rainfall variations in southwestern Australia were mirrored by snowfall variations at Law Dome. More intriguing, the Law Dome snowfall patterns seem to have intensified over the past several decades. Indeed, climate models predict such an anomaly when anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the last century are factored in. According to the models, higher levels of CO2, coupled with reductions in atmospheric ozone, create an atmospheric circulation pattern in the Southern Ocean that brings drier air to the farming regions of southwestern Australia and heavier snows to Law Dome. But as the models show, by boosting CO2 and cutting ozone, the normal cycles can be disrupted, and that is what seems to be happening now.

Antarctic Glacier Off Its Leash

An unmanned autonomous submarine has discovered a sea-floor ridge that may have been the last hope for stopping the now-accelerating retreat of the Pine Island Glacier, a crumbling keystone of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, researchers announced at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The Pine Island and adjacent Thwaites glaciers are key to the fate of West Antarctic ice, says glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in an e-mail. And West Antarctica is key to how fast and far sea level will rise in a warming world. "To a policymaker, I suspect that the continuing list of [such] ice-sheet surprises is not reassuring," he writes.

Read the full Science article.

The Southern Ocean and uptake of anthropogenic CO2

The Southern Ocean accounts for only about 6% of the world's ocean area, although it is estimated that it absorbs as much as 40% of the CO2 taken in by the seas. However, the Southern Ocean retains only about 9% of the CO2 it absorbs. What happens to the rest of it? Ito et al. were able to pinpoint the wind patterns and currents that distribute ocean CO2 (primarily related to the so called Ekman transport). As the team report, instead of sinking in place, almost all of the CO2 is carried away from the Antarctic and toward the subtropics - hence the missing CO2 in the Southern Ocean.

Takamitsu Ito said that "the atmosphere overlying the Southern Ocean is undergoing significant climate change". It's possible, he says, that "changing the atmospheric wind pattern in the region could alter the rate at which the Southern Ocean absorbs CO2," possibly reducing the ocean's ability to consume the gas and leading to further global warming.

For further details, see the full article in Nature.

EBA Researchers Discover Deep Ocean Vents and Organisms in Scotia Arc

The UK consortium ChEsSO (Chemosyntheticallydriven Ecosystems South of the Polar Front: Biogeography and Ecology) led by Prof. Paul Tyler of the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton has discovered the first active Antarctic black smokers at the East Scotia Ridge. The ChEsSO team has video surveyed the vent field with the ISIS, the UK's deep‐diving remotely operated vehicle (ROV) using HD technology, leading to fantastic footage. See the EBA Newsletter for details.

Rocks available for study from Pensacola Mountains, Antarctica

The US Polar Rock Repository has added many samples over the past year, particularly from the Pensacola Mountains region. We currently have over 18,000 samples at the USPRR available for research (including using destructive techniques), teaching or museum use. Requests are welcome from both the US and international community. In some cases, we have accompanying petrographic thin sections and analytical metadata associated with the samples. The easiest way to search our collection is through the highlighted 'Detailed Search' choice listed on the Polar Rock Repository home page.

Loan requests can be made through the website 'sample bag' feature. If you have a particular area of interest and do not see the samples you need, please contact us (curator@bprc.ohio-state.edu) because we have collections that are not yet cataloged. We also measure magnetic susceptibility on all samples larger than 6cm x 6cm and can provide this data in an Excel file.

Arctic Sea Ice stays low

Arctic sea ice extent, 1979 to 2010

The figure to the left is from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

It shows that despite cool temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean in January, Arctic sea ice extent continued to track below normal. By the end of January, ice extent dropped below the extent observed in January 2007. Ice extent was unusually low in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic, the one major area of the Arctic where temperatures remained warmer than normal. Arctic sea ice extent averaged for January 2010 was 13.78 million square kilometers (5.32 million square miles). This was 1.08 million square kilometers (417,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average for January, but 180,000 square kilometers (69,000 square miles) above the record low for the month, which occurred in January 2006.

Ice extent remained below normal over much of the Atlantic sector of the Arctic, including the Barents Sea, part of the East Greenland Sea, and in Davis Strait. The only region with above-average ice extent was on the Pacific side of the Bering Sea. While Arctic sea ice extent has declined in all seasons, the downward trends in winter ice extent are much smaller than in summer. Polar darkness and low temperatures mean that the ice generally refreezes to about the same boundaries each winter. Ice extent averaged for January 2010 was the fourth lowest for the month since the beginning of satellite records. The linear rate of decline for January is now 3.2% per decade.

Arctic Oscillation Explains Cold European and North American Winter of 2009-10

The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) carries an elegant explanation of why the European and North American winter has been so severe through December 2009 into January 2010 (see their Arctic Sea Ice News). The current phase of the Arctic Oscillation has very low pressures over the Arctic, making it unusually warm there (up to 7°C warmer than usual over Baffin Bay). In this negative phase of the oscillation, higher pressures and colder temperatures are typically found over the mid latitudes, as is the case now. Given the Arctic warming, the Arctic sea ice for the period remains well below the average for the 1979-2000 period and not a lot different from 2007. The December figures of ice extent are right on the line of a 3.3% decline in area per year for December since 1978. For those who are Euro-centric or North America-centric, it is worth bearing in mind that while we freeze, much of the rest of the world continues to show warming. What we are experiencing is weather - not climate.

Honours, Awards and Grants

New Year Honour for Peter Clarkson

In the UK's New Year's Honours List for 2010, Peter Clarkson, the former Executive Secretary of SCAR and currently an Emeritus Fellow of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for "services to Antarctic Science". This reflects his many years of service to SCAR, to Scott Polar Research Institute, to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to Antarctic Treaty Parties, to Antarctic tour operators, and to charitable activities including the BAS Club (of which he was Chairman from 2003-4 and Treasurer from 1984-90), and the Trans-Antarctic Association (of which he was Secretary from 1980-96, and Trustee from 1996-2000). Peter was previously awarded the prestigious UK Polar Medal for his work with the British Antarctic Survey (1967-1989). Well done Peter - well deserved indeed!

SCAR announces the launch of its 2010-11 Fellowship Programme

SCAR has launched its 2010-11 Fellowship Programme for PhD students and post-doctoral researchers (within 5 years of completing their PhD) from within the 35 SCAR Member countries to undertake research at an institute in another SCAR country. The Programme is designed to encourage the active involvement of early career scientists and engineers in Antarctic scientific research, and to strengthen international capacity and cooperation in Antarctic research. Please encourage candidates to apply to this scheme, which has proved very successful to date.

For full details, please go to the SCAR Fellowships page. Note that the deadline for submissions is 15th May 2010.

Antarctic Science Career Development Bursaries

The Antarctic Science Career Development Bursaries are awards of up to £5000, made annually to support the development of the careers of promising young scientists, working in any field of Antarctic science. The purpose of the award is to broaden the scope of an existing research project, especially for postdoctoral studies, through:

  1. funding extra field or laboratory work,
  2. purchasing/contributing towards the cost of a key piece of equipment, or
  3. funding international collaboration

Applications must be submitted to arrive at the Antarctic Science Office, no later than 2400 GMT on March 31st of each year. Allowance will not be made for late submission from other time zones. Applicants should be at least post-graduate or, preferably, post-doctoral and, if the latter, should be not more than 10 years from the start of their PhD. A condition of acceptance of the Antarctic Science Career Development Bursary is that the recipient must undertake to offer to Antarctic Science a first- or lead-author paper following on from the outcomes of the science activity for which the Bursary was awarded, or from science activity associated with it. Subject to satisfactory review by the usual processes, the paper will be published in Antarctic Science and the author identified as the winner of an Antarctic Science Bursary. In addition the recipient must acknowledge the award in presentations and publications.

For application forms and detailed requirements, please visit the Antarctic Science website.

SCAR MarBIN wins IPY data sharing award

The SCAR Marine Biodiversity Network (SCAR MarBIN), coordinated by Claude de Broyer and Bruno Danis, has been honoured with an IPY data sharing award (see the IPY Data and Information Services Discussion Forum for details of the scheme).

The data set in the Global Change Master Directory, "Checklist of Antarctic and Subantarctic Hyperiidea " was selected as the Grand Prize winner in the IPY data sharing contest. The award includes full travel, lodging and registration costs for the IPY Open Science Conference in Oslo in June.

Education and Outreach Lessons from IPY

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) with the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS), and the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) have won funding from the International Council for Science (ICSU) for a project "Education and Outreach Lessons from IPY". This project will involve an assessment and compilation of recommendations that capture Education and Outreach lessons from the IPY.

The International Polar Year (IPY 2007-2008) is recognised as one of the largest international and interdisciplinary science efforts in history. Aside from ground-breaking research, the IPY has established innovative and effective international education and outreach programmes while stimulating perhaps the largest focused investment in science education in recent times. The IPY education programme represents, in microcosm, a wealth of practical and real-world information by which to address shared IPY and ICSU goals. The outcomes of the Education and Outreach Lessons from IPY - an inventory, preliminary assessment and plans for a more substantive assessment, and recommendations for future activities in polar science education and in science education generally, will prove immensely valuable to the ICSU community and educators and researchers the world over.

SCAR Partner in ICSU MicroPerm Project

The International Permafrost Association has been awarded a grant from the International Council for Science (ICSU) to launch its MicroPerm project in partnership with the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the International Union of Geodesy and Geology (IUGG) and the International Union for Quaternary Science (INQUA).

The project, led by Dr. Dirk Wagner, at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, is the first of its kind, in that it will bring together all investigations related to permafrost microbiology to assess its relation to climate.
Permafrost microbiology focuses on the life and activity of microbes in frozen ground, which underlays 24% of the land mass in the northern hemisphere. Microbial activity is the primary process involved in the conversion of carbon stored in permafrost, which is thought to bear twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere, into carbon dioxide and methane.

The resilience of microbes in permafrost and their reaction to climate is well understood at the local scale, yet "the integration of permafrost microbiological studies at the circumpolar scale would be a great leap forward to understand the reaction of microbes and in particular of methane-producing bacteria to climate" says Dr. Wagner.

Other SCAR-Related Newsletters

Events

Events of interest to the SCAR Community are listed on the Events page.

Newsletter prepared by Colin Summerhayes and Rosemary Nash, SCAR Secretariat. Please send feedback to info@scar.org