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Other Polar News and Announcements - archive from 2008

(Most recent first)

Arctic Science Summit Week 2009

The second circular announcing details of this meeting is now available.

'Above The Polar Regions' IPY Day

The next IPY Day, on December 4th, is focussing on research 'Above The Polar Regions', including atmospheric research, meteorology,
astronomy, and space observing systems. Draft web pages for this event can be found on the IPY website. If you would like to get involved, promote your research or researchers, join an event, or connect your classes to researchers in the polar regions, please contact Rhian (ipy.ras@gmail.com).

Arctic Science Committee seeks Executive Officer

As of January 1, 2009, the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) will be based in Potsdam, Germany, and seeks to expand its staff with an Executive Officer (see the job description for more details). Deadline for applications is November 30.

Gas bubbling from Arctic seabed

Nature News (26 September) reports that, in the past few weeks, scientists aboard the British research ship James Clark Ross have discovered more than 250 plumes of methane bubbling up along the continental margin northwest of Svalbard. The findings add to a similar discovery by a Russian team in August, that reported elevated methane concentrations near the Lena River delta, as part of the International Siberian Shelf Study. The findings have provoked alarmist media reports predicting massive methane bursts that could accelerate global warming. Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, although it is present in much lower concentrations in the atmosphere. But the phenomenon is probably not new. The scientists believe that methane has been released in the region for at least 15,000 years. Whether what we're seeing in the region is of any relevance for the global climate is mere speculation.

Cryosphere Workshop

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), through its Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) project, are jointly sponsoring an "IPY Legacy Workshop on Sustaining Projects' Contributions to WMO Global Cryosphere Watch and GEOSS". It will be held on 3-5 December 2008 at the WMO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Workshop will discuss topics such as:

We encourage your participation and contribution to this Workshop. You can register and submit an abstract online at the Workshop website. The deadline for registration is 31 October 2008.

EU funding opportunity for polar research

The European Polar Consortium, in association with the European Polar Board of the European Science Foundation, is pleased to inform you of the pre-advertising of the PolarCLIMATE Call for Proposals on the ESF website.

The Call for Pre-Proposals opens on 26th September 2008. Pre-Proposals are to be submitted by a deadline of Friday 24th October 2008.

This first Pilot Call for Pre-Proposals will lead to potential Joint Projects to be undertaken within the PolarCLIMATE Programme. Following agreement with 20 ministries and funding organisations from 18 European Countries in Austria, France, Belgium, Bulgaria*, Czech Republic, Denmark*, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom*, the PolarCLIMATE Programme is expected to run for 3-4 years supported by national research funding. The Programme aims to support high quality transnational research at the European level in the Arctic and Antarctic. The Total commitment to the Call by the agencies is estimated to be 10 Million Euros (total includes direct financial commitment and estimated in-kind logistical and infrastructure support*). (*denotes counties with only in-kind support subject to scientific assessment results).

The research as part of this European Programme takes place after the International Polar Year and therefore will be an important continuity of efforts to investigate the processes of climate change and its impacts and to maintain momentum of the integrated groups of scientists that have formed during the IPY process.

Arctic Sea Ice

Several web sites offer up-to-date information on Arctic sea ice. Follow the latest developments on the NSIDC, SEARCH, and ESA websites or through the Sea Ice page on ipy.org where you can also find links to many sea ice information and activity resources.

Seas Likely to Rise Faster This Century

Based on an article by Richard A. Kerr, ScienceNOW Daily News, 4 September 2008. A report in "Science" suggests that global warming will cause sea levels to rise much faster by the end of the century than officially projected. The rising temperatures will cause the oceans to swell with melted glacial ice, the study finds, likely flooding substantial portions of Florida and Bangladesh, as well as many other low-lying, densely populated areas of the world. Warming glaciers raise sea level by adding more water both as they melt and when icebergs break off. Glaciologist W. Tad Pfeffer of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his colleagues calculated how fast glaciers would have to flow in order to raise sea level by a given number of metres and then considered whether those flow rates were plausible. They calculated Greenland ice loss through specific rock-bounded "gates". For West Antarctica the gates are not well defined, so they used approximations of how flow might respond to rising temperatures. The resulting "improved estimate" of sea-level rise ranges from 80 centimeters to 200 centimeters by the end of the century. That is significantly higher than the estimates of the IPCC (February 2007). Rises of this order would threaten coastal people in many parts of the world.

Research vessel transits the Northwest Passage for the first time ever

Bremerhaven, August 19th 2008. German research vessel Polarstern, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, is transiting the Northwest Passage for the first time. Polarstern left the port of Reykjavik on August 12th, sailed around Greenland on a southern course and is located currently at the beginning of the Northwest Passage. Its destination is the East Siberian Sea where geoscientific measurements at the junction between the Mendeleev Ridge and the East Siberian Shelf are the focus of the participants of this expedition. The measurements striven for in the framework of the International Polar Year will help to understand how the undersea ridges and basins were built. This expedition takes the researchers around the North Pole in 68 days because the return voyage is to lead via the Northeast Passage.

The researchers want to clarify the tectonic interrelations on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean in the track of Alfred Wegener, who founded the theory on continental drift in 1915. They employ seismic measurement methods which will allow a glance at the geological units and sediments. "At the bottom of the sea we find mountains which are about the same height as the Alps," illustrates Chief Scientist Wilfried Jokat. "These are partially overlaid by sediments, so that we have to look beneath the surface to find clues hinting at the geological history of the Mendeleev Ridge," he explains further.

Where the Mendeleev Ridge meets the East Siberian Shelf, very old layers can be found at the surface of the sea bottom. If the researchers find such places by means of the equipment on board Polarstern, they will try to retrieve cores with a gravity corer. 50 million year old rocks crop out at these places; usually, only layers of the upper 10 to 15 metres can be cored with a gravity corer, which only shows layers about 1 million years old. Both sediment cores and sediment profiles will be used to further a proposal for future Arctic depth drilling. Within the framework of the International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), a long drilling core will be gained which is anticipated by researchers worldwide. It will give new insights into the Arctic geological history of the last 100 million years.

Furthermore, there are areas with a high rate of sedimentation in the East Siberian Sea. If the researchers manage to retrieve cores from these sediments, it will help to conclude climate history of the younger geological past. For example, the rate of organic carbon in sediment cores hints at biological activity, and researchers can reconstruct temperature and ice cover up to one million years ago.

At present, organic carbon reaches the Arctic Ocean via rivers as well. For this reason oceanographers are interested in the East Siberian Sea. Similar to former cruise stages, they sample water and monitor temperature, salinity and depth. Additionally, they specify the concentration of terrestrial carbon in the water, by which they are able to calculate from which river the examined water originates and how long it has been on its way. These data will help to understand climate relevant systems of currents in the Arctic Ocean.

Changes to marine currents also affect the biotic environment. This is why biologists investigate the species assemblage in samples of various regions and depths and compare them with measurements taken in the 1990s. This way they can deduce, for instance, whether a changing ice cover affects the system's biological productivity. The copepod Oithona similes which lives both in the Arctic and Antarctic Ocean and also in the North Sea will be investigated in more detail. The researchers want to conduct experiments on board to see how they successfully reproduce in these different climatic zones.

All of this research is dependent on external factors like weather and, particularly, ice cover. Two months ago it was still uncertain whether Polarstern could transit the Northwest Passage; an alternative measurement program for the Greenland Sea had been prepared. Current satellite pictures show that the Northwest Passage is almost ice free and that it can probably be sailed without big problems. During the expedition, cruise leader Jokat wants to get in contact with Canadian and US-American colleagues who undertake measurements in the Beaufort Sea. They can pass on information which no satellite can provide.

After its journey home through the Northeast Passage, Polarstern will reach Bremerhaven again on October 19th.

New president of the International Permafrost Association (IPA)

The head of the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, Prof Dr Hans-Wolfgang Hubberten, is the new president of the International Permafrost Association (IPA). His appointment took place at the 9th International Conference on Permafrost in Fairbanks, Alaska. Prof Hubberten will lead the International Permafrost Association for the next four years. During his term in office he will coordinate, among other things, the analysis of the scientific results of the International Polar Year. "In these times of global warming, ....we have to expect dramatic changes to the ecosystem and the infrastructure of the respective region in the case of the thawing of the permafrost soils", says the researcher from Potsdam. Heavy soil erosion of the coastal regions as well as the release of huge amounts of carbon, greenhouse gases and freshwater, frozen in the extensive permafrost regions of Siberia and North America, could affect global water and carbon cycles.

Contrary to Expectation: Phytoplankton Calcification in a High-CO2 World

A paper by Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez et al, in Science, 18 April 2008 (Vol. 320. no. 5874, pp. 336 - 340) indicates that while ocean acidification in response to rising atmospheric CO2 partial pressures is widely expected to reduce calcification by marine organisms, new laboratory evidence shows that calcification and net primary production in the coccolithophore species Emiliania huxleyi are significantly increased by high CO2 partial pressures. Field evidence from the deep ocean is consistent with these laboratory conclusions, indicating that over the past 220 years there has been a 40% increase in average coccolith mass. These findings show that coccolithophores are already responding positively rather than negatively to respond to rising atmospheric CO2 partial pressures, which has important implications for biogeochemical modeling of future oceans and climate.

View the full article on the Science website.

Life in Extreme Environments

The first issue of the CAREX newsletter is now available. CAREX (Coordination Action for Research Activities on life in Extreme Environments) is a European Commission Framework Programme 7 project coordinated by the British Antarctic Survey (Dr. Cynan Ellis-Evans) active since January 1st, 2008. CAREX aims to provide a networking platform to the European scientific community involved in research on life in extreme environments, as well as defining research priorities in the field. It is an interdisciplinary initiative as it considers microbial life, plant adaptation and animal adaptation to various marine, polar, terrestrial extreme environments as well as outer space.

View the CAREX Newletter.

Climate model projects short-term Europe and North America cooling

A study published in Nature predicts a slight cooling of Europe and North America due to a temporary weakening of the meridional overturning circulation (the ocean thermohaline conveyor belt), masking the effect of climate change.

Read the full article.

First Monthly Arctic Sea Ice Outlook (May 2008)

The Arctic Sea Ice Outlook is an international effort to provide an integrated, community-wide summary of the state of arctic sea ice over the 2008 summer season. This effort, which emerged from discussions at the "Arctic Observation Integration Workshops", held in March 2008 in Palisades, NY, is a response by the scientific community to the need for better understanding of the arctic sea ice system, given the drastic and unexpected sea ice decline witnessed in 2007.

The Sea Ice Outlook effort produces monthly reports based on an open and inclusive process that synthesizes input from a broad range of scientific perspectives. Nineteen (19) groups from the international research community responded to the first call for outlook contributions. These contributions have been synthesized into the first monthly outlook report for May, which is now available in summary and full report formats.

The Sea Ice Outlook should not be considered as a formal prediction for arctic sea ice extent, nor is it intended as a replacement for existing efforts or centres with operational responsibility. Rather, it is a community effort that provides an instrument for synthesis of data from arctic observing systems and modeling activities to provide insight into the arctic sea ice system.

To access the report and for more information about the Sea Ice Outlook effort, please go to the Sea Ice Outlook overview on the ARCUS website or contact James Overland (Lead, Sea Ice Outlook Core Integration Group), Email: james.overland@noaa.gov

Two fatalities in helicopter crash in Antarctica

SCAR would like to send its condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of the two people who lost their lives when a helicopter based on the research ship Polarstern crashed near the German Antarctic station Neumayer II. Further details of the incident are available in the Science article.

2007 second warmest in past 120 years

According to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS), the year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data (see graph below), behind the record warmth of 2005. The 2007 warming tied with that for 1998, a 'freak' year where the extraordinary warming was driven by an unprecedented giant El Niño event. The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean is in the cool phase of its natural El Niño – La Niña cycle. The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990. The GISS figure shows:

  1. annual surface temperature anomaly relative to 1951-1980 mean, based on surface air measurements at meteorological stations and ship and satellite measurements of sea surface temperature; the 2007 point is the 11-month anomaly.
  2. Global map of surface temperature anomalies for the first 11 months of 2007. The La Niña cooling is evident in the tropical Pacific.

Global Temperature Charts for 2007

For details see the GISS 2007 Temperature Analysis on the Columbia website.

Death of Sir Edmund Hillary

SCAR is sad to learn of the death of one of the great mountain and polar explorers of our time, Sir Edmund Hillary, of New Zealand, at the age of 88, on January 11th. Sir Edmund was most widely known as the first man, with his sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, to have reached the summit of Mt Everest, in 1953. After that he climbed ten more peaks in the Himalayas during the late 50s and 60s. In polar terms he is best known for leading his team from Scott Base to the South Pole as part of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, during the International Geophysical Year, reaching the pole 50 years ago on 4 January 1958. Poles and mountains were not enough. In 1977, he also led a jet-boat expedition from the mouth of the Ganges to its source. Sir Edmund has always been a friend to New Zealand's Antarctic aspirations and recently visited Scott Base. Aside from his explorations, Sir Edmund was a great humanitarian, raising money for the people of Nepal, and starting the Himalayan Trust, which has helped to build hospitals, schools, pipelines and airfields for the people of the hill country. He served as New Zealand High Commissioner to India, Nepal and Bangladesh, 1985-88.

The United Nations Declares 2009 the International Year of Astronomy

The United Nations General Assembly has approved the proposal of UNESCO to declare the year 2009 the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009).

For more information, see the news release on the International Astronomical Union (IAU) website.

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