“Greenland is warming rapidly, and such ice-sheet-wide, surface-melt events will occur more frequently over the next couple of decades,” said Dan McGrath, a University of Colorado Boulder doctoral student who works at CIRES. McGrath is lead author of a paper published online May 20 in Geophysical Research Letters and which reports a significant warming trend on the Greenland Ice Sheet.

^{A new study shows summer melt events on the Greenland Ice Sheet are increasing in frequency due to rising temperatures.  Photo courtesy CIRES.}

McGrath and his coauthors calculate that by 2025 ice-sheet-wide melt events will have a 50 percent chance of occurring each year. That would signal the loss of the last major dry-snow zone -- regions where the snow stays almost perpetually frozen -- in the Northern Hemisphere, McGrath said.

In the study, the researchers used air and snow temperature data from meteorological stations and boreholes to generate a 60-year record of air temperatures at the Summit research station, the highest and coldest station on the ice sheet.

From 1982 to 2011, near-surface temperatures increased by an average of 0.16 degrees Fahrenheit every year. “This is six times faster than the global average,” McGrath said.

The warming at Summit is also accelerating. From 1950 to 2011, the average rate of warming was 0.04 degrees F per year. But from 1992 to 2011, that number jumped to 0.22 degrees F per year.

The warming has had a dramatic effect on the ice sheet’s structure, the scientists report. The ice sheet’s ablation zone -- the lower parts that lose more snow and ice each year than they accumulate -- is expanding up the ice sheet by about 145 feet per year.

“This increases the area over which the ice sheet sheds mass while shrinking the zone that gains mass,” McGrath said. “That will have an obvious impact on the ice sheet’s mass balance.”

Additionally, the dry-snow line -- above which the snow doesn’t melt -- is migrating up the ice sheet by about 115 feet per year. “These zones are indicators of the health of the ice sheet,” McGrath said. “And the changes we are observing are an early but important sign that the ice sheet is in transition.”

The changes could increase the amount of solar radiation the ice sheet absorbs -- since wet snow reflects less sunlight than dry snow -- increasing the melt rate as well. It also could potentially speed up the ice sheet’s flow, though more work needs to be done to untangle these impacts.

These findings are supported by results from other researchers who have found that the ice sheet is losing more than 275 billion tons of ice per year -- equivalent to the weight of 750,000 Empire State Buildings. “This imbalance is making a significant contribution to sea-level rise,” McGrath said.

The summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet has experienced surface melt in the past, McGrath says. But the melt events in the past were rare, happening once every century or two  -- in fact, only eight times in the last 1,500 years -- the exception rather than the norm. Now the norm is shifting toward a new, slushy set point.

“Progressive increases in surface melt have occurred throughout the satellite record, but the last decade has been exceptional,” McGrath said. “If each of these events keeps being so far above the average, the average will change to reflect that.”

The scientists’ findings come at a time when Arctic sea ice extent is also at record lows. “Ice-sheet-wide melting coupled with the loss of Arctic sea ice points to profound changes occurring to the Arctic climate system,” McGrath said. “These are not small, insignificant events we’re witnessing.”

NASA Cryospheric Sciences funded the research, with additional field logistical support provided by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs. Co-authors include former CIRES Director Konrad Steffen, CIRES adjunct research associate William Colgan, former CIRES doctoral student Atsuhiro Muto, and current CIRES doctoral student Nicolas Bayou.

While 99 percent of Earth's land ice is locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the remaining ice in the world's glaciers contributed just as much to sea rise as the two ice sheets combined from 2003 to 2009, says a new study led by Clark University and involving the University Colorado Boulder.

The new research found that all glacial regions lost mass from 2003 to 2009, with the biggest ice losses occurring in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas. The glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic sheets lost an average of roughly 260 billion metric tons of ice annually during the study period, causing the oceans to rise 0.03 inches, or about 0.7 millimeters per year.

The study compared traditional ground measurements to satellite data from NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, missions to estimate ice loss for glaciers in all regions of the planet.

"For the first time, we've been able to very precisely constrain how much these glaciers as a whole are contributing to sea rise," said geography Assistant Professor Alex Gardner of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., lead study author. "These smaller ice bodies are currently losing about as much mass as the ice sheets."

A paper on the subject is being published in the May 17 issue of the journal Science.

"Because the global glacier ice mass is relatively small in comparison with the huge ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, people tend to not worry about it," said CU-Boulder Professor Tad Pfeffer, a study co-author. "But it's like a little bucket with a huge hole in the bottom: it may not last for very long, just a century or two, but while there's ice in those glaciers, it's a major contributor to sea level rise," said Pfeffer, a glaciologist at CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

ICESat, which ceased operations in 2009, measured glacier changes using laser altimetry, which bounces laser pulses off the ice surface to determine changes in the height of ice cover. The GRACE satellite system, still operational, detects variations in Earth's gravity field resulting from changes in the planet's mass distribution, including ice displacements.

GRACE does not have a fine enough resolution and ICESat does not have sufficient sampling density to study small glaciers, but mass change estimates by the two satellite systems for large glaciated regions agree well, the scientists concluded.

"Because the two satellite techniques, ICESat and GRACE, are subject to completely different types of errors, the fact that their results are in such good agreement gives us increased confidence in those results," said CU-Boulder physics Professor John Wahr, a study co-author and fellow at the university's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

Ground-based estimates of glacier mass changes include measurements along a line from a glacier's summit to its edge, which are extrapolated over a glacier's entire area. Such measurements, while fairly accurate for individual glaciers, tend to cause scientists to overestimate ice loss when extrapolated over larger regions, including individual mountain ranges, according to the team.

Current estimates predict if all the glaciers in the world were to melt, they would raise sea level by about two feet. In contrast, an entire Greenland ice sheet melt would raise sea levels by about 20 feet, while if Antarctica lost its ice cover, sea levels would rise nearly 200 feet.

The study involved 16 researchers from 10 countries. In addition to Clark University and CU-Boulder, major research contributions came from the University of Michigan, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Trent University in Ontario, Canada, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies in Boulder, NASA's ICESat satellite was successfully operated from the CU-Boulder campus by a team made up primarily of undergraduates from its launch in 2003 to its demise in 2009 when the science payload failed. The students participated in the unusual decommissioning of a functioning satellite in 2010, bringing the craft into Earth re-entry to burn up. ICESat's successor, ICESat-2, is slated for launch in 2016 by NASA.

Home to an estimated 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil resources and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas, the Arctic is sure to lure them back. How they return is crucial. If energy companies can show it's possible to recover those resources responsibly, it will have enormous consequences – for those companies' balance sheets, for the diplomatic relations of the eight nations whose borders fall within the Arctic circle, and for the health of the planet.

"Interest in the Arctic is not waning," Kara Moriarty, executive director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, wrote in an e-mail. "In fact, the interest is as strong as ever. Companies are already planning for the 2014 season and are working diligently to have the right equipment and plans in place to be successful." The group represents companies responsible for the majority of oil and gas activities in Alaska.

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AMHERST, Mass. – Analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic, recently completed by an international team led by Julie Brigham-Grette of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, provide “absolutely new knowledge” of Arctic climate from 2.2 to 3.6 million years ago and show that with estimated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) similar to today’s levels, the Arctic was very warm, with no ice sheets.
 
“While existing geologic records from the Arctic contain important hints about this time period, what we are presenting is the most continuous archive of information about past climate change from the entire Arctic borderlands. As if reading a detective novel, we can go back in time and reconstruct how the Arctic evolved with only a few pages missing here and there,” says Brigham-Grette.
 
Results of analyses that provide “an exceptional window into environmental dynamics” never before possible were published this week in Science and have “major implications for understanding the pacing and context of how the Arctic transitioned from a forested landscape without ice sheets to the ice- and snow-covered land we know today,” she adds.
 
Their data come from analyzing sediment cores collected in the winter of 2009 from under ice-covered Lake El’gygytgyn, the oldest deep lake in the northeast Russian Arctic. “Lake E” was formed 3.6 million years ago when a huge meteorite hit the Earth and blasted out an 11-mile (18 km) wide crater. It has been collecting sediment layers ever since. Luckily for geoscientists, it lies in one of the few Arctic areas not eroded by continental glaciers, so a thick, continuous sediment record was left remarkably undisturbed. Cores from Lake E reach back in geologic time nearly 30 times farther than Greenland ice cores that cover the past 140,000 years.
 

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U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a grant for researching agriculture and the climate, during a visit to Wisconsin today.

Few industries depend on the climate as much as farming.  Bad weather can spell disaster for crops and animals. So the U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding a $10-million climate research project that includes the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison. During a visit to the campus, Vilsack says a department study indicates that weather patterns are becoming more intense and more variable: “Two years ago there was too much water last year there wasn't enough water and now, it depends on where you are — you may have too much or too little.”

Other universities involved in the national project will examine how to make plants and animals more resilient. At UW-Madison, soil scientist Matt Ruark will research ways to make farm systems better manage carbon and nitrogen, by using alternative farming practices that reduce erosion.

Reduction in tillage; use of cover crops; timing and application of manure; the source of manure. Has it been processed? Has it been separated? Has it been digested? All of those things will be evaluated after they're applied to soil.”

Some farmers in the United States are trying to reduce how much energy they use and convert waste to energy with manure digestors. Vilsack recently extended a memorandum of understanding with the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. The long term goal of that agreement is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020.

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When we think of the companies and organizations concerned with climate change, we don't often think of major automakers. But maybe we should think again.

Yesterday, General Motors became the first automaker to sign onto the Climate Declaration, a statement drafted by Ceres and its Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy project.

Ceres is a nonprofit launched in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and it boasts a fairly unique vision. Ceres believes that green, sustainable practices are consistent with good business practices -- in fact, the two are inseparable. Ceres builds coalitions among corporations, investors, and individuals to share that vision with the world.

One of Ceres' biggest projects to date is its Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy group, or BICEP, "an advocacy coalition of businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation enabling a rapid transition to a low-carbon, 21st century economy – an economy that will create new jobs and stimulate economic growth while stabilizing our planet’s fragile climate."

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It's no secret that the ice sheet is melting in Greenland. Last year, the Arctic ice cap shrunk to a record low, with only 24 percent of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice, a 50 percent drop from its 1979-2000 summer average. At the height of the 2012 summer, Greenland had experienced melting across 90 percent of its surface. For a journalist, it's an easy story to tell: temperatures climb, the ice shrinks.

But at the opposite end of the world, in Antarctica, the picture isn't quite as clear. Satellite images from 2012 showed that Antarctic sea ice reached its highest levels extent on record, evidence skeptics often point to as proof that climate change isn't happening. And for years, the East Antarctic ice sheet, which covers the majority of the continent, appeared to be stable or perhaps even gaining mass.

There are several reasons why changes in Antarctica are simply harder to explain than those in the Arctic, says Waleed Abdalati, professor of geography at the University of Colorado. The geography is different and data collection is challenging, he said. Plus, the climate and a large hole in the ozone layer have buffered large parts of the continent from warmer air.

"The fact that you have a large, tall, thick ice sheet situated at the South Pole creates a climate down there that tends to isolate it from the rest of the world," Abdalati said. "And it does that in large part by setting up a circulation pattern where winds blow around the perimeter of the continent and block warmer air from lower latitudes."

Unlike the Arctic, it has been almost impossible at times to collect data in Antarctica. Satellite data only dates back to 1979; research station data to the mid-1950s, in some areas. The ice sheet east of the Transantarctic mountains was less explored and less understood until recently; parts are still inaccessible. And throughout the continent, which is larger than the United States, the ice sheet varies dramatically, making the ice losses and gains more difficult to tease out, Abdalati said. Greenland, on the other hand is smaller, easier to access and has been therefore studied in greater detail.

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Scientists monitoring global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations report that, for the first time in human history, CO2 levels could soon rise above 400 parts per million for a sustained period of time in much of the Northern Hemisphere.

Hourly readings have surpassed 400 ppm in the past week, but daily averages remain just below 400, reported The Guardian. Daily readings are expected to surpass 400 ppm in early May. They will reach their annual peak by mid-month.

The measurements come from the NOAA-operated Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which has maintained a continuous record of atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1958. Records of earlier levels come from air bubbles inside Antarctic ice core samples.

"I wish it weren't true, but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400-ppm level without losing a beat," said Scripps Institution geochemist Ralph Keeling in a press statement. Keeling's late father began taking the measurements which have come to form the "Keeling Curve."

"At this pace we'll hit 450 ppm within a few decades," he added.

The symbolic CO2 milestone comes amid an apparent slowdown from Obama on the climate and energy front, despite bold words at the outset of the president's second term.

Yet the Senate Finance Committee may soon take up discussion of a carbon tax, while Obama's former Climate Czar, Carol Browner, has suggested the White House will act on power plant emissions.

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(Reuters) - Plants help to slow climate change by emitting gases as temperatures rise that lead to the formation of a sunshade of clouds over the planet, scientists said on Sunday.

The tiny sun-dimming effect could offset about one percent of warming worldwide and up to 30 percent locally such as over vast northern forests in Siberia, Canada or the Nordic nations, they wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.

While proportionally small, some scientists said the study provided further evidence of the importance of protecting forests, which help to slow climate change by absorbing greenhouse gases as they grow and to preserve wildlife.

Observations of forests from 11 sites around the world showed that plants emitted tiny particles that float on the wind as temperatures warm and act as seeds for water droplets that create clouds, they wrote.

Clouds' white tops in turn reflect sunlight back into space and offset warming, they wrote.

The study focused on forests in Europe, North America, Russia and southern Africa. The effect is believed to be smaller over far hotter tropical forests such as in the Amazon or the Congo basin.

"It's a small effect - one percent is not much," said lead author Pauli Paasonen of the University of Helsinki and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

"If temperatures were to increase by 1 degree without this effect, they'd rise 0.99 degrees with it," he told Reuters of a study that included researchers in the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Hungary and Sweden.

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Nearly 34 million years ago, the Earth underwent a transformation from a warm, high-carbon dioxide “greenhouse” state to a lower-CO2, variable climate similar to the modern “icehouse” world. Massive ice sheets grew across the Antarctic continent, major animal groups shifted, and ocean temperatures decreased by as much as 5 degrees.

But studies of how this drastic change affected temperatures on land have had mixed results. Some show no appreciable terrestrial climate change; others find cooling of up to 8 degrees and large changes in seasonality.

Now a group of American and British scientists have used a new chemical technique to measure the change in terrestrial temperature associated with this shift in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Their results suggest a drop of as much as 10 degrees for fresh water during the warm season and 6 degrees for the atmosphere in the North Atlantic, giving further evidence that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and Earth’s surface temperature are inextricably linked.

“One of the key principles of geology is that the past is the key to the present: records of past climate inform us of how the Earth system functions,” says Michael Hren, assistant professor of chemistry and geosciences at the University of Connecticut and the study’s lead author. “By understanding past climate transitions, we can better understand the present, and predict impacts for the future.”

The transition between the Late Eocene and the Oligocene epochs (between 34 million and 33.5 million years ago) was triggered in part, the authors write in their April 22 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by changes in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 that enabled ice to build up on the Antarctic continent.

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(Reuters) - The U.S. environment regulator on Monday said the State Department must take a harder look at climate and other impacts of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil sands pipeline before the Obama administration issues a final decision on the project.

The Environmental Protection Agency rated the State Department's 2,000-page March 1 draft review of the TransCanada Corp pipeline project as "insufficient," in a letter to department officials as a public comment period ended on Monday.

The agency's tough stance signals that unless the State Department addresses its concerns in a final review, it could create more hurdles for a $5.3 billion dollar project which has been pending for more than four years.

Backers say the project would boost North American energy security and provide thousands of construction jobs. Opponents argue that it would lead to higher releases of greenhouse gases.

The EPA said it was concerned about carbon emissions from the oil sands that are energy-intensive to produce, and about the safety of transporting Canadian crude via pipeline following a high profile spill in a Michigan river in 2010.

There was a reminder of the threat last month when an Exxon Mobil pipeline spilled thousands of barrels of Canadian crude in Arkansas, but the EPA letter did not mention that incident.

The agency was also concerned about the State Department's conclusion that the climate would not be affected by approval of the line because rail would be a major transport alternative.

"This analysis should include further investigation of rail capacity and costs, recognizing the potential for much higher per barrel rail shipment costs," the letter said.

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The 78-author paper, published Sunday in Nature Geoscience, used a variety of indirect indicators of temperature, from tree rings to pollen grains, to build on other work charting temperature shifts since the end of the last ice age — including the recent Marcott et al paper, explored here, which used seabed sediments to chart 11,000 years of temperatures.

The new paper drew no conclusions about Africa (you’ll see it’s missing from the chart above) because there are too few spots where long climate records accumulate in lakes or caves. (In most other populated regions, instrumental records have covered the last 100 years, but much of Africa remains a data-free zone even now.)

But along with supporting the general picture of a long temperature slide until the modern era’s warming, the analysis reveals fascinating regional variations, including these:

The Arctic was also warmest during the twentieth century, although warmer during 1941–1970 than 1971–2000 according to our reconstruction….

In Europe, slightly higher reconstructed temperatures were registered in A.D. 741–770, and the interval from A.D. 21–80 was substantially warmer than 1971–2000. Antarctica was probably warmer than 1971–2000 for a time period as recent as A.D. 1671–1700, and the entire period from 141–1250 was warmer than 1971–2000.

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The acceleration of change means that the species inhabiting each zone have less time to adapt to the climatic changes, said lead author Irina Mahlstein, a CIRES scientist who works at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “The warmer the climate gets, the faster the climate zones are shifting.  This could make it harder for plants and animals to adjust.”



The study is the first to look at the accelerating pace of the shifting of climate zones, which are areas of the Earth defined by annual and seasonal cycles of temperature and precipitation, as well as temperature and precipitation thresholds of plant species. Over 30 different climate zones are found on Earth; examples include the equatorial monsoonal zone, the polar tundra zone and cold arid desert zone.



“A shift in the climate zone is probably a better measure of ‘reality’ for living systems, more so than changing temperature by a degree or precipitation by a centimeter,” said Mahlstein.



The scientists used climate model simulations and a well-known ecosystem classification scheme to look at the shifts between climate zones over a two-century period, 1900 to 2098. The team found that for an initial 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit of warming, about 5 percent of Earth’s land area shifts to a new climate zone.



The models show that the pace of change quickens for the next 3.6 F of warming as an additional 10 percent of the land area shifts to a new climate zone.  The paper was published online in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 21.



Certain regions of the globe, such as northern middle and high latitudes, will undergo more changes than other regions, such as the tropics, the scientists found. In the tropics, mountainous regions will experience bigger changes than low-altitude areas.



In the coming century, the findings suggest that frost climates -- the coldest climate zone of the planet -- will largely decrease.  In general, dry regions in different areas of the globe will increase, and a large fraction of land area will change from cool summers to hot summers, according to the study.



The scientists also investigated whether temperature or precipitation had a greater impact on how much of the land area changed zones. “We found that temperature is the main factor, at least through the end of this century,” said Mahlstein.



John Daniel at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory and Susan Solomon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology co-authored the study.


Contacts
Irina Mahlstein, 303-497-4746


Irina.Mahlstein@noaa.gov


Jane Palmer, CIRES science writer, 303-883-4389


Jane.Palmer@colorado.edu
 

Jeremy Jones, pro snowboarder and Founder of the global nonprofit, Protect Our Winters was honored yesterday at a White House ceremony along with other “Champions of Change,” in recognition of “ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.”

Jones is being recognized for his contribution to raising awareness about the impact of climate change on the winter sports industry by creating Protect Our Winters, a foundation established in 2007 to unite and mobilize the global winter sports community against climate change.
The ceremony took place at the White House on Thursday afternoon.

Twelve Champions of Change were honored for working to prepare their communities for the consequences of climate change. These individuals are leaders and innovators working tirelessly to build community resilience by preparing for increasingly extreme weather and other costly climate-related impacts.  The Champions of Change program was created as a part of President Obama’s Winning the Future initiative.

“As we take action to reduce carbon pollution and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy, we must also take action to prepare for the impacts of climate change we are already seeing, including more frequent and severe extreme weather,” said Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  “This week, we look forward to welcoming Champions of Change who are doing smart, innovative work to protect the health, safety and prosperity of their communities in the face of climate change.”

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By mapping its spread over the course of the year, the scientists hoped to disentangle the forces that drive the circulation of the Southern Ocean — one of the most important, but least understood, regulators of Earth’s climate.

But four days from port, the ship’s captain died in the night. “There was a lot of confusion,” said Angel Ruiz-Angulo, a scientist on board. “Eventually, they said he died of heart failure.” Out of helicopter range, the crew had no choice but to put the captain’s body in a refrigerator designed for seawater samples and set course through gale-force winds for Punta Arenas, Chile, with the first mate at the helm. On shore, a short service was held, and the ship was examined. Then the scientists quickly returned to sea.

“It was a somber mood,” said Jim Ledwell, an oceanographer with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and chief scientist on the expedition.

“He had been with the crew a long time.” But there was little time to reflect. With only five weeks to collect data, Ledwell formulated a plan to reduce the number of stops the ship would make, focusing on the most essential sampling locations.

“Jim managed to handle everything very well. The results were as good as they could have been otherwise,” Ruiz-Angulo said. The data are now part of emerging models that are expected to yield a far more accurate picture of future climate change.

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A new study finds that it is possible to greatly slow the rate of sea level rise, which is one of the biggest threats global warming poses, by cutting so-called “short-lived climate pollutants,” which warm the climate on timescales of a few weeks to a decade, in combination with reductions in long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2).

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that reducing emissions of these short-lived climate pollutants, including soot and methane, by 30 to 60 percent by 2050 would slow the annual rate of sea level rise by about 18 percent by 2050. Combining reductions in short-lived pollutants with decreasing CO2 emissions could cut the rate of sea level rise in half by 2100, from 0.82 inches to 0.43 inches per year, while reducing the total sea level rise by 31 percent during the same period.

Related research by Climate Central scientists shows that the emissions reductions would potentially benefit more than 2 million Americans by 2100, who might otherwise be living below sea level at that point.
 

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Extreme drought, destructive wildfires, tornado warnings at night in Denver, the warmest June and July on record, a new record for the number of days over 90 and 100 degrees — are these random events or are they related to global warming?

The answer is not as easy as a simple yes or no, but overall the answer appears to be a carefully qualified yes. It is complicated and controversial, but I am going to give you some background from my perspective after nearly 50 years of being a “weather nut”. Yes, I have been fascinated by weather and climate since grade school.

Proceeding with Caution

I address this topic at some peril. In many ways, the job description for the TV “Weathercaster” is to simply be the nice friendly person who tells you what the high was, how much rain will fall and what to expect next weekend. Especially in recent years, broaching the topic of global warming can stir up deep emotions within viewers and can bring some rather rough responses via e-mail and Facebook.

Over the course of time, I have been called many different things while talking and writing about this subject. From courageous to foolish, to “the Pied Piper of Anti-Science.” I appreciate the fact that my viewers have many differing views and opinions on many issues, and climate change is one topic that seems to bring a strong reaction.

Nonetheless, TV meteorologists are often asked to provide their viewers with insight and explanations on earthquakes, meteors and comets, tsunamis and volcanoes. For many Americans, we are as close to a scientist as they will get, and they invite us into their living rooms.

They may not agree with my comments and explanations, but I hope they will appreciate the attempt and still choose to watch my weather reports.

So, with that said, here we go. More>


The politically touchy topic of climate change will be taught more deeply to students under proposed new national science standards released Tuesday.


The Next Generation Science Standards, developed over the last 18 months by California and 25 other states in conjunction with several scientific organizations, represent the first national effort since 1996 to transform the way science is taught in thousands of classrooms. The multi-state consortium is proposing that students learn fewer concepts more deeply and not merely memorize facts but understand how scientists actually investigate and gather information.


"What's important here is that the standards will give students a deep understanding of how science and scientists actually work," said Phil Lafontaine, a California Department of Education official who helped create the proposed standards. "It's not just what we know but how we came to know it."


Each state will decide on its own whether to adopt the benchmarks, which are based on a 2011 framework by the National Research Council. In California, they will be reviewed by a panel of science experts, with public hearings set to begin later this month in Sacramento, Santa Clara and Riverside. The state Board of Education is expected to vote on them in the fall, with partial implementation scheduled for 2014-15.

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Balog's work captures the disappearance of the world's glaciers through time-lapse photography. Since Chasing Ice premiered last fall, the documentary has experienced worldwide success winning numerous awards and drawing attention to the issue of climate change. In the two-part program last Monday, Beth Osnes took the stage with Balog for a live interview to discuss his career and experiences documenting the effect of climate change on the world’s glaciers.

During the interview, Balog expressed the change in public perception from “belief” in climate change, to understanding based on empirical evidence:

"We no longer talk about it in terms of believing. You don't believe in climate change, you either understand it or you don't. Regardless of ideology - we are humans who are capable of rational thought and that is what enables us to understand this issue. It's not a matter of belief."

When asked what advice he would offer students and people wanting to share the story of climate change, Balog encouraged the audience to learn and use all types of media to get the story out.

The second part of the program combined Balog’s photography and video with music as he shared his own poetry, imparting urgency and enormity of the changes going on in the world’s ice-covered landscapes.  This premiere of what Balog describes as the “beauty and horror” of glacial calving was shown in images and footage not previously released to the public.  The evening connected art with science to leave a lasting impression on all who attended. For Balog, as for many of the climate scientists and educators in the audience, this is his life’s work:

“I picture myself in 25 years with my daughters saying ‘the world is totally different now - wildfires and droughts all the time - what were you doing when you knew this was coming?’ I want to be able to say I did everything I could using the skills I had."

Learn More About Climate was pleased to sponsor “A Conversation with James Balog on the Art of Chasing Ice.” The event was hosted by Inside the Greenhouse, an interdisciplinary project led by CU Professors Beth Osnes, Max Boykoff, and Rebecca Safran and Earth Vision Trust, a nonprofit organization founded by James Balog.

Already, atmospheric turbulence injures hundreds of airline passengers each year, sometimes fatally, damaging aircraft and costing the industry an estimated $150 million (115 million euros), scientists said.

"Climate change is not just warming the Earth's surface, it is also changing the atmospheric winds ten kilometres (six miles) high, where planes fly," said study co-author Paul Williams of the University of Reading's National Centre for Atmospheric Science in southeastern England.

"That is making the atmosphere more vulnerable to the instability that creates clear-air turbulence," he told AFP by email.

"Our research suggests that we'll be seeing the 'fasten seatbelts' sign turned on more often in the decades ahead."
Turbulence is mainly caused by vertical airflow -- up-draughts and down-draughts near clouds and thunderstorms.

Clear-air turbulence, which is not visible to the naked eye and cannot be picked up by satellite or traditional radar, is linked to atmospheric jet streams, which are projected to strengthen with climate change.

The study authors used supercomputer simulations of the North Atlantic jet stream, a strong upper-atmospheric wind driven by temperature differences between colliding Arctic and tropical air.

The jet stream affects traffic in the aviation corridor between Europe and North America -- one of the world's busiest with about 300 eastbound and 300 westbound flights per day.
 

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Glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes that took at least 1,600 years to form has melted in just 25 years, scientists reported Thursday, the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance.

The evidence comes from a remarkable find at the margins of the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru, the world’s largest tropical ice sheet. Rapid melting there in the modern era is uncovering plants that were locked in a deep freeze when the glacier advanced many thousands of years ago.

Dating of those plants, using a radioactive form of carbon in the plant tissues that decays at a known rate, has given scientists an unusually precise method of determining the history of the ice sheet’s margins.

Lonnie G. Thompson, the Ohio State University glaciologist whose team has worked intermittently on the Quelccaya ice cap for decades, reported the findings in a paper released online Thursday by the journal Science.

The paper includes a long-awaited analysis of chemical tracers in ice cylinders the team recovered by drilling deep into Quelccaya, a record that will aid scientists worldwide in reconstructing past climatic variations.

Such analyses will take time, but Dr. Thompson said preliminary evidence shows, for example, that the earth probably went through a period of anomalous weather at around the time of the French Revolution, which began in 1789. The weather presumably contributed to the food shortages that exacerbated that upheaval.

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The bank is in the middle of an internal debate over how to reshape its role in a world where the major developing nations — the core “customers” for its loans and programs — have become increasingly middle class and where states caught in civil war pose an intractable development problem. At the same time, the impact of climate change disproportionately threatens the African and Asian nations that would find it hardest to cope.

Kim said the bank, a sprawling institution that lends to everything from power plants to local governance projects, would try to tailor its work to focus on the elimination of extreme poverty and on easing inequality in countries that are doing better economically. Finding ways to avoid or lessen potential climate effects, he said, are central to that effort.

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By a margin of 2 to 1, respondents say America should take action to reduce our fossil fuel use. Also, only one third of respondents agree with the Republican Party’s position on climate change, while about half agree with the party’s position on how to meet America’s energy needs.

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At the same time, retirement will allow Dr. Hansen to press his cause in court. He plans to take a more active role in lawsuits challenging the federal and state governments over their failure to limit emissions, for instance, as well as in fighting the development in Canada of a particularly dirty form of oil extracted from tar sands.

“As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,” he said in an interview. Dr. Hansen had already become an activist in recent years, taking vacation time from NASA to appear at climate protests and allowing himself to be arrested or cited a half-dozen times.

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A new survey commissioned by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Center for Ocean Solutions finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans want to prepare in order to minimize the damage likely to be caused by global warming-induced sea-level rise and storms. A majority also want people whose properties and businesses are located in hazard areas – not the government – to foot the bill for this preparation. Specifically, 82 percent of the Americans surveyed said that people and organizations should prepare for the damage likely to be caused by sea level rise and storms, rather than simply deal with the damage after it happens.  Among the most popular policy solutions identified in the survey are strengthening building codes for how to build new structures along the coast to minimize damage (favored by 62 percent) and preventing new buildings from being built near the coast (supported by 51 percent).

“People support preventive action,” said survey director Jon Krosnick, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, “and few people believe these preparations will harm the economy or eliminate jobs.  In fact, more people believe that preparation efforts will help the economy and create jobs around the U.S., in their state and in their town than think these efforts will harm the economy and result in fewer jobs in those areas. But people want coastal homeowners and businesses that locate in high-risk areas to pay for these measures.”
 

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Energy subsidies cost governments from the U.S. to Egypt $1.9 trillion, discourage private investment and help wealthy consumers more than the poor, according to a study by International Monetary Fund staff.

In the report published today that covers 176 countries, the Washington-based IMF advocates a progressive increase in energy prices, accompanied by targeted measures to protect the poorest. Getting rid of subsidies could also help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 13 percent, it estimated.

“Energy subsidies are large and they’re harmful,” Carlo Cottarelli, the IMF’s director of fiscal affairs, said on a conference call with reporters. “They lead to excessive consumption of energy, they absorb public-sector resources that could be used for more useful purposes” and they “benefit the rich more than the poor,” he said.

The report gives the IMF ammunition for what it describes as a “frequent topic of discussion” with member countries. Policy makers’ reluctance to let energy prices increase has stalled or derailed loans in nations such as Ukraine and Pakistan, countries the report shows spend more of their wealth on subsidies than on public health and education.

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In partnership with State and Tribal agencies, the Obama Administration today released the first nationwide strategy to help public and private decision makers address the impacts that climate change is having on natural resources and the people and economies that depend on them. Developed in response to a request by Congress, the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy is the product of extensive national dialogue that spanned nearly two years and was shaped by comments from more than 55,000 Americans.

Fish, wildlife, and plant resources provide important benefits and services to Americans every day, including jobs, income, food, clean water and air, building materials, storm protection, tourism and recreation. For example, hunting, fishing and other wildlife-related recreation contribute an estimated $120 billion to our nation’s economy every year, and marine ecosystems sustain a U.S. seafood industry that supports approximately 1 million jobs and $116 billion in economic activity annually.

The Climate Adaptation Strategy provides a roadmap of key steps needed over the next five years to reduce the current and expected impacts of climate change on our natural resources, which include: changing species distributions and migration patterns, the spread of wildlife diseases and invasive species, the inundation of coastal habitats with rising sea levels, changing productivity of our coastal oceans, and changes in freshwater availability.

The Climate Adaptation Strategy builds upon efforts already underway by federal, state, tribal governments and other organizations to safeguard fish, wildlife and plants and the communities that depend on them, and provides specific voluntary steps that agencies and partners can take in the coming years to reduce costly damages and protect the health of our communities and economy. The strategy does not prescribe any mandatory activities for government or nongovernmental entities, nor suggest any regulatory actions.

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In the predawn darkness in the heart of winter, as most of their classmates are still in bed, four University of Colorado Boulder undergraduates ready themselves for an often brutal and bone-chilling ski uphill to research sites in the snow-encrusted Indian Peaks high above Boulder.

It’s Friday morning. And as they do every Friday throughout the winter — regardless of snowstorms, bitter cold, or worse, the biting and unrelenting winds that are near-constant companions in the high mountains — a rotation of four of the six interns at CU-Boulder’s Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research make the hour’s drive from Boulder to the university’s Mountain Research Station, tucked in the trees at 9,500 feet above the tiny hamlet of Ward.

From there, the students attach “climbing skins” to the bottom of their skis, strap on backpacks, step into bindings and begin a grueling three-mile, 1,500-foot climb to the first of the two research sites. If the conditions are safe, they’ll carry on another “hard mile” and 500 feet higher to the final site on the gentle, rounded spine of Niwot Ridge.

Gathering data at the two sites is a valuable hands-on — and rare — learning experience for snow hydrology students. But perhaps more importantly, the data they collect by digging snow pits down to the grassy earth below is critical for helping scientists understand how the delicate high-altitude ecosystem is changing in the face of a warming climate.
 

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NOAA issued the three-month U.S. Spring Outlook today, stating that odds favor above-average temperatures across much of the continental United States, including drought-stricken areas of Texas, the Southwest and the Great Plains. Spring promises little drought relief for most of these areas, as well as Florida, with below- average spring precipitation favored there. Meanwhile, river flooding is likely to be worse than last year across the country, with the most significant flood potential in North Dakota.

"This outlook reminds us of the climate diversity and weather extremes we experience in North America, where one state prepares for flooding while neighboring states are parched, with no drought relief in sight," said Laura Furgione, deputy director of NOAA's National Weather Service.

"We produce this outlook to help communities prepare for what's likely to come in the next few months and minimize weather's impacts on lives and livelihoods. A Weather-Ready Nation hopes for the best, but prepares for the worst."

The U.S. Spring Outlook identifies the likelihood of spring flood risk and expectations for temperature, precipitation and drought. The outlook is based on a number of factors, including current conditions of snowpack, drought, soil moisture, streamflow, precipitation, Pacific Ocean temperatures and consensus among climate forecast models.

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For polar bears that pad and paddle around Hudson Bay, the trend toward an earlier melt and later freeze of Arctic sea ice is altering the timing of their seasonal migration in ways that leave the animals less time to feed.

Ice floes on the open water serve as hunting platforms for the bears, whose wintry diet of seals, snagged as they come up for air through breaks in the ice, builds the fat reserves polar bears need to survive on land during the sea-ice melt season.

The migration changes likely bode ill for the ability of the population to reproduce and to survive over the long term as global warming continues to build, say researchers who conducted a study published this week on the impact of climate on the area's polar bear migration patterns. The study appeared in Tuesday’s issue of the Journal of Animal Ecology.

Moreover, because the bears appear to have a strong sense of home turf, the researchers say the animals are likely getting off the melting ice earlier in order to return to familiar turf. If they stay on the moving ice to feed longer, they risk disembarking where they will have to spend more time and energy either returning to their usual range or exploring the new location for the best places to hunker down for the melt season.

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(CNN) -- Global warming has propelled Earth's climate from one of its coldest decades since the last ice age to one of its hottest -- in just one century. A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years, said climatologist Shaun Marcott, who worked on a new study on global temperatures going back that far.

"If any period in time had a sustained temperature change similar to what we have today, we would have certainly seen that in our record," he said. It is a good indicator of just how fast man-made climate change has progressed.

A century is a very short period of time for such a spike. Read entire article

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight -- dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide.

The study results essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China, two countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning, said lead study author Ryan Neely, who led the research as part of his CU-Boulder doctoral thesis. Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth’s surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet.

Neely said previous observations suggest that increases in stratospheric aerosols since 2000 have counterbalanced as much as 25 percent of the warming scientists blame on human greenhouse gas emissions. “This new study indicates it is emissions from small to moderate volcanoes that have been slowing the warming of the planet,” said Neely, a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint venture of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.   

A paper on the subject was published online in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Co-authors include Professors Brian Toon and Jeffrey Thayer from CU-Boulder; Susan Solomon, a former NOAA scientist now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jean Paul Vernier from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; Catherine Alvarez, Karen Rosenlof and John Daniel from NOAA; and Jason English, Michael Mills and Charles Bardeen from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

The new project was undertaken in part to resolve conflicting results of two recent studies on the origins of the sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere, including a 2009 study led by the late David Hoffman of NOAA indicating aerosol increases in the stratosphere may have come from rising emissions of sulfur dioxide from India and China. In contrast, a 2011 study led by Vernier -- who also provided essential observation data for the new GRL study -- showed moderate volcanic eruptions play a role in increasing particulates in the stratosphere, Neely said.

The new GRL study also builds on a 2011 study led by Solomon showing stratospheric aerosols offset about a quarter of the greenhouse effect warming on Earth during the past decade, said Neely, also a postdoctoral fellow in NCAR’s Advanced Study Program.

The new study relies on long-term measurements of changes in the stratospheric aerosol layer’s “optical depth,” which is a measure of transparency, said Neely.  Since 2000, the optical depth in the stratospheric aerosol layer has increased by about 4 to 7 percent, meaning it is slightly more opaque now than in previous years.

“The biggest implication here is that scientists need to pay more attention to small and moderate volcanic eruptions when trying to understand changes in Earth’s climate,” said Toon of CU-Boulder’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.  “But overall these eruptions are not going to counter the greenhouse effect. Emissions of volcanic gases go up and down, helping to cool or heat the planet, while greenhouse gas emissions from human activity just continue to go up.”

The key to the new results was the combined use of two sophisticated computer models, including the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model, or WACCM, Version 3, developed by NCAR and which is widely used around the world by scientists to study the atmosphere.  The team coupled WACCM with a second model, the Community Aerosol and Radiation Model for Atmosphere, or CARMA, which allows researchers to calculate properties of specific aerosols and which has been under development by a team led by Toon for the past several decades.

Neely said the team used the Janus supercomputer on campus to conduct seven computer “runs,” each simulating 10 years of atmospheric activity tied to both coal-burning activities in Asia and to emissions by volcanoes around the world. Each run took about a week of computer time using 192 processors, allowing the team to separate coal-burning pollution in Asia from aerosol contributions from moderate, global volcanic eruptions. The project would have taken a single computer processor roughly 25 years to complete, said Neely.

The scientists said 10-year climate data sets like the one gathered for the new study are not long enough to determine climate change trends. “This paper addresses a question of immediate relevance to our understanding of the human impact on climate,” said Neely. “It should interest those examining the sources of decadal climate variability, the global impact of local pollution and the role of volcanoes.”

While small and moderate volcanoes mask some of the human-caused warming of the planet, larger volcanoes can have a much bigger effect, said Toon. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, it emitted millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere that cooled the Earth slightly for the next several years.

The research for the new study was funded in part through a NOAA/ ESRL-CIRES Graduate Fellowship to Neely.  The National Science Foundation and NASA also provided funding for the research project.  The Janus supercomputer is supported by NSF and CU-Boulder and is a joint effort of CU-Boulder, CU Denver and NCAR. - See more at: http://www.colorado.edu/news/features/erupting-volcanoes-offset-recent-earth-warming#sthash.xG8C037v.dpuf

Creeping climate change in the Southwest appears to be having a negative effect on pinyon pine reproduction, a finding with implications for wildlife species sharing the same woodland ecosystems, says a University of Colorado Boulder-led study.

The new study showed that pinyon pine seed cone production declined by an average of about 40 percent at nine study sites in New Mexico and northwestern Oklahoma over the past four decades, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Miranda Redmond, who led the study. The biggest declines in pinyon pine seed cone reproduction were at the higher elevation research sites experiencing more dramatic warming relative to lower elevations, said Redmond of CU’s ecology and evolutionary biology department.

“We are finding significant declines in pinyon pine cone production at many of our study sites,” said Redmond. “The biggest declines in cone production we measured were in areas with greater increases in temperatures over the past several decades during the March to October growing season.”

Temperature and precipitation were recorded at official long-term weather stations located near each of the nine sites. Overall, average temperatures in the study areas have increased by about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the past four decades, she said.

A paper on the subject by Redmond, Assistant Professor Nichole Barger of CU-Boulder and Frank Forcella of the United States Department of Agriculture in Morris, Minn., appeared in a recent issue of the journal Ecosphere, published by the Ecological Society of America. The new study was funded primarily by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to Redmond.

The cones in which the pinyon seeds are produced are initiated two years prior to seed maturity, and research suggests the environmental stimulus for cone initiation is unseasonably low temperatures during the late summer, said Redmond. Between 1969 and 2009, unseasonably low temperatures in late summer decreased in the study areas, likely inhibiting cone initiation and development.

The study is one of the first to examine the impact of climate change on tree species like pinyon pines that, instead of reproducing annually, shed vast quantities of cones every few years during synchronous, episodic occurrences known as “masting” events. Redmond said such masting in the pinyon pine appears to occur every three to seven years, resulting in massive “bumper crops” of cones covering the ground.

In the new Ecosphere study, the researchers compared two 10-year sequences of time. In addition to showing that total pinyon pine cone production during the 2003-2012 decade had declined from the 1969-1978 decade in the study areas, the team found the production of cones during masting events also declined during that period.

Some scientists believe masting events evolved to produce a big surplus of nut-carrying cones -- far too many for wildlife species to consume in a season -- making it more likely the nuts eventually will sprout into pinyon pine seedlings, she said. Others have suggested masting events occur during favorable climate conditions and/or to increase pollination efficiency. “Right now we really don’t know what drives them,” Redmond said.

“Across a range of forested ecosystems we are observing widespread mortality events due to stressors such as changing climate, drought, insects and fire,” said CU’s Barger.  “This study provides evidence that increasing air temperatures may be influencing the ability of a common and iconic western U.S. tree, pinyon pine, to reproduce. We would predict that declines in pinyon pine cone production may impact the long-term viability of these tree populations.”

Wildlife biologists say pinyon-juniper woodlands are popular with scores of bird and mammal species ranging from black-chinned hummingbirds to black bears. A 2007 study by researchers at the University of Northern Arizona estimated that 150 Clark’s Nutcrackers cached roughly 5 million pinyon pine nuts in a single season, benefiting not only the birds themselves but also the pines whose nuts were distributed more widely for possible germination.

For the new study, Redmond revisited nine pinyon pine study sites scattered throughout New Mexico and Oklahoma that had been studied previously in 1978 by Forcella. Both Forcella and Redmond were able to document pinyon pine masting years by counting small, concave blemishes known as “abscission scars” on individual tree branches that appeared after the cones have been dropped, she said.

Since each year in the life of a pinyon pine tree is marked by a “whorl” -- a single circle of branches extending around a tree trunk -- the researchers were able to bracket pinyon pine reproductive activity in the nine study areas for the 1969-1978 decade and 2003-2012 decade, which were then compared.

Pinyon pines take three growing seasons, or about 26 months, to produce mature cones from the time of cone initiation.  Low elevation conifers including pinyon pines grow in water-limited environments and have been shown to have higher cone output during cool and/or wet summers, said Redmond. In addition to the climate-warming trend under way in the Southwest, the 2002-03 drought caused significant mortality in pinyon pine forests, Redmond said.

“Miranda’s ideas and accompanying results will be of value to ecologists and land managers in the deserts of the Southwest and beyond,” said Forcella, now a research agronomist in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.  “The work is evidence that the University of Colorado continues to cultivate a cadre of high-caliber graduate students for which it rightfully can take tremendous pride.”

Pinyon nuts, the Southwest’s only commercial source of edible pine seeds today, were dietary staples of indigenous Americans going back millennia.

For more information on CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department visit http://ebio.colorado.edu.

Contact:


Miranda Redmond, 415-300-6901


Mirandaredmond@gmail.com


Nichole Barger, 303-492-8239


Nichole.Barger@colorado.edu

Researchers have detected the presence of a pollutant-destroying compound iodine monoxide in surprisingly high levels high above the tropical ocean, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

“The levels of IO we observed were much higher than expected,” said Rainer Volkamer, a CIRES fellow and principal investigator of the study. “The high concentrations in air that has not recently been in contact with the ocean surface point to the intriguing possibility of a recycling mechanism whereby instead of IO decaying away as previously thought, it’s released back to the atmosphere by heterogeneous chemistry on aerosol particles.”

IO is an important chemical because it destroys ozone, a greenhouse gas that warms the planet and also indirectly lowers methane levels, said Volkamer, also an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry. Additionally, IO can form aerosols—tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere that can initiate the production of clouds that can help cool the climate.

If IO is recycled in the atmosphere, as the research findings suggest, “It means IO has a longer effective lifetime and is, thus, much more broadly distributed, affects a much broader atmospheric air mass, and can destroy much more ozone,” Volkamer said.

The team’s analysis indicates that IO accounts for up to 20 percent of the overall ozone loss rate in the upper troposphere (the layer of the atmosphere extending from Earth’s surface up to about 60,000 feet). This ozone sink is currently missing in most atmospheric models.

The origin of IO is thought to be iodine emitted by microalgae or inorganic reactions at the ocean surface. Because IO occurs in relatively very small concentrations—one in 1013 molecules—it previously had been impossible to quantify the amount in the upper atmosphere.  

Volkamer’s team, however, solved that problem. They built an instrument— the University of Colorado Airborne Multi-Axis Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (CU AMAX-DOAS) instrument—attached it to a research plane, and flew it over the tropical Pacific during January 2010, collecting and analyzing air samples from about 300 feet up to 33,000 feet to create a vertical profile of the atmosphere’s composition. The efforts marked the first aircraft measurements of IO, and the results appeared online Jan. 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

During the flight, the researchers studied both stable, aged air, which has had no contact with the ocean surface in days, and a deep convective storm, which pumps warm, moist air from the ocean surface into the upper troposphere.

Because IO has a very short lifetime in the atmosphere—it lasts only 30 to 60 minutes before forming aerosol particles—the researchers expected to find IO only near the ocean surface and in the storm cell, which acts like a “large vacuum cleaner, sucking air from the ocean surface up to 30,000 feet in as little as 20 minutes,” Volkamer said.

Instead, they discovered high levels of IO even in aged air that had not connected with the ocean for several days.

“Based on current understanding, iodine oxide shouldn’t be hanging around for more than one hour,” Volkamer said. “But these measurements reveal a surprising persistence of IO in air masses disconnected from the ground. We don’t see that the IO decays away. It still hangs around.”

The persistence of IO suggests that IO isn’t irreversibly lost to aerosol, Volkamer said. The aerosol “returns” the IO to the atmosphere. Such a recycling mechanism would be novel because iodine is a very heavy atom. “It’s like a cannonball,” Volkamer said. “It tends to form polymers and stick onto particles. But a portion seems to be returning into the gas phase.”

Such a recycling mechanism would extend the effective lifetime of IO, increasing the amount of ozone it destroys. The findings will help improve climate models’ predicative capability about how atmosphere behaves and how the atmosphere cleanses itself of pollutants and greenhouse gases, Volkamer said.

The next step will be to elucidate the mechanisms behind IO’s high concentrations.

“It’s exciting because the atmosphere has more cleansing mechanisms than we suspected,” Volkamer said.

Co-authors on the study include Barbara Dix, Sunil Baidar, James F. Bresch, Samuel R. Hall, K. Sebastian Schmidt, and Siyuan Wang. The research is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. CIRES is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NOAA.

Contact:

Kristin Bjornsen, CIRES science writer, 303-492-1790

Kristin.Bjornsen@colorado.edu


Rainer Volkamer, CIRES Fellow, 303-492-1843


Rainer.Volkamer@colorado.edu
 

A new study by an international team of scientists analyzing ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet going back in time more than 100,000 years indicates the last interglacial period may be a good analog for where the planet is headed in terms of increasing greenhouse gases and rising temperatures.



The new results from the NEEM deep ice core drilling project led by the University of Copenhagen and involving the University of Colorado Boulder show that between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago during the Eemian interglacial period, the climate in north Greenland rose to about 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today. Despite the strong warming signal during the Eemian -- a period when the seas were roughly 15 to 25 feet higher than today -- the surface of the north Greenland ice sheet near the NEEM facility was only a few hundred yards lower than it is today, an indication to scientists it contributed less than half of the total sea rise at the time.



The NEEM project involves 300 scientists and students from 14 countries and is led by Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, director of the University of Copenhagen’s Centre of Ice and Climate.  CU-Boulder geological sciences professor and ice core expert Jim White is the lead U.S. investigator on the project.  The National Science Foundation’s Division of Polar Programs funded the U.S. portion of the effort.



The new Nature findings showed that about 128,000 years ago, the surface elevation of ice near the NEEM site was more than 650 feet higher than present but the ice was starting to thin by about 2 inches per year.  Between about 122,000 and 115,000 years ago, Greenland’s surface elevation remained stable at roughly 425 feet below the present level.  Calculations indicate Greenland’s ice sheet volume was reduced by no more than 25 percent between 128,000 years ago and 122,000 years ago, said White.



A paper on the subject was published in the Jan. 24 issue of Nature.



“When we calculated how much ice melt from Greenland was contributing to global sea rise in the Eemian, we knew a large part of the sea rise back then must have come from Antarctica,” said White, director of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “A lot of us had been leaning in that direction for some time, but we now have evidence that confirms that the West Antarctic ice sheet was a dynamic and crucial player in global sea rise during the last interglacial period.”



Dahl-Jensen said the loss of ice mass on the Greenland ice sheet in the early part of the Eemian was likely similar to changes seen there by climate scientists in the past 10 years. Other studies have shown the temperatures above Greenland have been rising five times faster than the average global temperatures in recent years, and that Greenland has been losing more than 200 million tons of ice annually since 2003. The Greenland ice loss study was led by former CU-Boulder scientist Isabella Velicogna, who is currently a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine.



The intense melt in the vicinity of NEEM during the warm Eemian period was seen in the ice cores as layers of re-frozen meltwater.  Such melt events during the last glacial period were rare by comparison, showing that the surface temperatures at the NEEM site were in a cold, nearly constant state back then. But on July 12, 2012, satellite images from NASA indicated 97 percent of Greenland’s ice sheet surface had thawed as a result of warming temperatures.



"We were quite shocked by the warm surface temperatures observed at the NEEM ice camp in July 2012,” said Dahl-Jensen. “It was raining at the top of the Greenland ice sheet, and just as during the Eemian period, meltwater formed subsurface ice layers. While this was an extreme event, the present warming over Greenland makes surface melt more likely, and the predicted warming over Greenland in the next 50-100 years will very likely be so strong that we will potentially have Eemian-like climate conditions.”



The Greenland ice core layers -- formed over millennia by compressed snow -- are being studied in detail using a suite of measurements, including stable water isotope analysis that reveals information about temperature and greenhouse gas levels and moisture changes back in time. Lasers are used to measure the water stable isotopes and atmospheric gas bubbles trapped in the ice cores to better understand past variations in climate on an annual basis -- similar in some ways to a tree-ring record.



The results from the Nature study provide scientists with a “road map” of sorts to show where a warming Earth is headed in the future, said White.  Of the nine hottest years on Earth on record, eight have come since the year 2000.  In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that temperatures on Earth could climb by as much as 11 degrees F by 2100.



Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from sources like vehicle exhaust and industrial pollution -- which have risen from about 280 parts per million at the onset of the Industrial Revolution to 391 parts per million today -- are helping to raise temperatures on Earth, with no end in sight, said White.



"Unfortunately, we have reached a point where there is so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere it’s going to be difficult for us to further limit our impact on the planet,” White said.  “Our kids and grandkids are definitely going to look back and shake their heads at the inaction of this country’s generation. We are burning the lion’s share of oil and natural gas to benefit our lifestyle, and punting the responsibility for it.”



In the past, Earth’s journey into and out of glacial periods is thought to be due in large part to variations in its orbit, tilt and rotation that change the amount of solar energy delivered to the planet, he said. But the anthropogenic warming on Earth today could override such episodic changes, perhaps even staving off an ice age, White said.



While three previous ice cores drilled in Greenland in the last 20 years recovered ice from the Eemian, the deepest layers were compressed and folded, making the data difficult to interpret.  Although there was some folding of the lowest ice layers in the NEEM core, sophisticated ice-penetrating radar helped scientists sort out and interpret the individual layers to paint an accurate picture of the warming of Earth’s Northern Hemisphere as it emerged from the previous ice age, White said.



In addition to White, other CU-Boulder co-authors on the NEEM paper include INSTAAR scientist Bruce Vaughn and graduate student Tyler Jones of INSTAAR and CU-Boulder’s Environmental Studies Program.



“It’s a challenge being on the ice sheet, because we are out of our comfort zones and are working long, physical hours in an environment that is extremely cold and where the sun never sets,” Jones said.  “Being a member of the research team allowed me to understand the ice core recovery process and the science behind it in terms of learning more about past climates and the implications for future climate change.”



Other nations involved in NEEM include Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Other U.S. institutions involved in the effort include Oregon State University, Penn State, the University of California, San Diego and Dartmouth College.



For more information on INSTAAR go to http://instaar.colorado.edu/. Additional information, photos and videos on NEEM can be found at http://www.neem.ku.dk.


Contacts
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, 011-45 22 894 537


ddj@gfy.ku.dk


Jim White, 303-492-7909


James.White@colorado.edu

A team of researchers involving CU-Boulder is exhuming ice cores from Greenland, shown here, to better understand the past interglacial period known as the Eemian.  Photo courtesy Tyler Jones, University of Colorado

A new NASA-led study involving the University of Colorado Boulder finds that when it comes to combating global warming caused by emissions of ozone-forming chemicals, location matters.    

Ozone is both a major air pollutant with known adverse health effects and a greenhouse gas that traps heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists and policy analysts are interested in learning how curbing the emissions of ozone-forming chemicals can improve human health and also help mitigate climate change.

Research scientists Kevin Bowman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Daven Henze, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at CU-Boulder, set out to quantify, down to areas the size of large metropolitan regions, how the climate-altering impacts of these chemical emissions vary around the world. The chemicals, which are produced from sources such as planes, factories and automobiles, are converted to ozone in the presence of sunlight and subsequently transported by wind around our planet. Among these chemicals are nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and non-methane hydrocarbons.

By combining satellite observations of how much heat ozone absorbs in Earth’s atmosphere with a model of how chemicals are transported in the atmosphere, the researchers discovered significant regional variability — in some places by more than a factor of 10 — in how efficiently ozone trapped heat in Earth’s atmosphere, depending upon where the ozone-forming chemical emissions were located. This variability was found within individual continents and even among different regions with similar emission levels within individual countries.

High-latitude regions such as Europe had a smaller impact than lower-latitude regions like North America. Ozone was observed to be a more efficient greenhouse gas over hot regions like the tropics or relatively cloud-free regions like the Middle East. The satellite data were collected by the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer instrument on NASA’s Aura spacecraft.

“When it comes to reducing ozone levels, emission reductions in one part of the world may drive greenhouse warming more than a similar level of emission reductions elsewhere,” said Bowman, lead author of the study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “Where you clean up ozone precursor emissions makes a big difference. It’s all about — to use a real estate analogy — location, location, location.”

Variations in chemicals that lead to the production of ozone are driven by industry and human population. For example, the U.S. Northeast has much higher ozone precursor emission levels than, say, Wisconsin.

“We show that, for example, emissions of nitrogen dioxide in Denver are 20 percent more effective in contributing to ozone’s greenhouse gas effect than emissions of nitrogen dioxide in the San Francisco Bay area, even though both are at similar latitudes ” Bowman added. “Denver is at a much higher altitude than San Francisco and therefore can export ozone efficiently into the upper atmosphere where it is a more effective greenhouse gas.”

The researchers found that the top 15 regional contributors to global ozone greenhouse gas levels were predominantly located in China and the United States, including the regions that encompass New Orleans, Atlanta and Houston.

Bowman and Henze found considerable variability in how different types of emissions contribute to ozone’s greenhouse gas effect. For example, compared to all nitrogen dioxide emissions — both human-produced and natural — industrial and transportation sources make up a quarter of the total greenhouse gas effect, whereas airplanes make up only 1 percent.  They also found that nitrogen dioxide contributes about two-thirds of the ozone greenhouse gas effect compared with carbon monoxide and non-methane hydrocarbons.

Bowman said the research suggests that solutions to improve air quality and combat climate change should be tailored for the regions in which they are to be executed.

“One question that’s getting a lot of interest in policy initiatives such as the United Nations’ Environment Programme Climate and Clean Air Coalition is controlling short-lived greenhouse gases like methane and ozone as part of a short-term strategy for mitigating climate change,” Bowman said. “Our study could enable policy researchers to calculate the relative health and climate benefits of air pollution control and pinpoint where emission reductions will have the greatest impacts. This wasn’t really possible to do at these scales before now. This is particularly important in developing countries like China, where severe air pollution problems are of greater concern to public officials than climate change mitigation in the short term.”

“Our study is an important step forward in this field because we’ve built a special model capable of looking at the effects of location at a very high resolution,” said Henze. “The model simulations are based upon actual observations of ozone warming effects measured by NASA’s Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer satellite instrument. This is the first time we’ve been able to separate observed heat trapping due to ozone into its natural versus human sources, and even into specific types of human sources, such as fossil fuels versus biofuels. This information can be used to mitigate climate change while improving air quality.”

For more information on the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer visit http://tes.jpl.nasa.gov.

Contact:
Daven Henze, 303-492-8716


Daven.Henze@colorado.edu


Alan Buis, NASA media relations, 818-354-0474


Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov
 

A research team involving several scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder has found an unexpected silver lining in the devastating pine beetle outbreaks ravaging the West: Such events do not harm water quality in adjacent streams as scientists had previously believed.

According to CU-Boulder team member Professor William Lewis, the new study shows that smaller trees and other vegetation that survive pine beetle invasions along waterways increase their uptake of nitrate, a common disturbance-related pollutant. While logging or damaging storms can drive stream nitrate concentrations up by 400 percent for multiple years, the team found no significant increase in the nitrate concentrations following extensive pine beetle tree mortality in a number of Colorado study areas.

“We found that the beetles do not disturb watersheds in the same way as logging and severe storms,” said Lewis, interim director of CU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “They leave behind smaller trees and other understory vegetation, which compensate for the loss of larger pine trees by taking up additional nitrate from the system. Beetle-kill conditions are a good benchmark for the protection of sub-canopy vegetation to preserve water quality during forest management activities.”

A paper on the subject was published in the Jan. 14 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The U.S. Forest Service and other agencies have established harvesting practices that greatly mitigate damage to forests caused by logging, and they deserve credit for that,” said Lewis. “But this study shows just how important the survival of smaller trees and understory vegetation can be to stream water quality.”

In waterways adjacent to healthy pine forests, concentrations of nitrate is generally far lower than in rivers on the plains in the West like the South Platte, said Lewis. Nitrate pollution is caused by agricultural runoff from populated areas and by permitted discharges of treated effluent from water treatment facilities.

“In Colorado, many watersheds have lost 80 to 90 percent of their tree canopy as a result of the beetle epidemic,” said Lewis, also a faculty member in CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department.  “We began to wonder whether the loss of the trees was reducing water quality in the streams. We knew that forestry and water managers were expecting big changes in water quality as a result of the pine beetle outbreak, so we decided to pool our university and federal agency resources in order to come up with an answer.”

Study co-author and CU-Boulder Research Associate James McCutchan of CIRES said the new results should help forest managers develop more effective ways to harvest timber while having the smallest effect possible on downstream ecosystems.  “This study shows that at least in some areas, it is possible to remove a large part of the tree biomass from a watershed with a very minimal effect on the stream ecosystem,” he said.

Understory vegetation left intact after beetle outbreaks gains an ecological advantage in terms of survival and growth, since small trees no longer have to compete with large trees and have more access to light, water and nutrients, said McCutchan. Research by study co-author and former CU undergraduate Rachel Ertz showed concentrations of nitrate in the needles of small pines that survived beetle infestations were higher than those in healthy trees outside beetle-killed areas, another indication of how understory vegetation compensates for environmental conditions in beetle kill areas.

The researchers used computer modeling to show that in western forests, such a  “compensatory response” provides potent water quality protection against the adverse effects of nitrates only if roughly half of the vegetation survives “overstory” mortality from beetle kill events, which is what occurs normally in such areas, said Lewis.

Other study co-authors included Leigh Cooper, Thomas Detmer and Thomas Veblen from CU-Boulder, John Stednick from Colorado State University, Charles Rhoades from the U.S. Forest Service, Jennifer Briggs and David Clow from the U.S. Geological Survey and Gene Likens of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.

The severe pine beetle epidemic in Colorado and Wyoming forests is part of an unprecedented beetle outbreak that ranges from Mexico to Canada. A November 2012 study by CU-Boulder doctoral student Teresa Chapman showed the 2001-02 drought greatly accelerated the development of the mountain pine beetle epidemic.

The researchers measured stream nitrate concentrations at more than 100 sites in western Colorado containing lodgepole pines with a range of beetle-induced tree damage.  The study area included measurements from the Fraser Experimental Forest near Granby, Colo., a 23,000-acre study area established by the USFS in 1937.

The new study was funded by the USFS, the USGS, the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Park Service.  CIRES is a joint research institute between CU-Boulder and NOAA.

Contact:


William Lewis, 303-492-6378


lewis@spot.colorado.edu


James McCutchan, 303-492-5192


James.McCutchan@colorado.edu
 

Gaping crevasses that penetrate upward from the bottom of the largest remaining ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula make it more susceptible to collapse, according to University of Colorado Boulder researchers who spent the last four Southern Hemisphere summers studying the massive floating sheet of ice that covers an area twice the size of Massachusetts.

But the scientists also found that ribbons running through the Larsen C Ice Shelf – made up of a mixture of ice types that, together, are more prone to bending than breaking – make the shelf more resilient than it otherwise would be.

The research team from CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences presented the findings Dec. 6 at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

The Larsen C Ice Shelf is all that’s left of a series of ice shelves that once clung to the eastern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula and stretched into the Weddell Sea. When the other shelves disintegrated abruptly – including Larsen A in January 1995 and Larsen B in February 2002 – scientists were surprised by the speed of the breakup.

Researchers now believe that the catastrophic collapses of Larsen A and B were caused, at least in part, by rising temperatures in the region, where warming is increasing at six times the global average. The Antarctic Peninsula warmed 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the last century.

The warmer climate increased meltwater production, allowing more liquid to pool on top of the ice shelves. The water then drained into surface crevasses, wedging them open and cracking the shelf into individual icebergs, which resulted in rapid disintegration.

But while the meltwater may have been responsible for dealing the final blow to the shelves, researchers did not have the opportunity to study how the structure of the Larsen A and B shelves may have made them more vulnerable to drastic breakups – or protected the shelves from an even earlier demise.

CU-Boulder researchers did not want to miss the same opportunity on the Larsen C shelf, which covers more than 22,000 square miles of sea.

“It’s the perfect natural laboratory,” said Daniel McGrath, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and part of the CIRES research team. “We wanted to study this shelf while it’s still stable in order to get a better understanding of the processes that affect ice shelf stability.”

McGrath worked with CIRES colleagues over the last four years to study the Larsen C shelf in order to better understand how the warming climate may have interacted with the shelf’s existing structure to increase its vulnerability to a catastrophic collapse.

McGrath presented two of the group’s key findings at the AGU meeting. The first was the role that long-existing crevasses that start at the base of the shelf and propagate upward – known as basal crevasses – play in making the shelf more vulnerable to disintegration. The second relates to the way a type of ice found in areas called suture zones may be protecting the shelf against a breakup.

The scientists used ground penetrating radar to map out the basal crevasses, which turn out to be massive. The yawning cracks can run for several miles in length and can penetrate upwards for more than 750 feet. While the basal crevasses have been a part of Larsen C for hundreds of years, the interaction between these features and a warming climate will likely make the shelf more susceptible to future disintegration. “They likely play a really important role in ice-shelf disintegration, both past and future,” McGrath said.

The research team also studied the impact of suture zones in the ice shelf. Larsen C is fed by 12 distinct glaciers, which dump a steady flow of thick ice into the shelf. But the promontories of land between the glacial outlets, where ice does not flow into the shelf, allow for the creation of ribbon-like suture zones, which knit the glacial inflows together and which turn out to be important to the ice shelf’s resilience. “The ice in these zones really holds the neighboring inflows together,” McGrath said.

The suture zones get their malleable characteristic from a combination of ice types. A key component of the suture zone mixture is formed when the bottoms of the 12 glacial inflows begin to melt. The resulting freshwater is more buoyant than the surrounding seawater, so it rises upward to the relatively thinner ice zones between the glacial inflows, where it refreezes on the underside of the shelf and contributes to the chaotic ice structure that makes suture zones more flexible than the surrounding ice.

It turns out that the resilient characteristics of the suture zones keep cracks, including the basal crevasses, from spreading across the ice shelf, even where the suture zone ice makes up a comparatively small amount of the total thickness of the shelf. The CIRES team found that at the shelf front, where the ice meets the open sea, suture zone ice constitutes only 20 percent of the total thickness of the shelf but was still able to limit the spread of rifts through the ice. “It’s a pretty small part of the total ice thickness, and yet, it still has this really important role of holding the ice shelf together,” McGrath said.

Other CU researchers involved in the Larsen C project were Konrad Steffen, former director of CIRES; Ted Scambos, of CIRES and CU-Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center; Harihar Rajaram, of the Department of Civil Engineering; and Waleed Abdalati, of CIRES.

CIRES is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Contact:


Dan McGrath


Daniel.McGrath@colorado.edu

 

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has been awarded $9.2 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Energy to research modifying E. coli to produce biofuels such as gasoline.

“This is a fantastic opportunity to take what we have worked on for the past decade to the next level,” said team leader Ryan Gill, a fellow of CU-Boulder’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, or RASEI. “In this project, we will develop technologies that are orders of magnitude beyond where we are currently.”

The team is working with a non-pathogenic strain of E. coli. Among the microbe’s more than 4,000 genes, the team is searching for a small set and how it can be manipulated in a combination of on and off states to change the bacteria’s behavior.

“E. coli is not going to want to make your biofuel at all,” said Gill, who’s also a CU-Boulder associate professor of chemical and biological engineering. “It doesn’t do that naturally. It’s programmed with thousands of genes controlling how it replicates. We’re figuring out what control structure we need to rewire in the bug to make it do what we want, not what it wants.”

Included in the team are Rob Knight, CU-Boulder associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Pin-Ching Maness, principal scientist at DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL; and Adam Arkin, physical biosciences director at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The researchers hope to engineer the production of ethylene and isobutanol in the modified E. coli. The two compounds are widely used commodities that can be converted into gasoline among other chemicals.

The greatest challenge is harnessing an efficient and inexpensive process that competes with abundant and low-cost fossil fuels like oil, according to Gill.

“Microorganisms and their genomes are incredibly complex machines,” said Gill. “The first step alone -- of pinpointing the part of the E. coli genome that can help us make biofuels or other chemicals on a cost-competitive basis -- is a daunting challenge. Then we have to determine if the results we want will take one year or decades, $5 million or $500 million.”

The team will be able to simultaneously identify numerous E. coli genes and the results of turning these genes on or off using advanced technologies. Many of the technologies have been developed by the researchers’ own labs.

The grant is the first of its kind from the DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research and was awarded to only seven other research groups including teams led by MIT, Purdue University and the J. Craig Venter Institute.

In 2011, CU’s Technology Transfer Office named Gill an inventor of the year. In 2005, Gill won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award as well as a National Institutes of Health K25 Career Development Award for genomics research and teaching.

For more information about the DOE grant and other awardees visit http://genomicscience.energy.gov/biosystemsdesign/biosystemsdesign2012fundedprojects.pdf. For more information about RASEI visit http://rasei.colorado.edu/.

Contacts
Ryan Gill, 303-492-2627


rtg@colorado.edu

Mark F. Meier, one of the nation's most prominent glaciologists, and a leader in the study of glacier melt's effect on rising on sea levels, died Sunday in Boulder. He was 86.

At the time of his death, Meier was director emeritus at Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), where he served as director from 1985 to 1994. He also was professor emeritus of geological sciences at the University of Colorado. Meier moved to Boulder in 1985.

"He was one of the pioneers, when it comes to sea-level rise, basically telling people, 'This is a real phenomenon, this is going to happen, and you're not going to stop it unless you do something,'" said Jim White, current INSTAAR director. "And they didn't do anything."

White added, "Mark was where the rubber meets the road, in terms of translating science to society."

Hurricane Sandy caused its devastation to low-lying areas of the northeast United States less than a month before Meier's death. But Meier didn't need to see its wreckage to affirm what he'd been saying for years.

"I don't know that Mark needed vindication," White said. "Mark's understanding of the physics of melting ice, which is simple stuff, really, was profound. He knew what was going to happen. But he wasn't the type to sit back and say, 'See, I told you so.'"

The cascading effect from the proliferation of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, compounding recent urban nightmares such as flooded subways and tunnels, according to White, is what Meier had been forecasting "for a long time. This day was coming."

Tad Pfeffer, a fellow at INSTAAR and professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering at CU, worked alongside Meier. He said Meier maintained his professional involvement in glacial studies long after stepping down at INSTAAR. Meier also kept up on his work a CU, authoring two professional papers as recently as 2009, and even took part in a seminar at INSTAAR shortly before Thanksgiving.

"The work that he is most well known for now," Pfeffer said, "is his work on global assessments of glaciers and ice caps all around the world; not just studying one glacier in detail, which he also did a lot of (most notably the massive Columbia Glacier on Prince William Sound in Alaska), but also looking at what all the glaciers are doing, and adding it up as a critical part of assessing present-day sea level rise -- as well as projecting it into the future."

Meier, an Iowa native, formed the glaciology department for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1956, and received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1957.

He took part in glaciological studies during the International Geophysical Year (1957-58), then directed the U.S. Geological Survey's Project Office -- Glaciology in Tacoma, Wash., until assuming the directorship post at INSTAAR.

During the International Geophysical Year and International Hydrological Decade (1965-1975), Meier was a principal organizer of systematic measurement and assessment of glacier mass balance in North America. He also was a pioneer in the use of remote sensing in glaciology, and the leader of investigations of tidewater glacier dynamics in Alaska.

His many awards and honors include the Distinguished Service Award of the U.S. Department of the Interior, as well as three medals from the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Meier, who is survived by his wife, Barbara, as well as his children and grandchildren, also made his mark as a painter. He favored working in acrylics. Meier's landscapes of high mountains and polar regions were featured in local exhibits.

"Some were very abstract," Pfeffer said. "And you could see that same kind of artistry in his scientific work, as well. Back when people drafted by hand, his maps were beautiful examples of calligraphy."

Contact Camera Staff Writer Charlie Brennan at 303-473-1327 or brennanc@dailycamera.com.

Source: http://www.dailycamera.com/science-environment/ci_22085000/boulders-mark-f-meier-pioneer-glacial-melt-study?source=email
 

The wild and dramatic cascade of ice into the ocean from Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, an iconic glacier featured in the documentary “Chasing Ice” and one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, will cease around 2020, according to a study by the University of Colorado Boulder.

A computer model predicts the retreat of the Columbia Glacier will stop when the glacier reaches a new stable position -- roughly 15 miles upstream from the stable position it occupied prior to the 1980s. The team, headed by lead author William Colgan of the CU-Boulder headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, published its results today in The Cryosphere, an open access publication of the European Geophysical Union.

The Columbia Glacier is a large (425 square miles), multi-branched glacier in south-central Alaska that flows mostly south out of the Chugach Mountains to its tidewater terminus in Prince William Sound.

Warming air temperatures have triggered an increase in the Columbia Glacier’s rate of iceberg calving, whereby large pieces of ice detach from the glacier and float into the ocean, according to Colgan. “Presently, the Columbia Glacier is calving about 2 cubic miles of icebergs into the ocean each year -- that is over five times more freshwater than the entire state of Alaska uses annually,” he said. “It is astounding to watch.”

The imminent finish of the retreat, or recession of the front of the glacier, has surprised scientists and highlights the difficulties of trying to estimate future rates of sea level rise, Colgan said. “Many people are comfortable thinking of the glacier contribution to sea level rise as this nice predictable curve into the future, where every year there is a little more sea level rise, and we can model it out for 100 or 200 years,” Colgan said.

The team’s findings demonstrate otherwise, however. A single glacier’s contribution to sea level rise can “turn on” and “turn off” quite rapidly, over a couple of years, with the precise timing of the life cycle being difficult to forecast, he said. Presently, the majority of sea level rise comes from the global population of glaciers. Many of these glaciers are just starting to retreat, and some will soon cease to retreat.

“The variable nature and speed of the life cycle among glaciers highlights difficulties in trying to accurately predict the amount of sea level rise that will occur in the decades to come,” Colgan said.

The Columbia Glacier was first documented in 1794 when it appeared to be stable with a length of 41 miles. During the 1980s it began a rapid retreat and by 1995 it was only about 36 miles long. By late 2000 it was about 34 miles long.

The loss of a massive area of the Columbia Glacier’s tongue has generated a tremendous number of icebergs since the 1980s. After the Exxon Valdez ran aground while avoiding a Columbia Glacier iceberg in 1989, significant resources were invested to understand its iceberg production. As a result, Columbia Glacier became one of the most well-documented tidewater glaciers in the world, providing a bank of observational data for scientists trying to understand how a tidewater glacier reacts to a warming climate.

Motivated by the compelling imagery of the Columbia Glacier’s retreat documented in the Extreme Ice Survey -- James Balog’s collection of time-lapse photography of disappearing glaciers around the world -- Colgan became curious as to how long the glacier would continue to retreat. To answer this question, the team of researchers created a flexible model of the Columbia Glacier to reproduce different criteria such as ice thickness and terminus extent.

The scientists then compared thousands of outputs from the computer model under different assumptions with the wealth of data that exists for the Columbia Glacier.

The batch of outputs that most accurately reproduced the well-documented history of retreat was run into the future to predict the changes the Columbia Glacier will most likely experience until the year 2100. The researchers found that around 2020 the terminus of the glacier will retreat into water that is sufficiently shallow to provide a stable position through 2100 by slowing the rate of iceberg production.

The speediness of the glacier’s retreat is due to the unique nature of tidewater glaciers, Colgan said. When warming temperatures melt the surface of a land glacier, the land glacier only loses its mass by run-off. But in tidewater glaciers, the changes in ice thickness resulting from surface melt can create striking changes in ice flow, triggering an additional dynamic process for retreat.

The dynamic response of the Columbia Glacier to the surface melt will continue until the glacier reaches its new stable position in 2020, at roughly 26 miles long. “Once the dynamic trigger had been pulled, it probably wouldn’t have mattered too much what happened to the surface melt -- it was just going to continue retreating through the bedrock depression upstream of the pre-1980s terminus,” Colgan said.

Colgan next plans to attempt to use similar models to predict when the Greenland glaciers -- currently the major contributors to sea level rise -- will “turn off” and complete their retreats.

The future for the Columbia Glacier, however, looks bleak. “I think the hope was that once we saw climate change happening, we could act to prevent some irreversible consequences,” Colgan said, “but now we are only about eight years out from this retreat finishing -- it is really sad. There is virtually no chance of the Columbia Glacier recovering its pre-retreat dimensions on human time-scales.”

The study was funded by NASA, and co-authors on the paper include W. Tad Pfeffer of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Harihar Rajaram of the CU-Boulder Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, Waleed Abdalati of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration in Washington, D.C., and Balog of the Extreme Ice Survey in Boulder, Colo.

The complete study is available online at http://www.the-cryosphere.net/6/1395/2012/.

Contact:


William Colgan, CIRES, 011-45-5290-1585


William.Colgan@colorado.edu


Jane Palmer, CIRES science writer, 303-883-4398


Jane.Palmer@colorado.edu

Analysis of 90 years of observational data has revealed that summer climates in regions across the globe are changing -- mostly, but not always, warming --according to a new study led by a scientist from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences headquartered at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“It is the first time that we show on a local scale that there are significant changes in summer temperatures,” said lead author CIRES scientist Irina Mahlstein. “This result shows us that we are experiencing a new summer climate regime in some regions.”

The technique, which reveals location-by-location temperature changes rather than global averages, could yield valuable insights into changes in ecosystems on a regional scale. Because the methodology relies on detecting temperatures outside the expected norm, it is more relevant to understand changes to the animal and plant life of a particular region, which scientists would expect to show sensitivity to changes that lie outside of normal variability.

“If the summers are actually significantly different from the way that they used to be, it could affect ecosystems,” said Mahlstein, who works in the Chemical Sciences Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory.

To identify potential temperature changes, the team used climate observations recorded from 1920 to 2010 from around the globe. The scientists termed the 30-year interval from 1920 to 1949 the “base period,” and then compared the base period to other 30-year test intervals starting every 10 years since 1930.

The comparison used statistics to assess whether the test interval differed from the base period beyond what would be expected due to yearly temperature variability for that geographical area.

Their analysis found that some changes began to appear as early as the 1960s, and the observed changes were more prevalent in tropical areas. In these regions, temperatures varied little throughout the years, so the scientists could more easily detect any changes that did occur, Mahlstein said.

The scientists found significant summer temperature changes in 40 percent of tropical areas and 20 percent of higher-latitude areas. In the majority of cases, the researchers observed warming summer temperatures, but in some cases they observed cooling summer temperatures.

“This study has applied a new approach to the question, ‘Has the temperature changed in local areas?’ ” Mahlstein said. The study is in press in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

The study’s findings are consistent with other approaches used to answer the same question, such as modeling and analysis of trends, Mahlstein said. But this technique uses only observed data to come to the same result. “Looking at the graphs of our results, you can visibly see how things are changing,” she said.
In particular the scientists were able to look at the earlier time periods, note the temperature extremes, and observe that those values became more frequent in the later time periods. “You see how the extreme events of the past have become a normal event,” Mahlstein said.

The scientists used 90 years of data for their study, a little more than the average lifespan of a human being. So if inhabitants of those areas believe that summers have changed since they were younger, they can be confident it is not a figment of their imagination.

“We can actually say that these changes have happened in the lifetime of a person,” Mahlstein said.
Co-authors on the study were Gabriele Hegerl from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Susan Solomon from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

CIRES is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NOAA.

Contact:

Irina Mahlstein, CIRES, 303-497-4746


Irina.Mahlstein@noaa.gov


Jane Palmer, CIRES science writer, 303-883-4398


Jane.Palmer@colorado.edu



"Chasing Ice," one of the biggest environmental films of the year, follows acclaimed environmental photographer James Balog to the Arctic where he captures time-lapse images of the world's changing glaciers in the face of climate change. University of Colorado Boulder professors served on a team of science advisors for the film, including Jim White who is featured in our Learn More about Climate (LMAC) video series. 



Chasing Ice has won nearly 20 awards at film festivals around the world, including: The Sundance Film Festival – Excellence in Cinematography Award: US Documentary and the Environmental Media Association’s 22nd Annual Best Documentary Award. For more information about the film and to watch the trailer, visit http://www.chasingice.com/ 



Ticket requests are fulfilled on a first-come, first served basis and admission is not guaranteed. To request tickets, fill out the form at http://bit.ly/icetickets. Please use the code "COLOED" on the request form.

A new University of Colorado Boulder study shows for the first time that episodes of reduced precipitation in the southern Rocky Mountains, especially during the 2001-02 drought, greatly accelerated development of the mountain pine beetle epidemic.

The study, the first ever to chart the evolution of the current pine beetle epidemic in the southern Rocky Mountains, compared patterns of beetle outbreak in the two primary host species, the ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Teresa Chapman. The current mountain pine beetle outbreak in the southern Rockies -- which range from southern Wyoming through Colorado and into northern New Mexico --is estimated to have impacted nearly 3,000 square miles of forests, said Chapman, lead study author.

While the 2001-02 drought in the West played a key role in pushing the pine beetle outbreak into a true regional epidemic, the outbreak continued to gain ground even after temperature and precipitation levels returned to levels nearer the long-term averages, said Chapman of CU-Boulder’s geography department. The beetles continued to decimate lodgepole pine forests by moving into wetter and higher elevations and into less susceptible tree stands -- those with smaller diameter lodgepoles sharing space with other tree species.

“In recent years some researchers have thought the pine beetle outbreak in the southern Rocky Mountains might have started in one place and spread from there,” said Chapman. “What we found was that the mountain pine beetle outbreak originated in many locations.  The idea that the outbreak spread from multiple places, then coalesced and continued spreading, really highlights the importance of the broad-scale drivers of the pine beetle epidemic like climate and drought.”

A paper on the subject was recently published in the journal Ecology. Co-authors on the study include CU-Boulder geography Professor Thomas Veblen and Tania Schoennagel, an adjunct faculty member in the geography department and a research scientist at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. The National Science Foundation funded the study.

Mountain pine beetles are native insects that have shaped the forests of North America for thousands of years. They range from Canada to Mexico and are found at elevations from sea level to 11,000 feet. The effects of pine beetles are especially evident in recent years on Colorado’s Western Slope, including Rocky Mountain National Park, with a particularly severe epidemic occurring in Grand and Routt counties.

Chapman said the most recent mountain pine beetle outbreak began in the 1990s, primarily in scattered groups of lodgepole pine trees living at low elevations in areas of lower annual precipitation.  Following the 2001-02 drought, the outbreak was “uncoupled” from the initial weather and landscape conditions, triggering a rise in beetle populations on the Western Slope and propelling the insects over the Continental Divide into the northern Front Range to infect ponderosa pine, Chapman said.

The current pine beetle epidemic in the southern Rocky Mountains was influenced in part by extensive forest fires that ravaged Colorado’s Western Slope from roughly 1850 to 1890, said Chapman. Lodgepole pine stands completely burned off by the fires were succeeded by huge swaths of seedling lodgepoles that eventually grew side by side into dense mature stands, making them easier targets for the pine beetles.

“The widespread burning associated with dry years in the 19th century set the stage for the current outbreak by creating vast areas of trees in the size classes most susceptible to beetle attack,” said Chapman.

Veblen said a 1980s outbreak of the pine beetle centered in Colorado’s Grand County ended when extremely low minimum temperatures were reached in the winters of 1983 and 1984, killing the beetle larvae. But during the current outbreak, minimum temperatures during all seasons have been persistently high since 1996, well above the levels of extreme cold shown to kill beetle larvae in laboratory experiments.

“This implies that under continued warming trends, future outbreaks will not be terminated until they exhaust their food supply -- the pine tree hosts,” said Veblen.

Chapman said there has been a massive and unprecedented beetle epidemic in British Columbia, which also began in the early 1990s and has now has affected nearly 70,000 square miles. “It is hard to tell if this current beetle epidemic in the Southern Rockies is unprecedented,” she said.  “While warm periods in the 16th century may have triggered a large beetle epidemic, any evidence would have been wiped out by the massive fires in the latter part of the 19th century.”

Veblen said while the rate of spread of the mountain pine beetle in lodgepole pine forests has declined in the southern Rocky Mountains during the past two years because of a depletion of host pine population, U.S. Forest Service surveys indicate the rate of beetle spread in ponderosa pine forests on the Front Range has increased sharply over the past three years. “The current study suggests that under the continued warmer climate, the spread of the beetle in ponderosa pines is likely to grow until that food source also is depleted,” Veblen said.

“Our results emphasize the importance of considering different patterns in the population dynamics of mountain pine beetles for different host species, even under similar regional-scale weather variations,” said Chapman.  “Given the current outbreak of mountain pine beetles on the Front Range, their impact on ponderosa pines is certainly something that needs further study.”

A 2012 study by CU-Boulder Professor Jeffry Mitton and graduate student Scott Ferrenberg showed some Colorado pine beetles, which had been known to produce only one generation of tree-killing offspring annually, are producing two generations per year due to rising temperatures and a longer annual warm season. Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, according to the study.

In addition, a 2011 study led by CU-Boulder graduate student Evan Pugh indicated the infestation of trees by mountain pine beetles in the high country across the West could potentially trigger earlier snowmelt and increase water yields from snowpack that accumulates beneath affected trees.

Contact:
Teresa Chapman, 303-492-4785


Teresa.Chapman@colorado.edu


Thomas Veblen, 303-492-8528


Thomas.Veblen@colorado.edu
 

According to CU-Boulder geography Professor John O’Loughlin, the new CU-Boulder study undertaken with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder is an attempt to clarify the often-contradictory debate on whether climate change is affecting armed conflicts in Africa.  “We wanted to get beyond the specific idea and hype of climate wars,” he said. “The idea was to bring together a team perspective to see if changes in rainfall and temperature led to more conflict in vulnerable areas of East Africa.”

The research team examined extensive climate datasets from nine countries in East Africa, including the Horn of Africa, between 1990 and 2009: Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda. The team also used a dataset containing more than 16,000 violent conflicts in those countries during that time period, parsing out more specific information on conflict location and under what type of political, social, economic and geographic conditions each incident took place.

The study, which included changes in precipitation and temperature over continuous six-month periods from 1949 to 2009, also showed there was no climate effect on East African conflicts during normal and drier precipitation periods or during periods of average and cooler temperatures, said O’Loughlin.

Moderate increases in temperature reduced the risk of conflict slightly after controlling for the influence of social and political conditions, but very hot temperatures increased the risk of conflict, said O’Loughlin.  Unusually wet periods also reduced the risk of conflict, according to the new study.

“The relationship between climate change and conflict in East Africa is incredibly complex and varies hugely by country and time period,” he said. “The simplistic arguments we hear on both sides are not accurate, especially those by pessimists who talk about ‘climate wars’.  Compared to social, economic and political factors, climate factors adding to conflict risk are really quite modest.”

The results are being published online Oct. 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-authors on the study include CU-Boulder Research Associate Frank Witmer and graduate student Andrew Linke as well as three scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric research -- Arlene Laing, Andrew Gettelman and Jimy Dudhia. The National Science Foundation funded the study.

Much of the information on the 16,359 violent events in East Africa from 1990 to 2009 came from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset, or ACLED, directed by Clionadh Raleigh of Trinity College in Dublin.  The database covers individual conflicts from 1997 to 2009 in Africa, parts of Asia and Haiti – more than 60,000 violent incidents to date. Raleigh started the data collection while earning her doctorate at CU in 2007 under O’Loughlin.

In addition, more than a dozen CU-Boulder undergraduates spent thousands of hours combing online information sources like LexisNexis -- a corporation that pioneered the electronic accessibility of legal and newspaper documents -- in order to fill in details of individual violent conflicts by East African countries from 1990 to 1997. The student work was funded by the NSF’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.

The CU students coded each conflict event with very specific data, including geographic location coordinates, dates, people and descriptive classifications. The event information was then aggregated into months and into 100-kilometer grid cells that serve as the units of analysis for quantitative modeling.

Each conflict grid also was coded by socioeconomic and political characteristics like ethnic leadership, distance to an international border, capital city, local population size, well-being as measured by infant mortality, the extent of political rights, presidential election activity, road network density, the health of vegetation and crop conditions.

“The effects of climate variability on conflict risk is different in different countries,” O’Loughlin said. “Typically conflicts are very local and quite confined. The effects of climate on conflict in Ethiopia, for example, are different than those in Tanzania or Somalia.  The idea that there is a general ‘African effect’ for conflict is wrong.”

The researchers used a variety of complex statistical calculations to assess the role of climate in violent conflict in East Africa, including regression models and a technique to uncover nonlinear influences and decrease “noise,” said O’Loughlin, also a faculty member at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science.

One component of the methods used by the team extracts predictions of individual instances of conflict from the statistical model and systematically compared them  with the actual observations of conflict in the data, “a rigorous validity check,” he said.

Catastrophic conflicts like those in the “Great Lakes region” -- Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo -- since the 1990s and the war with the Lord’s Resistance Army led by terrorist Joseph Kony that has been running since the late 1980s in northern Uganda and neighboring regions are marked with large red swaths on the maps.

Legacies of violence are extremely important for understanding and explaining unrest, he said.  “Violence nearby and prior violence in the locality, especially for heavily populated areas, are the strongest predictors of conflict.”

Ongoing work is extending the study to all of sub-Saharan Africa since 1980 with a database of 63,000 violent events.  Preliminary results from the work confirm the East African climate effects of higher than normal temperatures are increasing conflict risk.

Contacts
John O’Loughlin, 303-492-1619


Johno@colorado.edu
 

October 2, 2012

This September, sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean fell to the lowest extent in the satellite record, which began in 1979. Satellite data analyzed by NSIDC scientists showed that the sea ice cover reached its lowest extent on September 16. Sea ice extent averaged for the month of September was also the lowest in the satellite record.

The near-record ice melt occurred without the unusual weather conditions that contributed to the extreme melt of 2007. In 2007, winds and weather patterns helped melt large expanses of ice. "Atmospheric and oceanic conditions were not as conducive to ice loss this year, but the melt still reached a new record low," said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier. "This probably reflects loss of multi-year ice in the Arctic, as well as other factors that are making the ice more vulnerable." Multi-year ice is ice that has survived more than one melt season and is thicker than first-year ice.

NSIDC Director Mark Serreze said, "It looks like the spring ice cover is so thin now that large areas melt out in summer, even without persistent extreme weather patterns." A storm that tracked through the Arctic in August helped break up the weakened ice pack.

Arctic sea ice extent reached its lowest point this year on September 16, 2012 when sea ice extent dropped to 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). Averaged over the month of September, ice extent was 3.61 million square kilometers (1.39 million square miles). This places 2012 as the lowest ice extent both for the daily minimum extent and the monthly average. Ice extent was 3.29 million square kilometers (1.27 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average.

The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and shrinks each summer as the sun rises higher in the northern sky. Each year the Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum extent in September. It hit its previous record low in 2007. This summer's low ice extent continued the downward trend seen over the last 33 years. Scientists attribute this trend in large part to warming temperatures caused by climate change. Since 1979, September Arctic sea ice extent has declined by 13 percent per decade. Summer sea ice extent is important because, among other things, it reflects sunlight, keeping the Arctic region cool and moderating global climate.

In addition to the decline in sea ice extent, a two-dimensional measure of the ice cover, the ice cover has grown thinner and less resistant to summer melt. Recent data on the age of sea ice, which scientists use to estimate the thickness of the ice cover, shows that the youngest, thinnest ice, which has survived only one or two melt seasons, now makes up the large majority of the ice cover.

Climate models have suggested that the Arctic could lose almost all of its summer ice cover by 2100, but in recent years, ice extent has declined faster than the models predicted. Serreze said, "The big summer ice loss in 2011 set us up for another big melt year in 2012. We may be looking at an Arctic Ocean essentially free of summer ice only a few decades from now." NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve recently spent three weeks in the Arctic Ocean on an icebreaker ship, and was surprised by how thin the ice was and how much open water existed between the individual ice floes. "According to the satellite data, I expected to be in nearly 90% ice cover, but instead the ice concentrations were typically below 50%," she said.

As the Arctic was experiencing a record low minimum extent, the Antarctic sea ice was reaching record high levels, culminating in a Southern Hemisphere winter maximum extent of 19.44 million square kilometers (7.51 million square miles) on September 26. The September 2012 monthly average was also a record high, at 19.39 million square kilometers (7.49 million square miles) slightly higher than the previous record in 2006. Temperatures over Antarctica were near average this austral winter. Scientists largely attribute the increase in Antarctic sea ice extent to stronger circumpolar winds, which blow the sea ice outward, increasing extent.

NSIDC scientist Ted Scambos said, "Antarctica's changes—in winter, in the sea ice—are due more to wind than to warmth, because the warming does not take much of the sea ice area above the freezing point during winter. Instead, the winds that blow around the continent, the "westerlies," have gotten stronger in response to a stubbornly cold continent, and the warming ocean and land to the north."
 
Information and graphics
For a full analysis of the summer melt season and additional images, please see Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis.


An NSIDC animation of the Arctic melt season is available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AztEry44A9A&feature=youtu.be

An NSIDC animation of the Antarctic melt season is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBD8hWbiFMI&feature=youtu.be

For more information and visualizations of thinning sea ice, see the NOAA Climate Watch article, "Arctic Sea Ice Getting Thinner, Younger."
 
Contact:
Natasha Vizcarra


National Snow and Ice Data Center


University of Colorado Boulder


natasha.vizcarra@nsidc.org

Event Details:

Who: Dr. Katharine Wilkinson

When: Friday, October 12, 5:00 - 6:30 pm

Where: Old Main Chapel, CU-Boulder

Why: The first event for the emergent International Collective on Environment, Culture and Politics (ICE CaPs): ICE CaPs seeks to promote the development of workable and effective responses to complexenvironmental challenges from the local to the international, and to provoke public engagement with these issues. see www.icecaps.org for more information.

Led by CU-Boulder researcher Ernesto Trujillo and Assistant Professor Noah Molotch, the study team used the data -- including satellite images and ground measurements -- to identify the threshold where mid-level forests sustained primarily by moisture change to higher-elevation forests sustained primarily by sunlight and temperature.  Being able to identify this “tipping point” is important because it is in the mid-level forests -- at altitudes from roughly 6,500 to 8,000 feet -- where many people live and play in the West and which are associated with increasing wildfires, beetle outbreaks and increased tree mortality, said Molotch.

“Our results provide the first direct observations of the snowpack-forest connections across broad spatial scales,” said Molotch, also a research scientist at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “Finding the tipping point between water-limited forests and energy-limited forests defines for us the region of the greatest sensitivity to climate change -- the mid-elevation forests -- which is where we should focus future research.”

While the research by Molotch and his team took place in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, it is applicable to other mountain ranges across the West, he said.  The implications are important, since climate studies indicate the snowpack in mid-elevation forests in the Western United States and other similar forests around the world has been decreasing in the past 50 years because of regional warming.

“We found that mid-elevation forests show a dramatic sensitivity to snow that fell the previous winter in terms of accumulation and subsequent melt,” said Molotch, also a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.  “If snowpack declines, forests become more stressed, which can lead to ecological changes that include alterations in the distribution and abundance of plant and animal species as well as vulnerability to perturbations like fire and beetle kill.”

A paper on the subject was published online Sept. 9 in Nature Geosciences.  Co-authors on the study include Ernesto Trujillo of INSTAAR and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, Michael Golden and Anne Kelly of the University of California, Irvine, and Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. The National Science Foundation and NASA funded the study.

Molotch said the study team attributed about 50 percent of the greenness in mid-elevation forests by satellites to maximum snow accumulation from the previous winter, with the other 50 percent caused by conditions like soil depth, soil nutrients, temperature and sunlight.  “The strength of the relationship between forest greenness and snowpack from the previous year was quite surprising to us,” Molotch said.

The research team initially set out to identify the various components of drought that lead to vegetation stress, particularly in mountain snowpack, said Molotch. “We went after snowpack in the western U.S. because it provides about 60 to 80 percent of the water input in high elevation mountains.”

The team used 26 years of continuous data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, a space-borne sensor flying on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite, to measure the forest greenness. The researchers compared it to long-term data from 107 snow stations maintained by the California Cooperative Snow Survey, a consortium of state and federal agencies.

In addition, the researchers used information gathered from several “flux towers” in the southern Sierra Nevada mountain range, which measure the exchanges of carbon dioxide, water vapor and energy between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. Instruments on the towers, which are roughly 100 feet high, allowed them to measure the sensitivity of both mid-level and high-level mountainous regions in both wet and dry years -- data that matched up well with the satellite and ground data, he said.

“The implications of this study are profound when you think about the potential for ecological change in mountainous environments in the West in the not too distant future,” said Molotch, an assistant professor in the geography department. “If we take our study and project forward in time when climate models are calling for warming and drying conditions, the implication is that forests will be increasingly water-stressed in the future and thus more vulnerable to fires and insect outbreaks.

“When you put this into the context of recent losses in Colorado and elsewhere in the West to forest fire devastation, then it becomes something we really have to pay attention to,” he said.  “This tipping-point elevation is very likely to migrate up the mountainsides as the climate warms.”

Contact:


Noah Molotch, 303-492-6151


Noah.Molotch@colorado.edu
 

Rising concentrations of zinc and other metals in the upper Snake River just west of the Continental Divide near Keystone, Colo., may be the result of falling water tables, melting permafrost and accelerating mineral weathering rates, all driven by warmer air temperatures in the watershed.  Researchers observed a fourfold increase in dissolved zinc over the last 30 years during the month of September.

Increases in metals were seen in other months as well, with lesser increases seen during the high-flow snowmelt period. During the study period, local mean annual and mean summer air temperatures increased at a rate of 0.5 to 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

Generally, high concentrations of dissolved metals in the Snake River watershed are primarily the result of acid rock drainage, or ARD, formed by natural weathering of pyrite and other metal-rich sulfide minerals in the bedrock. Weathering of pyrite forms sulfuric acid through a series of chemical reactions, and pulls metals like zinc from minerals in the rock and carries these metals into streams.

Increased sulfate and calcium concentrations observed over the study period lend weight to the hypothesis that the increased zinc concentrations are due to acceleration of pyrite weathering. The potential for comparable increases in metals in similar Western watersheds is a concern because of impacts on water resources, fisheries and stream ecosystems. Trout populations in the lower Snake River, for example, appear to be limited by the metal concentrations in the water, said USGS research biologist Andrew Todd, lead researcher on the project.

“Acid rock drainage is a significant water quality problem facing much of the Western United States,” Todd said. “It is now clear that we need to better understand the relationship between climate and ARD as we consider the management of these watersheds moving forward.”

Warmer temperatures and earlier snowmelt runoff have been observed throughout mountainous areas of the western United States where ARD is common, but it is not known if these changes have triggered rising acidity and metal concentrations in other “mineralized” watersheds because of lack of comparable monitoring data, according to the research team.

CU-Boulder Professor Diane McKnight, a collaborator on the project, has generated much of the upper Snake River data through research projects conducted with her students since the mid-1990s. McKnight said students in her environmental engineering and environmental studies classes like Caitlin Crouch -- a study co-author who received her master’s degree under McKnight -- are highly motivated to understand ARD problems.

“Students can see that their research will have direct applications to addressing a critical issue for Colorado,” said McKnight, professor in the civil, environmental and architectural engineering department and a fellow in CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

In cases where ARD is linked directly with past and present mining activities it is called acid mine drainage, or AMD. Another Snake River tributary, Peru Creek, is largely devoid of life due to AMD generated from the abandoned Pennsylvania Mine and smaller mines upstream and has become a target for potential remediation efforts.

The Colorado Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety, in conjunction with other local, state and federal partners, is conducting underground exploration work at the mine to investigate the sources of heavy metals-laden water draining from the mine entrance. The new study by Todd and colleagues has important implications in such mine cleanup efforts because it suggests that establishing attainable cleanup objectives could be difficult if natural background metal concentrations are a “moving target.”

A study on the subject was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Other collaborators include Andrew Manning and Philip Verplanck of USGS.  The data analyzed for the study came from INSTAAR, the USGS and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Contact:

Heidi Koontz, USGS, 303-202-4763
Hkoontz@usgs.gov

Diane McKnight, CU-Boulder, 303-492-4687


Diane.McKnight@colorado.edu
 

When the Fourmile Canyon Fire erupted west of Boulder in 2010, smoke from the wildfire poured into parts of the city including a site housing scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Within 24 hours, a few researchers at the David Skaggs Research Center had opened up a particle sampling port on the roof of the building and started pulling in smoky air for analysis by two custom instruments inside. They became the first scientists to directly measure and quantify some unique heat-trapping effects of wildfire smoke particles.

“For the first time we were able to measure these warming effects minute-by-minute as the fire progressed,” said CIRES scientist Dan Lack, lead author of the study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers also were able to record a phenomenon called the “lensing effect,” in which oils from the fire coat the soot particles and create a lens that focuses more light onto the particles. This can change the “radiative balance” in an area, sometimes leading to greater warming of the air and cooling of the surface.

While scientists had previously predicted such an effect and demonstrated it in laboratory experiments, the Boulder researchers were one of the first to directly measure the effect during an actual wildfire. Lack and his colleagues found that lensing increased the warming effect of soot by 50 to 70 percent.

“When the fire erupted on Labor Day, so many researchers came in to work to turn on instruments and start sampling that we practically had traffic jams on the road into the lab,” Lack said. “I think we all realized that although this was an unfortunate event, it might be the best opportunity to collect some unique data. It turned out to be the best dataset, perfectly suited to the new instrument we had developed.”

The instrument called a spectrophotometer can capture exquisite detail about all particles in the air, including characteristics that might affect the smoke particles’ tendency to absorb sunlight and warm their surroundings. While researchers know that overall, wildfire smoke can cause this lensing effect, the details have been difficult to quantify, in part because of sparse observations of particles from real-world fires.

Once the researchers began studying the data they collected during the fire, it became obvious that the soot from the wildfire was different in several key ways from soot produced by other sources -- diesel engines, for example.

“When vegetation burns, it is not as efficient as a diesel engine, and that means some of the burning vegetation ends up as oils,” Lack said. In the smoke plume, the oils coated the soot particles and that microscopic sheen acted like a magnifying glass, focusing more light onto the soot particles and magnifying the warming of the surrounding air.

The researchers also discovered that the oils coating the soot were brown, and that dark coloration allowed further absorption of light, and therefore further warming the atmosphere around the smoke plume.

The additional warming effects mean greater heating of the atmosphere enveloped in dark smoke from a wildfire, and understanding that heating effect is important for understanding climate change, Lack said. The extra heating also can affect cloud formation, air turbulence, winds and even rainfall.

The discovery was made possible by state-of-the-art instruments developed by CIRES, NOAA and other scientists, Lack said. The instruments can capture fine-scale details about particles sent airborne by the fire, including their composition, shape, size, color and ability to absorb and reflect sunlight of various wavelengths.

“With such well-directed measurements, we can look at the warming effects of soot, the magnifying coating and the brown oils and see a much clearer, yet still smoky picture of the effect of forest fires on climate,” Lack said.

CIRES is a cooperative institute of CU-Boulder and NOAA.

Contact:


Dan Lack, 303-497-5824


Daniel.lack@colorado.edu


Jane Palmer, CIRES media relations, 303-492-6289


Jane.palmer@colorado.edu
 

The blanket of sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean melted to its lowest extent ever recorded since satellites began measuring it in 1979, according to the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.

On Aug. 26, the Arctic sea ice extent fell to 1.58 million square miles, or 4.10 million square kilometers. The number is 27,000 square miles, or 70,000 square kilometers below the record low daily sea ice extent set Sept. 18, 2007.  Since the summer Arctic sea ice minimum normally does not occur until the melt season ends in mid- to late September, the CU-Boulder research team expects the sea ice extent to continue to dwindle for the next two or three weeks, said Walt Meier, an NSID scientist.

“It’s a little surprising to see the 2012 Arctic sea ice extent in August dip below the record low 2007 sea ice extent in September,” he said.  “It’s likely we are going to surpass the record decline by a fair amount this year by the time all is said and done.”

On Sept. 18, 2007, the September minimum extent of Arctic sea ice shattered all satellite records, reaching a five-day running average of 1.61 million square miles, or 4.17 million square kilometers.  Compared to the long-term minimum average from 1979 to 2000, the 2007 minimum extent was lower by about a million square miles -- an area about the same as Alaska and Texas combined, or 10 United Kingdoms.

While a large Arctic storm in early August appears to have helped to break up some of the 2012 sea ice and helped it to melt more quickly, the decline seen in in recent years is well outside the range of natural climate variability, said Meier. Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases pumped into Earth’s atmosphere.

CU-Boulder researchers say the old, thick multi-year ice that used to dominate the Arctic region has been replaced by young, thin ice that has survived only one or two melt seasons -- ice which now makes up about 80 percent of the ice cover.  Since 1979, the September Arctic sea ice extent has declined by 12 percent per decade.

The record-breaking Arctic sea ice extent in 2012 moves the 2011 sea ice extent minimum from the second to the third lowest spot on record, behind 2007. Meier and his CU-Boulder colleagues say they believe the Arctic may be ice-free in the summers within the next several decades.

“The years from 2007 to 2012 are the six lowest years in terms of Arctic sea ice extent in the satellite record,” said Meier. “In the big picture, 2012 is just another year in the sequence of declining sea ice. We have been seeing a trend toward decreasing minimum Arctic sea ice extents for the past 34 years, and there’s no reason to believe this trend will change.”

The Arctic sea ice extent as measured by scientists is the total area of all Arctic regions where ice covers at least 15 percent of the ocean surface, said Meier.

Scientists say Arctic sea ice is important because it keeps the polar region cold and helps moderate global climate -- some have dubbed it “Earth’s air conditioner.” While the bright surface of Arctic sea ice reflects up to 80 percent of the sunlight back to space, the increasing amounts of open ocean there -- which absorb about 90 percent of the sunlight striking the Arctic -- have created a positive feedback effect, causing the ocean to heat up and contribute to increased sea ice melt.

Earlier this year, a national research team led by CU embarked on a two-year effort to better understand the impacts of environmental factors associated with the continuing decline of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. The $3 million, NASA-funded project led by Research Professor James Maslanik of aerospace engineering sciences includes tools ranging from unmanned aircraft and satellites to ocean buoys in order to understand the characteristics and changes in Arctic sea ice, including the Beaufort Sea and Canada Basin that are experiencing record warming and decreased sea ice extent.

NSIDC is part of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences -- a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquartered on the CU campus -- and is funded primarily by NASA.  NSIDC’s sea ice data come from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder sensor on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program F17 satellite using methods developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

For more information and graphics visit CU-Boulder’s NSIDC website at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2011/091511.html. For more information on CIRES visit http://cires.colorado.edu/.

Contact:


Natasha Vizcarra, NSIDC news, 303-492-1497


Natasha.Vizcarra@nsidc.org

Despite sharp increases in carbon dioxide emissions by humans in recent decades that are warming the planet, Earth’s vegetation and oceans continue to soak up about half of them, according to a surprising new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

The study, led by CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Ashley Ballantyne, looked at global CO2 emissions reports from the past 50 years and compared them with rising levels of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere during that time, primarily because of fossil fuel burning.  The results showed that while CO2 emissions had quadrupled, natural carbon “sinks” that sequester the greenhouse gas doubled their uptake in the past 50 years, lessening the warming impacts on Earth’s climate.

“What we are seeing is that the Earth continues to do the heavy lifting by taking up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, even while humans have done very little to reduce carbon emissions,” said Ballantyne. “How long this will continue, we don’t know.”

A paper on the subject will be published in the Aug. 2 issue of Nature. Co-authors on the study include CU-Boulder Professor Jim White, CU-Boulder doctoral student Caroline Alden and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists John Miller and Pieter Tans.  Miller also is a research associate at the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

According to Alden, the trend of sinks gulping atmospheric carbon cannot continue indefinitely. “It’s not a question of whether or not natural sinks will slow their uptake of carbon, but when,” she said.

“We’re already seeing climate change happen despite the fact that only half of fossil fuel emissions stay in the atmosphere while the other half is drawn down by the land biosphere and oceans,” Alden said. “If natural sinks saturate as models predict, the impact of human emissions on atmospheric CO2 will double.”

Ballantyne said recent studies by others have suggested carbon sinks were declining in some areas of the globe, including parts of the Southern Hemisphere and portions of the world’s oceans. But the new Nature study showed global CO2 uptake by Earth’s sinks essentially doubled from 1960 to 2010, although increased variations from year-to-year and decade-to-decade suggests some instability in the global carbon cycle, he said.

White, who directs CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, likened the increased pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere to a car going full throttle. “The faster we go, the more our car starts to shake and rattle,” he said. “If we drive 100 miles per hour, it is going to shake and rattle a lot more because there is a lot more instability, so it’s probably time to back off the accelerator,” he said. “The same is true with CO2 emissions.”

The atmospheric CO2 levels were measured at 40 remote sites around the world by researchers from NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., including stations at the South Pole and on the Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii.

Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere primarily by fossil fuel combustion and by forest fires and some natural processes, said Ballantyne. “When carbon sinks become carbon sources, it will be a very critical time for Earth,” said Ballantyne.  “We don’t see any evidence of that yet, but it’s certainly something we should be looking for.”

“It is important to understand that CO2 sinks are not really sinks in the sense that the extra carbon is still present in Earth’s vegetation, soils and the ocean,” said NOAA’s Tans. “It hasn’t disappeared. What we really are seeing is a global carbon system that has been pushed out of equilibrium by the human burning of fossil fuels.”

Despite the enormous uptake of carbon by the planet, CO2 in the atmosphere has climbed from about 280 parts per million just prior to the Industrial Revolution to about 394 parts per million today, and the rate of increase is speeding up.  The global average of atmospheric CO2 is expected to reach 400 ppm by 2016, according to scientists.

The team used several global CO2 emissions reports for the Nature study, including one by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. They concluded that about 350 billion tons of carbon -- the equivalent of roughly 1 trillion tons of CO2 -- had been emitted as a result of fossil fuel burning and land use changes from 1959 to 2010, with just over half moving into sinks on land or in the oceans.

According to the study, the scientists observed decreased CO2 uptake by Earth’s land and oceans in the 1990s, followed by increased CO2 sequestering by the planet from 2000 to 2010. “Seeing such variation from decade to decade tells us that we need to observe Earth’s carbon cycle for significantly longer periods in order to help us understand what is occurring,” said Ballantyne.

Scientists also are concerned about the increasing uptake of CO2 by the world’s oceans, which is making them more acidic. Dissolved CO2 changes seawater chemistry by forming carbonic acid that is known to damage coral, the fundamental structure of coral reef ecosystems that harbor 25 percent of the world’s fish species.

The study was funded by the National Research Council, the National Science Foundation and NOAA.

A total of 33.6 billion tons of CO2 were emitted globally in 2010, climbing to 34.8 billion tons in 2011, according to the International Energy Agency. Federal budget cuts to U.S. carbon cycle research are making it more difficult to measure and understand both natural and human influences on the carbon cycle, according to the research team.

“The good news is that today, nature is helping us out,” said White also a professor in CU’s geological sciences department.  “The bad news is that none of us think nature is going to keep helping us out indefinitely.  When the time comes that these carbon sinks are no longer taking up carbon, there is going to be a big price to pay.”

Contact:

Ashley Ballantyne, 760-846-1391


Ashley.Ballantyne@colorado.edu

Jim White, 303-492-5494


jwhite@colorado.edu

Cost: You may take the course for free for no credit or take the course for recertification credit or potentially for graduate Environmental Studies credit.  Colorado teachers can receive a subsidy for credit costs.

The ICEE Climate Instruction 101 online course focuses on the Essential Principles of Climate Science and provides experience with teaching strategies such as identifying and addressing misconceptions, minimizing controversy, and teaching so that students can engage positively.  

The online course will run August 25-November 18 and will meet one hour per week in a webinar format. Commitments include participation in the weekly webinar, a small group project, and discussions online as well as completion of assignments. Small groups will be formed along similar teaching goals. 

The target audience is secondary science teachers. However, if sufficient interest exists from informal educators, upper elementary educators, or interdisciplinary teams we will form a small group with that interest.

Please feel free to browse our sample syllabus.

Application deadline is July 15th.

This course is a partnership between the CIRES ICEE project and the University of Colorado Learn More About Climate Initiative. Instructors for this course will be Susan Buhr with CIRES and Deb Morrison with Learn More About Climate.

If you would like to download a copy of the course application please click here or apply online at http://cires.colorado.edu/education/outreach/ICEE/OnlineCourse/

Program Requirements:
• Participate in the 1 week summer program
• Implement one lesson in the fall 2012
• Stipend: $500 for the 1 week program
• $300 follow up fall implementation
• Resources: books and materials
• Credit: Credit through Colorado School of Mines
 
Application due July 9, 2012. Space is limited to the first 25 teachers.
Apply through this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NREL_Energy_Institute
 
Questions? Please contact Linda Lung: linda.lung@nrel.gov

Clara Boland didn’t fully appreciate coal’s role in her life until she did some digging. That meant going to Paonia, a small town in Western Colorado, which has mined coal for more than a century.

Boland’s aim was to create a short documentary film for a course on conveying climate science through film. Her journey began in Boulder, where young people called coal “yesterday’s fuel,” dirty and toxic.

Longtime Paonia residents like Alan Austin said it’s easy to “sit in our ivory towers and look down at coal miners.” Actual life in a coal town is not, he said, so black and white.

As Boyd Boland, Clara’s father, said on screen, coal fuels the American dream, providing good-paying jobs. “Without coal, I don’t think this community could survive.”

Boland acknowledges that burning coal produces greenhouse gases and harmful airborne particulates. “But when you’re here, those problems are somebody else’s problems.”

In the film’s final scene, Clara Boland strides across a small mountain of coal. She says that the North Fork Valley— a tightknit area that feels more distinctly western than the resort towns on the other side of McClure Pass—needs a “shift in thinking,” and that Paonians can create safe, new jobs in clean energy.

It is early February. Boland and her professor, Rebecca Safran of ecology and evolutionary biology, are guest speakers in a new course at the University of Colorado Boulder that aims to explore innovative, creative and effective ways to convey climate-change science and its implications.

That course, called “Inside the Greenhouse,” takes Safran’s concept and runs with it. It is team-taught by two faculty members: Beth Osnes and Maxwell Boykoff from theatre and dance and environmental studies, respectively.

These disciplines seldom rub elbows. But in this course, cross-disciplinary teaching—collaboratively analyzing issues from the disparate lenses of social science, natural science and the arts and humanities—is intentional.

The course is an experiment, one of several interdisciplinary courses supported by the Gordon Gamm Fund, named after local philanthropist Gordon Gamm.The goal, Boykoff notes, is to “reach people where they are.”
 
Boland is addressing the class that hopes to learn from her, as she herself has learned. In retrospect, she says, her film’s conclusion might be a stretch. “I don’t think a community like Paonia can easily make such a huge shift.”

As Professor Safran noted, it is a challenge to convey scientific information on climate change in a way that “doesn’t just spell depression.” Osnes and Boykoff see that challenge and, have, from their respective disciplines, addressed it.

Disciplinary cross-pollination

Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, explains that cross-disciplinary interaction of two faculty members “creates opportunities for new scholarship, research, and creative works that may not happen in the absence of these courses.”

That description fits here: Osnes and Boykoff each has a distinguished academic record. Together, they make a synergistic powerhouse.

Besides teaching and researching in the Department of Theatre and Dance, Osnes, a former Fulbright Scholar, has a lead role in an award-winning 2011 documentary called Mother: Caring For 7 Billion, which features the contrasting lives of Osnes and an Ethiopian woman and which effectively frames the population explosion with these individual narratives.

Boykoff is the author of a 2011 book— Who Speaks for the Climate? —which has been called a “path-breaking” analysis of mass-media representations of climate science.  He is a fellow in CU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and a senior visiting research associate in the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. His research has been cited in Science, Nature, The New York Times, CNN and Columbia Journalism Review.

Coached by these two experts, small groups of students enrolled in “Inside the Greenhouse” will create two “compositions”—original expressions ranging from “choreopoems” to a video montage.

After creating both compositions, each group will choose one to revise and polish, drawing from feedback from the class, the professors and an outside expert panel.

Then collectively, the whole class will create a 30- to 40-minute program—also called “Inside the Greenhouse”—which will include work generated by students and will feature excerpts from an on-stage interview with a “high-profile public figure who has been wrestling with questions regarding climate science, policy and the public.”

Brainstorming communication

That’s all yet to come. But on this day in class, the students observe Clara Boland’s work before describing their concepts for their own compositions.

One group, for instance, assembles at the front of the room and describes its concept: following a person who wastes energy all day. Then, the students say, the scenes will rewind, and the protagonist will make different choices—to conserve energy. At the end, there might be a message that each person can make easy, meaningful choices.

Perhaps the pivotal scene would involve a “drop-dead gorgeous guy” who’s conducting survey about energy usage. A dreamy dude, Osnes suggest, could motivate behavioral change. Osnes observes that in a short video, only one artistic device should be employed. That will help drive the point home, she suggests. Further, she notes, it’s not clear why the protagonist would change her behavior.

Another group of students proposes a variation on a series of commercials from Liberty Mutual, an insurance company. The original commercials depict a series of selfless acts that appear contagious. The tagline is “Responsibility. What’s your policy?”

Boykoff, an expert in climate communication, says being overly earnest could be a “pitfall” that could keep the message from being effectively heard.

Osnes, whose expertise is communication from the stage, concurs: “If using clean energy doesn’t look like fun, that won’t work. Showing somebody freezing in a yurt won’t work.”

Before the class departs, Osnes challenges the students to commit fully to the project. “Let’s do this for real,” she says, emphasizing the point with a quotation from the poet Mary Oliver:

“What is it you’re going to do with your one wild and precious life?”

For more information about supporting academic programs, contact Carroll Christman, senior director of development at the CU Foundation, at 303-541-1450. This piece was written by Clint Talbott and originally appeared in the Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine.
 

The segment discusses how teachers are incorporating new national science standards for teaching climate change in their K-12 classrooms. Click here to learn more and watch a video of the full nine-minute segment.

A University of Colorado Boulder-led team has developed a new monitoring system to analyze and compare emissions from man-made fossil fuels and trace gases in the atmosphere, a technique that likely could be used to monitor the effectiveness of measures regulating greenhouse gases.

The research team looked at atmospheric gas measurements taken every two weeks from aircraft over a six-year period over the northeast United States to collect samples of CO2 and other environmentally important gases. Their method allowed them to separate CO2 derived from fossil fuels from CO2 being emitted by biological sources like plant respiration, said CU-Boulder Senior Research Associate Scott Lehman, who led the study with CU-Boulder Research Associate John Miller.

The separation was made possible by the fact that CO2 released from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas has no carbon-14, since the half-life of that carbon radio isotope is about 5,700 years -- far less than the age of fossil fuels, which are millions of years old. In contrast, CO2 emitted from biological sources on Earth like plants is relatively rich in carbon-14 and the difference can be pinpointed by atmospheric scientists, said Lehman of CU’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

The team also measured concentrations of 22 other atmospheric gases tied to human activities as part of the study, said Miller of the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.  The diverse set of gases impact climate change, air quality and the recovery of the ozone layer, but their emissions are poorly understood.  The authors used the ratio between the concentration level of each gas in the atmosphere and that of fossil fuel-derived CO2 to estimate the emission rates of the individual gases, said Miller.

In the long run, measuring carbon-14 in the atmosphere offers the possibility to directly measure country and state emissions of fossil fuel CO2, said Miller.  The technique would be an improvement over traditional, “accounting-based” methods of estimating emission rates of CO2 and other gases, which generally rely on reports from particular countries or regions regarding the use of coal, oil and natural gas, he said.

“While the accounting-based approach is probably accurate at global scales, the uncertainties rise for smaller-scale regions,” said Miller, also a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder. “And as CO2 emissions targets become more widespread, there may be a greater temptation to underreport. But we’ll be able to see through that.”

A paper on the subject was published in the April 19 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, published by the American Geophysical Union.  Co-authors include Stephen Montzka and Ed Dlugokencky of NOAA, Colm Sweeney, Benjamin Miller, Anna Karion, Jocelyn Turnbull and Pieter Tans of NOAA and CIRES, Chad Wolak of CU’s INSTAAR and John Southton of the University of California, Irvine.

One surprise in the study was that the researchers detected continued emissions of methyl chloroform and several other gases banned from production in the United States. Such observations emphasize the importance of independent monitoring, since the detection of such emissions could be overlooked by the widely used accounting-based estimation techniques, said Montzka.

The atmospheric air samples were taken every two weeks for six years by aircraft off the coastlines of Cape May, N.J., and Portsmouth, N.H.  

Fossil fuel emissions have driven Earth’s atmospheric CO2 from concentrations of about 280 parts per million in the early 1800s to about 390 parts per million today, said Miller. The vast majority of climate scientists believe higher concentrations of the greenhouse gas CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere are directly leading to rising temperatures on the planet.

“We think the approach offered by this study can increase the accuracy of emissions detection and verification for fossil fuel combustion and a host of other man-made gases,” said Lehman.  He said the approach of using carbon-14 has been supported by the National Academy of Sciences and could be an invaluable tool for monitoring greenhouse gases by federal agencies like NOAA.

Unfortunately, NOAA’s greenhouse gas monitoring program has been cut back by Congress in recent years, said Lehman. “Even if we lack the will to regulate emissions, the public has a right to know what is happening to our atmosphere. Sticking our heads in the sand is not a sound strategy,” he said.

Contact:

Scott Lehman, 303-492-8980
Scott.Lehman@colorado.edu

John Miller, 303-497-7739

John.B.Miller@noaa.gov

Like snow sliding off a roof on a sunny day, the Greenland Ice Sheet may be sliding faster into the ocean due to massive releases of meltwater from surface lakes, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

Such lake drainages may affect sea-level rise, with implications for coastal communities, according to the researchers. “This is the first evidence that Greenland’s ‘supraglacial’ lakes have responded to recent increases in surface meltwater production by draining more frequently, as opposed to growing in size,” says CIRES research associate William Colgan, who co-led the new study with CU-Boulder computer science doctoral student Yu-Li Liang.

During summer, meltwater pools into lakes on the ice sheet’s surface. When the water pressure gets high enough, the ice fractures beneath the lake, forming a vertical drainpipe, and “a huge burst of water quickly pulses through to the bed of the ice sheet,” Colgan said.

The study is being published online today by the journal Remote Sensing of Environment. The study was funded by the Arctic Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation.

The researchers used satellite images along with innovative feature-recognition software to monitor nearly 1,000 lakes on a Connecticut-sized portion of the ice sheet over a 10-year period. They discovered that as the climate warms, such catastrophic lake drainages are increasing in frequency. Catastrophic lake drainages were 3.5 times more likely to occur during the warmest years than the coldest years.

During a typical catastrophic lake drainage, about 10 million cubic meters of meltwater -- which is equivalent to the volume of about 4,000 Olympic swimming pools -- funnels to the ice sheet’s underside within a day or two. Once the water reaches the ice sheet’s belly that abuts underlying rock, it may turn the ice-bed surface into a Slip ’N Slide, lubricating the ice sheet’s glide into the ocean. This would accelerate the sea-level rise associated with climate change.

Alternatively, however, the lake drainages may carve out sub-glacial “sewers” to efficiently route water to the ocean. “This would drain the ice sheet’s water, making less water available for ice-sheet sliding,” Colgan said. That would slow the ice sheet’s migration into the ocean and decelerate sea-level rise.

“Lake drainages are a wild card in terms of whether they enhance or decrease the ice sheet’s slide,” Colgan said. Finding out which scenario is correct is a pressing question for climate models and for communities preparing for sea-level change, he said.

For the study, the researchers developed new feature-recognition software capable of identifying supraglacial lakes in satellite images and determining their size and when they appear and disappear. “Previously, much of this had to be double-checked manually,” Colgan said. “Now we feed the images into the code, and the program can recognize whether a feature is a lake or not, with high confidence and no manual intervention.”

Automating the process was vital since the study looked at more than 9,000 images. The researchers verified the program’s accuracy by manually looking at about 30 percent of the images over 30 percent of the study area. They found that the algorithm  -- a step-by-step procedure for calculations -- correctly detected and tracked 99 percent of supraglacial lakes.

The program could be useful in future studies to determine how lake drainages affect sea-level rise, according to the researchers.  CIRES co-authors on the team include Konrad Steffen, Waleed Abdalati, Julienne Stroeve, Qin Lv, David Gallaher and Nicolas Bayou.

Contact:

William Colgan, 303-735-3681

William.Colgan@colorado.edu

Yu-Li Liang

Yu-Li.Liang@colorado.edu

Kristin Bjornsen, CIRES science writer, 303-492-1790

Kristin.bjornsen@colorado.edu
 

A series of papers published this month on ecological changes at 26 global research sites -- including one administered by the University of Colorado Boulder in the high mountains west of the city -- indicates that ecosystems dependent on seasonal snow and ice are the most sensitive to changes in climate.

The six papers appeared in the April issue of the journal BioScience.  The papers were tied to data gathered at sites in North America, Puerto Rico, the island of Moorea near Tahiti, and Antarctica, which are known as Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, sites and are funded by the National Science Foundation. CU-Boulder’s Niwot Ridge site, one of the five original LTER sites designated by NSF in 1980, encompasses several thousand acres of subalpine forest, tundra, talus slopes, glacial lakes and wetlands stretching up to more than 13,000 feet on top of the Continental Divide.

As part of the new reports, LTER scientists in association with NSF have come up with a new evaluation system of the research sites that brings in the “human dimension,” said CU-Boulder Professor Mark Williams, the principal investigator on CU’s Niwot Ridge LTER site.  “In the past we tried to look at pristine ecosystems, but those are essentially gone,” said Williams. “So we’ve come up with an approach that integrates human activities with our ecological research.”

One of the six papers, “Long-Term Studies Detect Effects of Disappearing Ice and Snow,” was led by Portland State University Professor Andrew Fountain and co-authored by several others, including Williams, a geography professor and a fellow at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.  According to the authors, there are big changes occurring in temperate areas beyond the poles, where warming temperatures have triggered declines in polar bear and penguin populations.

Key measurements at the Niwot Ridge site -- which has climate records going back more than 60 years thanks to pioneering work by CU biology Professor John Marr in the 1950s -- are temperature and precipitation logs from two stations, one at 12,700 feet in elevation and a second at 10,000 feet.  Although the climate at the higher meteorological station -- by far the highest long-term climate station in the United States -- has been getting slightly wetter and cooler in recent decades, the station at 10,000 feet in a subalpine forest is getting significantly warmer and drier.

Williams said warming at 10,000 feet and lower may be causing enhanced surface water evaporation and transport that moves westward and higher in the mountains, with the water vapor being converted to snow that falls atop the Continental Divide.  Snow cover increases reflectivity of incoming sunlight, further cooling the alpine area and overriding the overall warming signal in the West, which is believed to be a 2 or 3 degree Fahrenheit rise over the past decade due to rising greenhouse gases.

“These two Niwot Ridge stations are less than five miles away from each other -- you can see one from the other -- but there are totally different trends occurring,” he said. In many places in the mountainous West, only a small increase in temperature can cause the climate to cross a “threshold” that triggers earlier and more intense snow melting, said Williams, principal investigator on a 2011 grant of $5.9 million from NSF to CU to continue long-term ecological studies at Niwot Ridge.
 

With snowpack roughly half of normal in 2012 and snow melting in the high country that began more than three months earlier than last year, the outlook is not good for montane and subalpine forests in Colorado and other parts of the West, he said.
 

Low snowpack and early melt invariably have a huge impact on the Colorado economy, said Williams.  Despite near record snowfall in 2010-11, warming temperatures have caused less snow and shorter winters in recent years and affected the ski industry -- one of Colorado’s largest economic drivers, said Williams.
 

As for the future of flora and fauna in subalpine and alpine regions like Niwot Ridge, there will be “winners and losers” as the climate warms, said Williams. Animals like American pikas, potato-sized denizens of alpine talus slopes in the West, need heavy snowpack to insulate them from cold winters as they huddle in hay piles beneath the rocks. In lower, more isolated mountain ranges in Nevada, researchers are already seeing a marked decline in American pika populations.
 

The predictions of the study authors are that microbes, plants and animals that depend on snow and ice will decrease if they are unable to move higher into areas of snow and ice.  But shallower snow could cause big game like deer and elk to move higher in altitude to browse, according to the authors.
 

A big concern in temperate mountains like Colorado is the heath and welfare of coniferous trees as the climate changes, said Williams. “Trees in Colorado’s mountains are under a tremendous amount of stress due to drought and pine beetle outbreaks.  And the fire danger, at least now, is through the roof,” he said.
 

“If some of these forested areas disappear, I think the chances of them coming back are pretty low,” Williams said. “The climate they grew up in doesn’t exist anymore.  As we lose trees to drought, beetles and wildfires, we are likely to see an invasion of grasses and shrubs in areas where we have never seen them, causing a complete restructuring of our forest community.”
 

As snowline moves up due to warming temperatures, so will parts of alpine tundra in the West, Williams said. “The tundra may be able to function reasonably well for several decades -- it will be awhile before warming climate change pushes the tundra off the tops of mountains.  But that is the direction we are heading.”
 

Williams co-authored three of the six BioScience studies, including the main LTER overview paper and a paper on ecosystem and human influences on stream flow in response to climate change at LTER sites. CU-Boulder Professor Tim Seastedt was a co-author on another of the papers, a study on the past, present and future roles of long-term experiments in the LTER network.
 

The 2011 NSF renewal grant to CU-Boulder for the Niwot Ridge LTER site, which is adjacent to CU-Boulder’s Mountain Research Station, will allow faculty and students, including undergraduates, to continue key environmental studies there.  Both sites are located about 25 miles west of Boulder.
 

Contact:

Mark Williams, 303-492-8830

mark@snobear.colorado.edu

University of Colorado-Boulder
Continuing Education
GEOG 4110
3.0 semester hours

Paul Lander, PhD, ASLA, LEED A.P.
Mon, September 10 - December 17, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
For more information, and to register, visit:
http://conted.colorado.edu/programs/boulder-evening/courses

Looks at human-environment relations through the element of water. Key areas for investigation:
    - scope of water issues across the world: quantity, quality, access, governance
    - in depth look at key regions of the world
    - elements driving future change - population and climate change

Click here to download a flyer for the course.

Click here to watch Learn More About Climate's two newest films about Population, Consumption, Energy, and Solutions featuring Professor Al Bartlett.

Film Screening and Discussion of"Growthbusters: Hooked on Growth"

Monday, April 9

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Humanities Room 250, University of Colorado at Boulder

This documentary film examines the beliefs and behaviors preventing us from becoming a sustainable civilization. It takes a unique approach among modern environmental documentaries: Rather than dispensing facts about climate change; peak energy, food and water; and bio-diversity loss, it examines the cultural barriers that prevent us from acting rationally. It asks why population conversations are so difficult to have, and why a roaring economy is more important to us than a survivable planet. It explores our obsession with community growth and economic growth. Growthbusters holds up a mirror, encouraging us to examine the beliefs and behaviors we must leave behind, and the values we need to embrace, in order that our children can survive and thrive.

The film screening will be followed by a discussion with film's producer Dave Gardner and Dr. Al Bartlett.

Sponsored by the CU Environmental Center in conjunction with the Conference on World Affairs, April 9-13,www.colorado.edu/cwa/. This event is free and open to the public.

Location: http://www.colorado.edu/campusmap/map.html?bldg=HUMN


 

March 27, 2012

Some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations of tree-killing offspring annually, dramatically increasing the potential for bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees, CU-Boulder researchers have found.

Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, the study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven't previously developed defenses.

This exponential increase in the beetle population might help explain the scope of the current beetle epidemic, which is the largest in history and extends from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska, according to Professor Jeffry Mitton and graduate student Scott Ferrenberg, both of the ecology and evolutionary biology department.

"This thing is immense," Mitton said. The duo's research, conducted in 2009 and 2010 at CU's Mountain Research Station, located about 25 miles west of Boulder, helps explain why.

"We followed them through the summer, and we saw something that had never been seen before," Mitton said. "Adults that were newly laid eggs two months before were going out and attacking trees" -- in the same year. Normally, mountain pine beetles spend a winter as larvae in trees before emerging as adults the following summer.

These effects may be particularly pronounced at higher elevations, where warmer temperatures have facilitated beetle attacks. In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades.

Warmer temperatures gave the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades, according to Mitton and Ferrenberg. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970.

The Mountain Research Station site is about 10,000 feet in elevation, 1,000 feet higher than the beetles have historically thrived.

"While our study is limited in area, it was completed in a site that was characterized as climatically unsuitable for (mountain pine beetle) development by the U.S. Forest Service only three decades ago," they wrote in the study.

But in 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada, Mitton said.

A new study led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and involving the University of Colorado Boulder proposes a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a series of extreme warming events on Earth about 50 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, as well as a sequence of similar, smaller warming events afterward.

“The standard hypothesis has been that the source of carbon was in the ocean in the form of frozen methane gas in ocean-floor sediments,” said lead study author Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “We are instead ascribing the carbon source to the continents in polar latitudes where permafrost can store massive amounts of carbon that can be released as CO2 when the permafrost thaws.”

The new view is supported by calculations estimating interactions of variables such as greenhouse gas levels, changes in the Earth’s tilt and orbit, ancient distributions of vegetation, and carbon stored in rocks and in frozen soil.  A paper on the subject appears in the April 5 issue of Nature.

While the amounts of carbon involved in the ancient soil-thaw scenarios were likely much greater than today, implications of the study appear dire for the long-term future as polar permafrost carbon deposits have begun to thaw due to burning fossil fuels, DeConto said. “Similar dynamics are at play today. Global warming is degrading permafrost in the north polar regions, thawing frozen organic matter, which will decay to release CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. This will only exacerbate future warming in a positive feedback loop.”  

He and colleagues at CU-Boulder, Yale, Penn State, the University of Urbino, Italy, and the University of Sheffield in England designed a model to account for the source, magnitude and timing of carbon release at the PETM and subsequent warm periods, which now appear to have been triggered by changes in the Earth’s orbit.

CU-Boulder researcher Kevin Schaefer, a Nature paper co-author, led a 2011 study showing up to two-thirds of Earth’s permafrost could disappear by 2200 as a result of warming temperatures, unleashing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere.

“We found in this new Nature study that changes in Earth’s orbit triggered massive releases of carbon dioxide and methane from thawing permafrost in Antarctica,” said Schaefer, a research associate at CU-Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, an arm of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “If the Arctic permafrost thaws out, it will release carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere and amplify warming due to the burning of fossil fuels.”

Earth’s atmospheric temperature is a result of energy input from the sun minus what escapes back to space. CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs and traps heat that would otherwise return to space. The PETM was accompanied by a massive carbon input to the atmosphere, with ocean acidification, and was characterized by a global temperature rise of about 9 degrees Fahrenheit in a few thousand years, according to the study.

The research team used a new, high-precision geologic record from rocks in central Italy to show that the PETM and other warming events occurred during periods when Earth’s orbit around the sun was both highly eccentric and tilted. Orbit affects the amount, location and seasonality of solar radiation received on Earth, which in turn affects the seasons, particularly in polar latitudes, where permafrost and stored carbon can accumulate.

They then simulated climate-ecosystem-soil interactions, accounting for gradually rising greenhouse gases and polar temperatures plus the combined effects of changes in Earth’s orbit. Their results show that the magnitude and timing of the PETM and subsequent busts of warming can be explained by the orbitally triggered decomposition of organic carbon soil material in Antarctica and the area surrounding the Arctic.

The massive carbon reservoir at the poles had the potential to repeatedly release billions of tons carbon to the atmosphere-ocean system once a long-term warming threshold was reached just prior to the PETM,” DeConto and colleagues say. Until now, Antarctica, which today is covered by miles of ice, has not been recognized as an important player in such global carbon dynamics, according to the team.

In the past, Antarctica and high elevations adjacent to the Arctic region were suitable locations for massive carbon storage, according to the study. “During long-term warming, these environments eventually reached a climatic threshold,” with permafrost thaw and the sudden release of stored soil carbon triggered during the Earth’s highly eccentric orbits coupled with high tilt, according to the study.

Contact:

Janet Lathrop, UMass media relations, 413-545-0444
jlathrop@admin.umass.edu
Robert DeConto, 413-545-3426
deconto@geo.umass.edu
Kevin Schaefer, 303-492-8869
Kevin.schaefer@colorado.edu

• Scientists will present talks on their cutting edge research
• Lessons that can be used in the classroom will be tied to the themes (both in science and computer labs)
• The nature and process of science will be explored

“You cannot sustain population growth. It’s not debatable,” says CU-Boulder Professor Emeritus Al Bartlett.  “It’s based on arithmetic.  It’s not debatable unless you want to debate arithmetic."
 

In a newly-released video, entitled “Population, Consumption, and Climate:  A Conversation with Al Bartlett,” the physics professor reprises themes from a talk on the arithmetic of population he first gave in 1969.  He has since delivered that well-known lecture more than 1,700 times to audiences worldwide.
 

Using an animation that shows bacteria doubling in number over a fixed period of time, Bartlett illustrates the arithmetic of steady growth and how quickly resources are depleted as growth continues.
 

“There will be limits,” states Bartlett.  We are approaching one such limit globally in petroleum. “New technologies in drilling for natural gas doesn’t change our supplies,” he points out.  “It doesn’t change the amount of oil or natural gas that’s in the ground.  What it does is let us use it up more rapidly.”
 

Bartlett goes on to explain that despite the fact that population growth rates in developing countries may be 3-4 times higher, the worst problem with population is in the United States because of our very high per capita demand for energy and resources.
 

“The average child born in the United States will have, over its lifetime, 10-20 times the impact on world resources as a child born in an underdeveloped nation,” he says.  “So we’ve got to address the problem at home” by learning to conserve and live within our means.
 

In addition to putting enormous strain on the earth’s natural resources, excessive consumption contributes to climate change because resource extraction, manufacturing and transportation produce a great deal of carbon dioxide.  And, according to Bartlett, “if any fraction of global warming can be attributed to the actions of humans, that’s all the proof you need to say the human population today is greater than the carrying capacity of the earth.”
 

Part of CU-Boulder’s “Learn More About Climate” initiative, which brings climate change-related information to communities across the state, “Population, Consumption, and Climate:  A Conversation with Al Bartlett” is the seventh in a series of videos that can be viewed at LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu — an online tool that localizes climate change through interviews with leading scientists and everyday Coloradans to explain how climate change is affecting our state.  The site also offers resources for teachers, students, policy makers and community members who want to learn more about this critical issue.    

Professor Emeritus Bartlett joined the faculty at CU-Boulder in 1950.  He continues to deliver his acclaimed lecture “Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101” to audiences in towns across Colorado. To view “Population, Consumption, and Climate:  A Conversation with Al Bartlett,” please visit LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu. 

Click here for a list of links related to climate, energy, and consumption.
 

Click on the links below for more information about population growth, climate, energy, and consumption.

POPULATION, CONSUMPTION, AND CLIMATE: A CONVERSATION ABOUT AL BARTLETT

About Al Bartlett: http://www.albartlett.org

Full Interview with Al Bartlett: http://vimeo.com/37014682

Related Links

• Al Bartlett's arithmetic, population, and energy presentation
• Al Bartlett's book, "The Essential Exponential" 
• CU-Boulder Population Center 
• NPR Story: "Visualizing How A Population Grows to 7 Billion" 
• The Population Connection 

CLIMATE CHANGE: MAKING CHOICES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE

About Max Boykoff: http://cires.colorado.edu/people/boykoff/

Full Interview with Max Boykoff: http://vimeo.com/37500836

Related Links

• Max Boykoff's new book, "Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change"
•  "The New Carbon Economy: Constitution, Governance, and Contestation" edited by Peter Newell, Max Boykoff, and Emily Boyd
• Solar Energy International's "Solar in the Schools" Program
• The "Young Voices on Climate Change" project from author and illustrator Lynne Cherry
• The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) science and education program

About Beth Osnes: http://theatredance.colorado.edu/?page_id=518 and http://centerwest.org/beth-osnes/

Full Interview with Beth Osnes: http://vimeo.com/37505865

Related Links:

• MOTHER: Caring for 7 Billion Film
• Beth Osnes Explains World Energy Justice
  

About Bernard Amadei:  https://mcedc.colorado.edu/amadei-biography

Related Links:

• Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities
• Mortenson Center Introduces Sustainable Housing Solution on Crow Reservation
• Crow Tribe Sustainable Housing Project Student Outreach, Exchange, and Training
• TED Talk: "Technology with a Soul" by Bernard Amadei 
• Engineers without Borders USA
• Engineers without Borders International

Long thought to produce only one generation of tree-killing offspring annually, some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically increasing the potential for the bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees, University of Colorado Boulder researchers have found.

Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, their study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven’t previously developed defenses.

These are among the key findings of Jeffry Mitton, a CU-Boulder professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Scott Ferrenberg, a graduate student in that department. The study is being published this month in The American Naturalist.

This exponential increase in the beetle population might help to explain the scope of the current beetle epidemic, which is the largest in history and extends from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska.

“This thing is immense,” Mitton said. The duo’s research, conducted in 2009 and 2010 at CU’s Mountain Research Station, located about 25 miles west of Boulder, helps explain why.

“We followed them through the summer, and we saw something that had never been seen before,” Mitton said. “Adults that were newly laid eggs two months before were going out and attacking trees” -- in the same year. Normally, mountain pine beetles spend a winter as larvae in trees before emerging as adults the following summer.

These effects may be particularly pronounced at higher elevations, where warmer temperatures have facilitated beetle attacks. In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades.

Warmer temperatures gave the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades, Mitton and Ferrenberg report. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970.

The Mountain Research Station site is about 10,000 feet in elevation, 1,000 feet higher than the beetles have historically thrived. In their study, Mitton and Ferrenberg emphasize this anomaly.

“While our study is limited in area, it was completed in a site that was characterized as climatically unsuitable for (mountain pine beetle) development by the U.S. Forest Service only three decades ago,” they write.

But in 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada, Mitton said.

Ferrenberg had the idea to monitor the beetles at higher elevations partly because trees at lower elevations have been attacked by beetles for centuries and have developed some defenses.

Lodgepole pines at higher elevations tended to have a lower density of resin ducts, which transport resin, the sole defense against beetles. The number of resin ducts in a tree can be a “marker” for whether a tree has a higher or lower resistance to a beetle attack, Ferrenberg said.
 

The trees at higher elevations had not faced the same intensity of beetle attacks as those at lower elevations until temperatures warmed, and they have not faced pressures of natural selection exerted by attacking beetles. “The trees in that area are somewhat naïve in their response,” Ferrenberg said.
 

These data help explain why westbound motorists emerging from the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 can look up, from 11,000 feet in elevation, and see beetle-killed trees. “We think we see some of the reason for the fact that this epidemic is so widespread,” Mitton said.
 

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
 

More on this story will appear in the next edition of Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine at http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/

Contact:

Jeffry Mitton 303-492-8956

mitton@colorado.edu

Scott Ferrenberg, 303-492-8956

scott.ferrenberg@colorado.edu
 

Meeting Materials

For those who attended the Science Hubs meeting, you can download meeting materials here.

1.  All presenter powerpoint files (zip file)
2.  Selected handouts

Some people noticed that the Evidence lesson plan has the old Colorado science standards on it -- this was due to a version error, and we are updating it.  You can access the Evidence lesson plan here:  http://learnmoreaboutclimate.colorado.edu/model-lessons/evidence-of-climate-change

Dr. Chris Ray mentioned the newly launched site on pika science that is not in the handouts.  That URL is:
http://cumuseum.colorado.edu/ScienceLIVE

Dr. Anne Gold included some resources in her first presentation that weren't on the handouts.  Those are:
1.  AAAS Strand Maps with concept maps of important topics in science and their interconnections, including climate:  http://strandmaps.nsdl.org
2.  AAAS Misconceptions study, outlining common misconceptions in various areas, including weather and climate:  http://assessment.aaas.org/topics
3.  Skeptical Science, a good source for sound information and explaining misinformation about various areas, including climate change:  http://skepticalscience.com
4.  Real Climate, another good resource for information about climate: http://realclimate.org

On the agenda:
* Is climate changing in Colorado?  How would we know?
* Climate and energy topics in the classroom
* The American Pika:  A model species for studying climate sensitivity
* Resources for teaching about climate and energy.
 

Equipped with specialized lasers and GPS technology, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research are working with institutions including the University of Colorado Boulder to solve a critical wintertime weather mystery: how to accurately measure the amount of snow on the ground.

Transportation crews, water managers, and others who make vital safety decisions need precise measurements of how snow depth varies across wide areas. But traditional measuring devices such as snow gauges or yardsticks often are inadequate for capturing snow totals that can vary even within a single field or neighborhood.

Now scientists are finding that prototype devices that use light pulses, satellite signals, and other technologies offer the potential to almost instantly measure large areas of snow. In time, such devices might even provide a global picture of snow depth.

“We’ve been measuring rain accurately for centuries, but snow is much harder because of the way it’s affected by wind and sun and other factors,” says NCAR scientist Ethan Gutmann. “It looks like new technology will finally give us the ability to say exactly how much snow is on the ground.”

NCAR is conducting the research with several collaborating organizations, including CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The work is supported by NCAR’s sponsor, the National Science Foundation.

Emergency managers rely on snowfall measurements when mobilizing snow plows or deciding whether to shut down highways and airports during major storms. They also use snow totals when determining whether a region qualifies for disaster assistance. In mountainous areas, officials need accurate reports of snowpack depth to assess the threat of avalanches or floods, and to anticipate the amount of water available from spring and summer runoff.

More accurate measurements can also help meteorologists and hydrologists better understand snow physics and hydrological processes.

But traditional approaches to measuring snow can greatly underreport or overreport snow totals, especially in severe conditions. Snow gauges may miss almost a third of the snow in a windy storm, even when they are protected by specialized fencing designed to cut down on the wind’s impacts. Snow probes or yardsticks can reveal snow depth within limited areas. But such tools require numerous in-person measurements at different locations, a method that may not keep up with totals during heavy snowfalls.

Weather experts also sometimes monitor the amount of snow that collects on flat, white pieces of wood known as snow boards, but this is a time-intensive approach that requires people to check the boards and clear them off every few hours. The nation’s two largest volunteer efforts—The National Weather Service’s Cooperative Observer Program and the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network—each involve thousands of participants nationwide using snow boards, but their reports are usually filed just once a day.

More recently, ultrasonic devices have been deployed in some of the world’s most wintry regions. Much like radar, these devices measure the length of time needed for a pulse of ultrasonic energy to bounce off the surface of the snow and return to the transmitter. However, the signal can be affected by shifting atmospheric conditions, including temperature, humidity, and winds.

The specialized laser instruments under development at NCAR can correct for such problems. Once set up at a location, they can automatically measure snow depth across large areas. Unlike ultrasonic instruments, lasers rely on light pulses that are not affected by atmospheric conditions.

New tests by Gutmann indicate that a laser instrument installed high above treeline in the Rocky Mountains west of Boulder can measure 10 feet or more of snow with an accuracy as fine as half an inch or better. The instrument, in a little over an hour,  measures snow at more than 1,000 points across an area almost the size of a football field to produce a three-dimensional image of the snowpack and its variations in depth.

Gutmann’s next step, if he can secure the needed funding, will be to build and test a laser instrument that can measure snow over several square miles. Measuring such a large area would require a new instrument capable of taking over 12,000 measurements per second.

“If we’re successful, all of a sudden these types of instruments will reveal a continually updated picture of snow across an entire basin,” he says.

One limitation for the lasers, however, is the light pulses cannot penetrate through objects such as trees and buildings. This could require development of networks of low-cost laser installations that would each record snow depths within a confined area. Alternatively, future satellites equipped with such lasers might be capable of mapping the entire world from above.

Gutmann and Kristine Larson, a colleague at CU-Boulder, are also exploring how to use GPS sensors for snowfall measurements. GPS sensors record both satellite signals that reach them directly and signals that bounce off the ground. When there is snow on the ground, the GPS signal bounces off the snow with a different frequency than when it is bare soil, enabling scientists to determine how high the surface of the snow is above the ground.

Such units could be a cost-efficient way of measuring snow totals because meteorologists could tap into the existing global network of ground-based GPS receivers. However, researchers are seeking to fully understand how both the density of the snow and the roughness of its surface alter GPS signals.

“Our hope is to develop a set of high-tech tools that will enable officials to continually monitor snow depth, even during an intense storm,” Larson says. “While we still have our work cut out for us, the technology is very promising.”

“I think this technology has great potential to benefit emergency managers and other decision makers, as well as forecasters, “ Gutmann says.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Scientific contacts:

Ethan Gutmann, NCAR Scientist
303-497-8283
gutmann@ucar.edu

Kristine Larson, CU Scientist
303-492-6583
kristinem.larson@gmail.com

February 8, 2012

Earth’s glaciers and ice caps outside of the regions of Greenland and Antarctica are shedding roughly 150 billion tons of ice annually, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

The research effort is the first comprehensive satellite study of the contribution of the world’s melting glaciers and ice caps to global sea level rise and indicates they are adding roughly 0.4 millimeters annually, said CU-Boulder physics Professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study. The measurements are important because the melting of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, along with Greenland and Antarctica, pose the greatest threat to sea level increases in the future, Wahr said.

The researchers used satellite measurements taken with the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, a joint effort of NASA and Germany, to calculate that the world’s glaciers and ice caps had lost about 148 billion tons, or about 39 cubic miles of ice annually from 2003 to 2010.  The total does not count the mass from individual glacier and ice caps on the fringes of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets -- roughly an additional 80 billion tons.

“This is the first time anyone has looked at all of the mass loss from all of Earth’s glaciers and ice caps with GRACE,” said Wahr.  “The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet’s cold regions are responding to global change.”

A paper on the subject is being published in the Feb. 9 online edition of the journal Nature.  The first author, Thomas Jacob, did his research at CU-Boulder and is now at the Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières, in Orléans, France.  Other paper co-authors include Professor Tad Pfeffer of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and Sean Swenson, a former CU-Boulder physics doctoral student who is now a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

“The strength of GRACE is that it sees everything in the system,” said Wahr. “Even though we don’t have the resolution to look at individual glaciers, GRACE has proven to be an exceptional tool.”  Traditional estimates of Earth’s ice caps and glaciers have been made using ground-based measurements from relatively few glaciers to infer what all of the unmonitored glaciers around the world were doing, he said. Only a few hundred of the roughly 200,000 glaciers worldwide have been monitored for a decade or more.

Launched in 2002, two GRACE satellites whip around Earth in tandem 16 times a day at an altitude of about 300 miles, sensing subtle variations in Earth’s mass and gravitational pull. Separated by roughly 135 miles, the satellites measure changes in Earth’s gravity field caused by regional changes in the planet’s mass, including ice sheets, oceans and water stored in the soil and in underground aquifers.

A positive change in gravity during a satellite approach over Greenland, for example, tugs the lead GRACE satellite away from the trailing satellite, speeding it up and increasing the distance between the two. As the satellites straddle Greenland, the front satellite slows down and the trailing satellite speeds up. A sensitive ranging system allows researchers to measure the distance of the two satellites down to as small as 1 micron -- about 1/100 the width of a human hair -- and to calculate ice and water amounts from particular regions of interest around the globe using their gravity fields.

For the global glaciers and ice cap measurements, the study authors created separate “mascons,” large, ice-covered regions of Earth of various ovate-type shapes. Jacob and Wahr blanketed 20 regions of Earth with 175 mascons and calculated the estimated mass balance for each mascon.

The CU-led team also used GRACE data to calculate that the ice loss from both Greenland and Antarctica, including their peripheral ice caps and glaciers, was roughly 385 billion tons of ice annually. The total mass ice loss from Greenland, Antarctica and all Earth’s glaciers and ice caps from 2003 to 2010 was about 1,000 cubic miles, about eight times the water volume of Lake Erie, said Wahr.

“The total amount of ice lost to Earth’s oceans from 2003 to 2010 would cover the entire United States in about 1 and one-half feet of water,” said Wahr, also a fellow at the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that human activities like pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is warming the planet, an effect that is most pronounced in the polar regions.

One unexpected study result from GRACE was that the estimated ice loss from high Asia mountains -- including ranges like the Himalaya, the Pamir and the Tien Shan -- was only about 4 billion tons of ice annually.  Some previous ground-based estimates of ice loss in the high Asia mountains have ranged up to 50 billion tons annually, Wahr said.

“The GRACE results in this region really were a surprise,” said Wahr.  “One possible explanation is that previous estimates were based on measurements taken primarily from some of the lower, more accessible glaciers in Asia and were extrapolated to infer the behavior of higher glaciers.  But unlike the lower glaciers, many of the high glaciers would still be too cold to lose mass even in the presence of atmospheric warming.”

“What is still not clear is how these rates of melt may increase and how rapidly glaciers may shrink in the coming decades,” said Pfeffer, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s civil, environmental and architectural engineering department. “That makes it hard to project into the future.”

According to the GRACE data, total sea level rise from all land-based ice on Earth including Greenland and Antarctica was roughly 1.5 millimeters per year annually or about 12 millimeters, or one-half inch, from 2003 to 2010, said Wahr. The sea rise amount does not include the expansion of water due to warming, which is the second key sea-rise component and is roughly equal to melt totals, he said.

“One big question is how sea level rise is going to change in this century,” said Pfeffer. “If we could understand the physics more completely and perfect numerical models to simulate all of the processes controlling sea level -- especially glacier and ice sheet changes -- we would have a much better means to make predictions. But we are not quite there yet.”
 
Contact:

John Wahr, 303-492-8349

John.Wahr@colorado.edu

Tad Pfeffer, 303-492-3480

Tad.Pfeffer@colorado.edu
 

February 1, 2012

Scientists have disagreed for many years over the precise cause for a period of cooling global temperatures that began after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century, commonly known as the Little Ice Age.

Now, a new study led by CU-Boulder Professor and Institute for Alpine and Arctic Research (INSTAAR) Fellow Gifford Miller indicates that the Little Ice Age began abruptly between A.D. 1275 and 1300, triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism and sustained by a self-perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback system in the North Atlantic Ocean.

“This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age,” said Miller.  “We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time.  If the climate system is hit again and again by cold conditions over a relatively short period—in this case, from volcanic eruptions—there appears to be a cumulative cooling effect.”  

Most scientists believed the Little Ice Age was caused either by decreased summer solar radiation, erupting volcanoes that cooled the planet by ejecting shiny aerosol particles that reflected sunlight back into space, or a combination of both, said Miller.

The new study, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Icelandic Science Foundation, suggests that the onset of the Little Ice Age was caused by an unusual, 50-year-long episode of four massive tropical volcanic eruptions. Climate models used in the new study showed that the persistence of cold summers following the eruptions is best explained by a sea ice-ocean feedback system originating in the North Atlantic Ocean.

"Our simulations showed that the volcanic eruptions may have had a profound cooling effect,” says NCAR scientist Bette Otto-Bliesner, a co-author of the study. “The eruptions could have triggered a chain reaction, affecting sea ice and ocean currents in a way that lowered temperatures for centuries."

The researchers set the solar radiation at a constant level in the climate models, and Miller said the Little Ice Age likely would have occurred without decreased summer solar radiation at the time. “Estimates of the sun’s variability over time are getting smaller, it’s now thought by some scientists to have varied little more in the last millennia than during a standard 11-year solar cycle,” he said.

One of the primary questions pertaining to the Little Ice Age is how unusual the warming of Earth is today, he said.  A previous study led by Miller in 2008 on Baffin Island indicated temperatures today are the warmest in at least 2,000 years.
 

A national research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder is embarking on a two-year, multi-pronged effort to better understand the impacts of environmental factors associated with the continuing decline of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The team will use tools ranging from unmanned aircraft and satellites to ocean buoys in order to understand the characteristics and changes in Arctic sea ice, which was at 1.67 million square miles during September 2011, more than 1 million square miles below the 1979-2000 monthly average sea ice extent for September -- an area larger than Texas and California combined. Critical ocean regions north of the Alaskan coast, like the Beaufort Sea and the Canada Basin, have experienced record warming and decreased sea ice extent unprecedented in human memory, said CU-Boulder Research Professor James Maslanik, who is leading the research effort.

The team will be targeting the Beaufort Sea, considered a “marginal ice zone” where old and thick multiyear sea ice has failed to survive during the summer melt season in recent years, said Maslanik of CU-Boulder’s Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research in CU’s engineering college. Such marginal ice zones are characterized by extensive ice loss and a strong “ice-albedo” feedback.

“Sea ice is lost when the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight in the form of heat in the summers, resulting in potentially thinner sea ice that re-forms the following winter,” Maslanik said.  “This positive feedback between heat absorption by the ocean and accelerated melting becomes reinforcing in itself.” Marginal ice zones also are characterized by significant human and marine mammal activity, he said.
 

There was a record loss of sea ice cover over the Arctic in 2007, he said. “In some areas of the Arctic Ocean the multiyear ice rebounded, but in the Beaufort Sea we did not see that kind of multiyear ice persistence like we used to see,” said Maslanik, who also is a research professor in the aerospace engineering sciences department.
 

“The biggest question is whether places like the Beaufort Sea and adjacent Canada Basin have passed a ‘tipping point’ and now are essentially sub-Arctic zones where ice disappears each summer,” he said.  Such ice loss could be causing fundamental changes in ocean conditions, including earlier annual blooms of phytoplankton, which are microscopic plant-like organisms that drive the marine food web.
 

The vast majority of climate scientists believe shrinking Arctic sea ice in recent decades is due to rising temperatures primarily caused by human activities that pump huge amounts of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The new $3 million study led by Maslanik, “The Marginal Ice Zone Observations and Processes EXperiment,” or MIZOPEX, is being funded by NASA.
 

The team will undertake extensive airborne surface mapping using a variety of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or UAS, comparing the results with data collected by a fleet of satellites from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Japanese space agency.  Unlike satellites, small, unmanned aircraft can fly below the clouds, observe the same location continuously for hours and make more precise measurements of sea ice composition and sea surface temperatures.  Maslanik and his CU-Boulder team previously used unmanned aircraft to assess ice conditions both in the Arctic and in Antarctica.
 

The MIZOPEX arsenal also will include floating buoys that measure ocean temperatures. CU-Boulder engineering faculty members Scott Palo and Dale Lawrence and their graduate students are converting miniaturized versions of dropsondes -- standard weather reconnaissance devices designed to be dropped from aircraft and capture data as they fall toward Earth -- into the buoys that will be deployed by the UAS.
 

The modified dropsondes, which were developed at CU-Boulder for use in Antarctica, will be combined with CU-designed miniature unmanned aircraft that will land on the ocean near sea ice floes. Such floes are critical to several species of Arctic wildlife, including polar bears, walruses and seals.
 

The buoys and unmanned craft will collect sea surface and subsurface temperatures to about a meter deep, while the overflying unmanned planes and satellites measure temperatures at the surface, Maslanik said. “We want to know if the warming is just at the ocean surface or if there is additional heat getting into the mixed layers of the upper ocean, either from absorbed sunlight or from ocean currents, that could be contributing to sea ice melt.”
 

The team plans to gather information over 24-hour cycles to determine how the ocean and ice are reacting to atmospheric changes. “Understanding what’s happening in the water is critical to forecasting what will happen to ice in the near term, as well as in the decades to come,” said MIZOPEX team scientist Betsy Weatherhead of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
 

“We’ve never had the data before,” Weatherhead said. “With this new instrumentation, we’ll be able to ask questions and test theories about the drivers of ice melt.”
 

The MIZOPEX effort involves CU-Boulder, NASA, Fort Hays State University in Kansas, Brigham Young University, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, NOAA, the University of Washington and Columbia University.  Ball Aerospace Systems Group of Boulder also is collaborating on the project.
 

Other MIZOPEX project scientists from CU include Brian Argrow, Sandra Castro, Ian Crocker, William Emery, Eric Frew and Mark Tschudi.  Argrow directs the CU-headquartered Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles, a university-government-industry partnership for the development and application of unmanned vehicle systems.
 

For more information on MIZOPEX visit http://ccar.colorado.edu/mizopex/index.html. For more information on CU-Boulder’s Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles visit http://recuv.colorado.edu/.
 
Contact:

James Maslanik, 303-492-8974 James.Maslanik@colorado.edu

Betsy Weatherhead, 303-497-6653  Betsy.Weatherhead@noaa.gov
 

For more information, visit the Science Explorer's page here.

Science Explorers workshops engage teams composed of 1 teacher and 5 students (grades 5-8) in a full day of hands-on, inquiry-based science. This year's workshop, Earth System Science: Exploring Change in the Critical Zone, focuses on the complex relationships between geology, soils, climate, ice, snow, wildfires and Colorado's water supply.

During this intensive hands-on workshop, teachers and students will rotate through three interconnected workshops:

Foundations for Flow:

Students and teachers will re-create a Colorado watershed from the bedrock up, and then wear it down with constructive and destructive forces over time. They will see our geological past, experience the sedimentary rocks on the surface, and then simulate the massive uplifts and faulting that formed our mountains. Using snow, ice, summer rains and heat, they will create snowfields, glaciers, streams and rivers, to grind the mountains down to the landforms that we see today.

Fire and Water:

Using computer mapping and hands-on experiments, students and teachers will explore the relationships between ecosystems, wildfires, soils and water. They will predict fire intensity and see how wildfires impact soils, erosion and water quality. They will conduct experiments to help understand how different soils impact water flow and storage, as well as how scientists use computer models to predict the way landscapes and watersheds will change over time.

Ice, Snow and H2O:

This chilly session focuses on how weather, climate, snow and ice impact Colorado's water supply. Teachers and students will create and conduct experiments with glacial ice, and use measurements and math to understand the relationship between glaciers, snowpack and our water supply. They will compare and contrast weather data and real snow tubes to solve a mystery, and play a fun game to understand how Earth System Interactions supply year-round water to Colorado, with only the occasional flood or landslide.

Click here to register for a Science Explorers workshop

For more details about the workshops, including how they address Colorado Science Standards, please contact Hester Nadel at 303-492-8640 or nadel@colorado.edu.

Professor James White
Geological sciences and environmental studies
Louisville Public Library, 951 Spruce Street

January 25    7 PM

Professor James White will review the basic science behind the Earth’s climate system, discuss how humans are impacting it, and put the current climate situation into the context of natural variability. White’s research primarily focuses on how and why climate changes have occurred in the past and how carbon dioxide moves between the atmosphere, ocean, and land plants

Programs are free and open to the public.
For more information, email outreach@colorado.edu or call 303-335-4849.

Join us at the museum as we ring in the New Year with a flurry of family activities. This January, we will be investigating the science of snow, from falling flakes to dangerous avalanches. Explore how climate change is affecting snow through hands-on activities. On January 28 we will explore climate change with a concert of environmental songs and skits created and performed by 'Jeff and Paige'. Expect original science-based music for kids, quick costume changes, plenty of audience participation and more. Ski, sled, or skate on in!

For more information: http://cumuseum.colorado.edu or museumed@colorado.edu or 303-492-1666.

Maxwell Boykoff's interest in how the media covers the science of climate change began as a side project nearly a decade ago.

The University of Colorado professor -- who was studying vulnerability and hurricane activity in Central America at the time -- was musing about the interaction between science and public policy when he started to wonder how the media's coverage of climate change has impacted the public's perception.

The question sent Boykoff into the archives of some of the country's most venerable publications -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal -- where he discovered that many journalists' attempts to be "balanced" actually skewed their reporting on climate change.

The normal act of reporting on both sides of the story may not actually create an accurate story in the case of climate science, Boykoff concluded, since the scientific consensus is that climate change is happening and that humans are contributing to it.

Giving climate change skeptics equal space in a story may unfairly amplify their views, Boykoff found.

More than a dozen studies on climate change and the media later, Boykoff has published a book, released last week, called "Who Speaks for the Climate?: Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change."

"What started as a bit of a side project, I realized was something that needed a lot more attention," said Boykoff, a researcher at CU's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. "I ended up making that the focus of my ongoing research."

Boykoff's book takes an in-depth look into the media's coverage, which Boykoff says has improved in some ways.

"There have been lessons learned over time," he said. "But there have been lessons learned that we run the risk of having to learn again."

In particular, Boykoff is bothered by the media's tendency to conflate issues that aren't directly related into "one great global warming debate."

For example, a story about the ability of a cap-and-trade program to limit carbon emissions may end up becoming a story about whether humans contribute to climate change at all. Boykoff hopes his book will enable people to think critically about that kind of media coverage on climate change.

"For the everyday person picking up the book, it helps them really understand the processes of science, the processes of journalism and how these issues make their way onto the printed page and into a television news program," he said. "It helps them more critically engage with these kinds of issues."

Alan Townsend, director of CU's Environmental Studies Program, said that the topics tackled in Boykoff's book are an important "piece of the puzzle" to understanding how the public thinks about and responds to climate change.

"Public perception of any particular issue or event is clearly shaped by the conduit that they have for that information, which is the media," he said. "The way people are going to make decisions, the ways in which they're going to understand an issue, the way they're going to act can clearly be shaped by that."

Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or sniderl@dailycamera.com.

We will be piloting a new series of engaging hands-on activities focused on water, snow, geology, climate, glaciers and fire in the Boulder Creek Watershed. Hands-on science activities will include: creating glaciers and using them to wear down mountains; building the Flatirons from the bedrock up; creating streams, rivers and valleys; exploring fire ecology, erosion and stream chemistry; discovering the secrets in snow-tubes; and more. This will be an action-packed morning of experiments, computer mapping, interactive games, hands-on science and fun!

When: Friday, November 11th, 2011, 9:00 AM -12:00 PM

Where: CU Science Discovery @ Science Learning Laboratory, 3400 Marine St (EAST CAMPUS), Boulder, CO.

This opportunity is limited to 10 students on a first-come, first-served basis.  To register, please visit:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHA0ZFd1MlNheTNNTTUwLVBtM1pRUkE6MQ

For more information, please contact Anjali Maus at 303-735-2230 or anjali.maus@colorado.edu.

 

Hydraulic Fracturing:

Monday October 10th
A Geo-Engineering Perspective

Dr. Will Fleckenstein, PE
BP Adjunct Professor
Colorado School of Mines

Shale Drilling and Completions

East Campus
RL-1 Room 269
12:00 Noon


Monday October 17th
An Environmental Perspective

Dr. Stephen G. Osborn
California Polytechnic University (formerly at Duke)

Methane, Water and Hydraulic Fracturing

East Campus
ARC Room 269
12:00 Noon

Click here to download the flyer.

The blanket of sea ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean appears to have reached its lowest extent for 2011, the second lowest recorded since satellites began measuring it in 1979, according to the University of Colorado Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The Arctic sea ice extent fell to 1.67 million square miles, or 4.33 million square kilometers on Sept. 9, 2011. This year's minimum of 1.67 million square miles is more than 1 million square miles below the 1979-2000 monthly average extent for September -- an area larger than Texas and California combined.

While this year's September minimum extent was greater than the all-time low in 2007, it remains significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, according to scientists involved in the analysis. Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases pumped into Earth's atmosphere.

"Every summer that we see a very low ice extent in September sets us up for a similar situation the following year," said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze, also a professor in CU-Boulder's geography department. "The Arctic sea ice cover is so thin now compared to 30 years ago that it just can't take a hit anymore. This overall pattern of thinning ice in the Arctic in recent decades is really starting to catch up with us."

Serreze said that in 2007, the year of record low Arctic sea ice, there was a "nearly perfect" set-up of specific weather conditions. Winds pushed in more warm air over the Arctic than usual, helping to melt sea ice, and winds also pushed the floating ice chunks together into a smaller area. "It is interesting that this year, the second lowest sea ice extent ever recorded, that we didn't see that kind of weather pattern at all," he said.

The last five years have been the five lowest Arctic sea ice extents recorded since satellite measurements began in 1979, said CU-Boulder's Walt Meier, an NSIDC scientist. "The primary driver of these low sea ice conditions is rising temperatures in the Arctic, and we definitely are heading in the direction of ice-free summers," he said. "Our best estimates now indicate that may occur by about 2030 or 2040."

There still is a chance the sea ice extent could fall slightly due to changing winds or late season melt, said Meier. During the first week of October, CU-Boulder's NSIDC will issue a full analysis of the 2011 results and a comparison to previous years.

NSIDC is part of CU-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences -- a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquartered on the CU campus -- and is funded primarily by NASA.

NSIDC's sea ice data come from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder sensor on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program F17 satellite using methods developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

For more information and graphics visit CU-Boulder's NSIDC website at nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2011/091511.html.

Contact


Walt Meier, 303-492-6508

Walt@nsidc.org

Mark Serreze, 303-492-2963
serreze@kryos.colorado.edu

Katherine, Leitzell, 303-492-1497

leitzell@nsidc.org
 

Researchers from the University of Colorado and Kansas State University have been awarded a grant for more than $850,000 to study the impacts of climate change on prairie dogs in the Boulder area.

The massive grant -- from the Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation -- is designed to give the researchers three years in the field to try and figure out how climate change is altering prairie dog habitat and how the rodents are responding to those changes.
 

The study will be focused on open space lands in Boulder and Boulder County and will include testing soils, plants and prairie dog behavior. Researchers and city officials say the results will have implications for how cities manage prairie dogs in the future.
 

Tim Seastedt, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at CU and the principal investigator in the study, said global climate change has already caused changes in the growing season and the types of plant species that are found on urban open space.
 

One of the primary questions is whether those changes are causing prairie dogs to change their habits, including being more active during the winter -- which can lead to soil erosion after the rodents eat plants to the bare ground.
 

"The classical studies on prairie dogs for foraging behavior were sort of null and void" under the new climate reality, Seastedt said.
 

For example, prairie dogs don't hibernate, but they do tend to stay underground during the winter. Seastedt said warmer temperatures and less snow cover may change that behavior.
 

"This makes the argument that they're going to be up there grazing for a longer period of time," Seastedt said.
 

He said changes in climate and plant species could present a "variety of challenges that this keystone species has never faced."
 

"If these guys (prairie dogs) change their behavior, then they virtually reconstruct the system," he said.
 

The study also will examine the interactions between native and non-native plants, including whether new species are taking up water used by the native variety.
 

Seastedt said Boulder is the perfect place for a case study. After all, the city offers more protected prairie dog habitat than the massive Pawnee National Grassland on the northeastern plains.
 

And Boulder has a variety of non-native plant species that officials already have noticed seem to be changing the landscape.
 

Heather Swanson, Boulder's wildlife ecologist, said some of the changes reported in recent years include loss of topsoil and changes in plant species where prairie dogs can be found.
 

"Hopefully this study will actually document those changes, because right now it's just sort of anecdotal changes over time," she said.
 

Laurel Hartley is an assistant professor of biology at CU-Denver. She is an expert on prairie dogs and is teaming up with Seastedt on the study.
 

"We think we're going to find that in some places that the prairie dogs push the plant community in ways that we haven't seen before," she said.
 

She described the project as being "cutting edge" in terms of examining how global climate change will affect a species down the road.
 

Experiments will include creating cages to keep prairie dogs from grazing in certain areas and mimicking the various ways that climate change might eventually affect plants -- such as supplementing water to simulate changes in rain patterns.
 

"We'll know how grasslands will respond under certain scenarios," Hartley said.
 

She added that the results of the study likely would change the way cities such as Boulder address prairie dogs and grasslands.
 

"It definitely will have management implications," Hartley said.
Jesse Nippert, from Kansas State University, is a specialist in isotopic water analysis and also will be involved in the study.
 

Boulder Councilman Ken Wilson, who studied under Seastedt at CU, said he's eager to see the group's findings.
 

"I'm concerned that our management plan has not been informed by science that would look at what's happening on these fragmented parcels" of open space, Wilson said. "We've seen some impacts that are disturbing, where (prairie dogs) totally defoliate these areas. We need to understand why that's happening so that we can manage our grasslands better."
 

Contact Camera Staff Writer Heath Urie at 303-473-1328 or urieh@dailycamera.com.

New photographs taken of a vast glacier in northern Greenland have revealed the astonishing rate of its breakup, with one scientist saying he was rendered "speechless."

In August 2010, part of the Petermann Glacier about four times the size of Manhattan island broke off , prompting a hearing in Congress.

Researcher Alun Hubbard, of the Centre for Glaciology at Aberystwyth University, U.K., told msnbc.com by phone that another section, about twice the size of Manhattan, appeared close to breaking off.

In 2009, scientists installed GPS masts on the glacier to track its movement.
But when they returned in July this year, they found the ice had been melting so quickly — at an unexpected 16-and-a-half feet in two years — that some of the masts stuck into the glacier were no longer in position.

Hubbard, who has been working with Jason Box, of Ohio State University, and others, said in a statement issued by the Byrd Polar Research Center that scientists were still trying to work out how fast the glacier was moving and the effect on the ice sheet feeding the glacier.

'Really weird'

But he said he was taken aback by the difference between 2009 and 2011 when he visited the glacier in late July.

"Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the break-up, which rendered me speechless," he said in the statement.

"I'm very familiar with the glacier. It's very hard to sort of envisage something so big not being there ... to come back and basically see an ice shelf has disappeared, which is 20 kilometers across (about 12 miles) ... I was speechless and started laughing because I couldn't sort of believe it," Hubbard added, speaking to msnbc.com.

"It was really weird when the helicopter first came over," he added.

Hubbard told msnbc.com that he had gone to the glacier to recover instruments used to monitor the glacier and time-lapse photographs.

"What I saw there is this ice shelf is riddled with rifts and cracks. You can see another big rift another 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) back into" the glacier, he said.

Hubbard said the large rift, which the researchers have dubbed "The Big Kahuna," was getting bigger. He was cautious about predicting when it would create a new vast ice island, but said it could happen "maybe next year, something like that."

'Abnormally warm'

He said while sea glacier's "calving" of ice bergs was a natural process, they were witnessing something out of the ordinary.

"The break-off last year is bigger than anything seen for at least 150 years," Hubbard said.

"This region (northern Greenland) is experiencing temperatures which are abnormally warm ... I think the far northwest of Greenland is seeing a kind of new regime of climate," he added.

The Humbolt Glacier, the widest in the northern hemisphere, is also retreating, Hubbard said. He said he was not a climate scientist, but said the pattern of ice melting in the area was "a definite consequence of climate change and global warming."

Writing in the Annals of Glaciology journal, published on Aug. 22, the researchers said Greenland's glaciers had collectively lost 592.6 square miles of ice between 2000 and 2010.

The August 2010 "calving" event saw the creation of an ice island of 112 square miles, causing the Petermann Glacier to retreat by about 8 miles.

The island contained enough water to keep the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for two years or to provide the entire U.S. with tap water for 120 days, Andreas Muenchow, professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, said at the time.

The Byrd center statement, which summarized the journal report, said while this loss of ice was "extreme compared with others ... it is part of a larger pattern of ice area loss concentrated in north Greenland."

Twice as many glaciers are retreating as the number that are advancing, and the area of ice lost was nine times the amount gained, the researchers found.

'Harbinger of many changes'

At the Congressional hearing in August 2010, the then chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Rep. Edward Markey, said the melting of the Greenland ice sheet was "but one harbinger of the many changes to come."

"Scientists, skeptical by both nature and training, always urge a dose of caution when looking at any one event as evidence of climate change," he said in his opening statement. "This level of professional skepticism is what makes the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused by man all the more powerful."

Markey listed extreme weather events, such as a record-breaking heatwave and drought in Russia, extreme floods in Asia, record-breaking temperatures on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and "mega storms and floods" in many parts of the country.

"Take a step back from these individual pieces and we see a mosaic that could not be clearer. Our world is becoming less hospitable with every passing year," he added.

Ian Johnston
msnbc.com
 

Led by CU-Boulder doctoral student Liesl Erb, the study team assessed 69 historical sites known to host pikas in a swath of the Southern Rockies ranging from southern Wyoming through Colorado and into northern New Mexico. The results showed that 65 of the 69 historical sites that had hosted pikas -- some dating back more than a century -- were still occupied by the round-eared, hamster-like mammals, Erb said.

The new study stands in contrast to a 2011 study in Nevada's Great Basin that showed local extinction rates of pika populations there have increased nearly five-fold in the past decade. That study, by a separate research group, also showed that local Great Basin pika populations had moved up in elevation nearly 500 feet in the past 10 years, a migration believed to be triggered by warming temperatures.

Despite the low number of extirpations, or local population extinctions, in the Southern Rockies, the CU-Boulder team found that the pattern of pika disappearance at particular sites was not random, said Erb of the ecology and evolutionary biology department and lead study author. "The sites that had been abandoned by pikas in our study area all were drier on average than the occupied sites," she said.

A paper on the new CU-Boulder study by Erb is being published in the September issue of the journal Ecology. Co-authors include CU-Boulder Research Associate Chris Ray and Associate Professor Robert Guralnick, both affiliated with the ecology and evolutionary biology department.

The study was funded primarily by the National Geographic Society.

One likely reason for the relative success of pikas in the Southern Rocky Mountains study is that available habitats are higher in elevation and are more contiguous than habitats in Nevada's Great Basin, said Erb. But some climate models are predicting drier conditions in parts of the Southern Rockies in the coming decades as the climate warms, she said.

Alpine species are among the plants and animals most threatened by climatic shifts because of their physiological and geographic constraints, said Erb. In 2010, the U.S. government denied endangered species listing for the American pika in part because there was insufficient data on its distribution and abundance across western North America. The American pika lives in mountainous regions including British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, California and New Mexico.

Surprisingly, most of the pikas that have disappeared from Great Basin sites under study in recent years were from sites that experienced extremely cold temperatures and may be related to a lack of winter snowpack insulation, said Ray, who has participated in several Great Basin pika studies including the 2011 study. Ray suspects pikas may reduce summer foraging activities to avoid heat stress caused by rising temperatures, leading to smaller winter food caches that can't sustain them during extreme cold snaps.

Guralnick, also curator of invertebrate zoology for the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, said pikas are becoming a "bellwether" species for mountain ecosystems, primarily due to their recent Great Basin declines. Prior to the new CU survey, population trends of pikas in the Rockies were relatively unknown, he said.

"Many have assumed that warming temperatures would be the primary signal affecting North American pikas," said Guralnick. "This study shows it is more complicated than that, and that drier conditions could affect the persistence of pikas across the West."

The CU-Boulder study team initially looked at about 800 historical records of pika sightings in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, but most locations were not specific enough for scientific use. The team eventually narrowed down the historical sites of pikas to 69 specific places known to have been occupied at some point before 1980, using tools like GPS to help pinpoint the geographical accuracy of each individual site.

Members of the rabbit family, the conspicuous pikas can be seen scurrying about rocky debris known as talus in alpine and subalpine regions of the Rockies, emitting their signature, high-pitched squeaks. Instead of hibernating, pikas cache huge amounts of plants and flowers known as hay piles under large rocks that sustain them through the long winters.

The CU team used data from Oregon State University's PRISM Climate Group to compile local climate information from 1908 to 2007 for the 69 historical pika sites in the Southern Rockies. The information produced estimates of monthly precipitation and minimum and maximum temperatures. The team confirmed the presence of pikas at each site either visually, by their distinctive squeaks, or by evidence of fresh pika hay piles cached under rocks in the study areas.

Sites visited early in the 2008 field season that lacked fresh pika signs were revisited in late October and early November for re-evaluation, Erb said. In places where pikas were still absent, researchers searched rock slopes up to two miles in all directions in an attempt to locate pika populations.

Volunteers have helped gather similar data on pikas through the PikaNET program, the Front Range Pika Project and the New Mexico Pika Monitoring Project. Such volunteer projects are organized through collaborations between CU-Boulder, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, the Denver Zoo, Rocky Mountain Wild, Colorado State University, the Mountain Studies Institute in Silverton, Colo., the San Juan Public Lands Center headquartered in Durango, Colo., and the Seventh Generation Institute in Santa Fe, N.M.

"It is good news that pikas are doing better in the Southern Rocky Mountains than some other places," said Erb. "It is likely that the geographic traits of the Rockies are a big reason why we are not seeing significant declines, at least not yet."

Contact

Liesl Erb, 303-859-7803

Liesl.Erb@colorado.edu

The exhibit will open Sept. 6, and it is free and open to the public. Visit University of Colorado Museum of Natural History website for museum hours and location information.

Meet the Scientist: Tom Veblen, PhD, professor of geography, will host a formal opening on Thursday, Sept.15 at 7 p.m. in the Paleontology Hall of the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. A reception prior to the talk will begin at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Veblen and his students have been studying the data and research findings on long-term fire history in the region to create this public education program.

An international team of researchers has combined data from multiple sources to provide the clearest account yet of how much glacial ice surges into the sea following the collapse of Antarctic ice shelves.

The work by researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), the Laboratoire d'Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the University of Toulouse, France, and the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) details recent ice losses while promising to sharpen future predictions of further ice loss and sea level rise likely to result from ongoing changes along the Antarctic Peninsula.

"Not only do you get an initial loss of glacial ice when adjacent ice shelves collapse, but you get continued ice losses for many years—even decades—to come," says Christopher Shuman, a researcher at UMBC's Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "This further demonstrates how important ice shelves are to Antarctic glaciers."

Shuman is lead author of the study "2001-2009 elevation and mass losses in the Larsen A and B embayments, Antarctic Peninsula" published online today in the Journal of Glaciology.

An ice shelf is a thick floating tongue of ice, fed by a tributary glacier, extending into the sea off a land mass. Previous research showed that the recent collapse of several ice shelves in Antarctica led to acceleration of the glaciers that feed into them. Combining satellite data from NASA and the French space agency CNES, along with measurements collected during aircraft missions similar to ongoing NASA IceBridge flights, Shuman, Etienne Berthier of the University of Toulouse and Ted Scambos of the NSIDC produced detailed ice loss maps from 2001 to 2009 for the main tributary glaciers of the Larsen A and B ice shelves, which collapsed in 1995 and 2002, respectively.

"The approach we took drew on the strengths of each data source to produce the most complete picture yet of how these glaciers are changing," Berthier said, noting that the study relied on easy access to remote sensing information provided by NASA and CNES. The team used data from NASA sources including the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments and the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat).

The analysis reveals rapid elevation decreases of more than 500 feet for some glaciers, and it puts the total ice loss from 2001 to 2006 squarely between the widely varying and less certain estimates produced using an approach that relies on assumptions about a glacier's mass budget.

The authors' analysis shows ice loss in the study area of at least 11.2 gigatons per year from 2001 to 2006. Their ongoing work shows ice loss from 2006 to 2010 was almost as large, averaging 10.2 gigatons per year.

"This study shows where the tracking of sea level rise is heading in terms of the level of detail possible and the instrumentation that can be brought to bear," Scambos said. "We're showing that glacier changes can start fast, with a single climate or ocean ‘bang', but they have a long persistence."

The article is available at www.igsoc.org/. An animation showing ice edge changes for the Larsen B ice shelf and its adjacent tributary glaciers is available at svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?3803. A map showing elevation changes of tributary glaciers is available at http://etienne.berthier.free.fr/images/ElevationChange_2001to2006_LarsenB.jpg.
 

A companion paper, "The triggering of sub glacial lake drainage during rapid glacier drawdown: Crane Glacier, Antarctic Peninsula," by the same three authors, led by Scambos, also is available online at www.igsoc.org/annals/ in the issue "Earth's Disappearing Ice: Drivers, Responses and Impacts."
 

For a NSIDC fact sheet visit nsidc.org/quickfacts/iceshelves.html

Contact
Anthony Lane, 410-455-5793
alane@umbc.edu
Katherine Leitzell, 303-492-1497
leitzell@nsidc.org
 

Their work, published yesterday in the journal Science, suggests that the plummeting snowpack could have serious consequences for more than 70 million people who depend on water from the runoff-fed Columbia, Colorado and Missouri rivers.

"The Northern Rockies have shown the greatest response to warming in terms of snowpack decline," said lead author Greg Pederson, a research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Northern Rocky Mountain Research Center. "Temperature, especially now, seems to be undercutting snowpack."

That's a marked shift from the pattern that predominated from A.D. 1200 to the 1980s: When snowpack was low in the Northern Rockies, it was high in the Southern Rockies -- and vice versa.

But for the past 30 years or so, snowpack in both regions has shrunk. Pederson and his colleagues pin the blame on warmer springs driven by a combination of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and natural climate variation.

"In the last 30 years, there's been this growing synchrony where the whole West is getting warmer," said Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. "That part is not new, but they point out a few other occasions in the last millennium where there has been low snowpack in the West were also periods that were unusually warm. That's a pretty strong message: that historically, low snowpack and warm spring go hand in hand."

This time, no return to cooler period

Tim Barnett, a climatologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said the new results appear to agree with his earlier work that used climate models to show humans' greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to declining snowpack in the western United States.

"I think we get some idea of what natural variability is in the snowpack," said Barnett, though he noted his expertise lies in climate models, not tree-ring studies. "The fact that things have sort of gone south here in the last 30 to 40 years [in the new study] pretty much jibes with what we've done."

Meanwhile, Pederson said he sees an important difference between modern conditions and the brief 14th- and 15th-century periods of warm temperatures and low snowpack along the Columbia and Missouri river headwaters.

"They were eventually followed by cooling," he said. "Now, alas, we don't expect to return to a cooler period."

That glimpse into the past was provided by 66 tree-ring data sets scientists used to stitch together an annual record of snowpack far older than modern observations, which began in the early 20th century.

They used some records from ponderosa pine and Douglas fir trees, which thrive at lower elevations and in years with heavy snowfall. But to track snowfall in higher elevations, the scientists examined rings from subalpine larch, mountain hemlock and subalpine fir trees -- species whose growth is retarded by snowfall.

Peering into the past

In those cases, "you're often looking at a tree you could easily put your arms around -- and it could be 500 to 800 years old," Pederson said.

The combined tree-ring record is valuable because it overcomes a vexing problem with many modern climate observations: They don't go far enough into the past to show scientists what conditions were like before human activities began transforming the environment.

"We built a system to observe our changing environment during the period it's been changing rapidly," said Mote.

Pederson says he's confident his tree-ring results are accurate in part because during a brief period of overlap during the 20th century, the snowpack depth derived from the tree rings and modern observations look like "photocopies" of one another.

Although the new study describes ongoing decline in snowpack throughout the Rockies, this year has bucked that long-term trend. Record snowpacks have been recorded in the northern West, according to the Agriculture Department's Natural Resources Conservation Service, which monitors snowpack.

Experts characterized it as a brief blip in a longer-term trend of decline. They attributed last year's unusually wet winter to the La Niña weather pattern that was in place from August to May.

"We're seeing 200 to 400 percent of normal for this time of year," said Michael Strobel, director of the service's National Water and Climate Center.

Source: New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/06/10/10climatewire-researchers-see-unusually-rapid-decline-in-w-89625.html?smid=tw-nytenvironment&seid=auto

This year the course will be held from Aug. 8-12 at UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) in Boulder. There will be two field experiences as part of the course as well as opportunities to learn from and talk to well known climate scientists and climate educators. A small amount of advance preparation will be needed to familiarize yourself with the wiki technology used during the course and explore some background information. The course consists of the five-day summer classes, a fall enactment of the lesson you co-construct during the summer classes, and a final follow-up evening meeting to submit completed lessons. There is no fee for this course due to support from CU Outreach and UCAR. You will earn recertification credit through your participation in this course.

If you are interested in participating in this course please email Deborah.morrison@colorado.edu to be placed on the course list. The course will be capped at 20 participants. 

A new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates the infestation of trees by mountain pine beetles in the high country across the West could potentially trigger earlier snowmelt and increase water yields from snowpack that accumulates beneath affected trees.

Led by CU-Boulder geological sciences department doctoral student Evan Pugh, the study was undertaken near Grand Lake, Colo., adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park, an area that has been devastated by mountain pine beetle attacks in recent years. Mountain pine beetles have killed more than 4 million acres of lodgepole pine trees in Colorado and southern Wyoming since 1996, the most severe outbreak on record.

Pugh and his team monitored eight pairs of tree stands, each pair consisting of one live stand and one dead stand roughly an acre each in size and located adjacent to each other, sharing the same topography, elevation and slope. The team monitored the two distinct phases of pine beetle tree death during the three-year study -- the "red phase" in which dead trees still retained red needles, and the "gray phase" in which all of the tree needles and some small branches had been shed, said Pugh.

The study showed that there was roughly 15 percent more snow accumulation under the gray phase stands than under living stands or red phase stands, likely due in large part to a lack of "snow interception" by needled tree branches that can cause snowflakes to "sublimate" into gas and return to the atmosphere, he said. Gray phase trees also allow more solar radiation through their canopies than live trees and red phase trees, increasing the potential for earlier melt, said Pugh, lead study author.

Snowmelt rates were highest under red phase trees, with snow disappearing up to a week earlier than snow in adjacent, healthy stands even though both received the same amount of snowfall at their bases. Pugh showed the earlier snowmelt in red phase tree stands is due in large part to the amount of litter -- needles and branches -- that drops or is blown from the trees onto on the snow surface, decreasing its solar reflecting power, or albedo, and causing it to absorb more of the sun's radiation and heat up slightly.

"This is the first study to look at the potential effects that different stages of mountain pine beetle tree death may have on snowmelt," Pugh said. "What we are seeing is earlier snowmelt and more snow accumulation in dead forests."

A paper on the subject was published online today in the peer-reviewed journal, Ecohydrology. The paper was co-authored by CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Eric Small and funded in part by a CU-Boulder Innovative Seed Grant. Four undergraduates -- Leslie Baehr, Tevis Blom, Bryant Kealey and Jon Hammond -- received internship credit for helping to conduct the research.

The study took place at the headwaters of the Colorado River in north-central Colorado. Six of the eight healthy tree stands in the study were made up primarily of lodgepole pines, while two were made up of mixed conifer trees. "One of the hardest parts of this study was to find stands of healthy trees in this area," said Pugh.

The red phase that occurs following tree death usually lasts about 18 months, and the onset of the gray phase occurs about three or four years after tree death, said Pugh.

"One of the big surprises to me was that changes in snowpack depth and snowmelt timing as a result of the pine beetle outbreak were not larger," said Small. But the continuing effects could become more significant in the coming decades, he said.

The CU-Boulder team used a wide variety of instruments during the study. In addition to avalanche poles used to periodically measure the snow depth at the 16 study stands, the team also inserted tiny thermometers at various snow depths to help them predict when the snow would likely melt. They also dug snow pits in each of the tree stands and weighed known volumes of snow to calculate density and water content.

Pugh's team also used devices known as pyranometers to measure the snow surface albedo and the transmission of sunlight through forest canopies. Fisheye camera images taken from the snow surface helped the researchers to calculate the size and structure of the various tree stand canopies, he said.

"The students really got something out of working on this project," said Small. "Not only did they get internship credit, they had a chance to conduct meaningful research."

A massive fire in the study area in the late 1800s resulted in most of the succeeding lodgepole pines to be about the same size and age, making them easier targets for pine beetles. While mountain pine beetle infestations are natural events, climate change probably has played a role in the most recent outbreak. Drought conditions in the West in recent years have caused living pines to absorb less water, decreasing their ability to produce enough sap to "pitch out" beetles that are attacking them, Pugh said.

Water managers in Salt Lake City have reported extra water in river basins that hydrologic models had not predicted, Pugh said, an indication beetle-killed trees are having an impact on meltwater.

With the exception of two studies in British Columbia looking at the effects of beetle- killed lodgepole pine trees on snow accumulation and melt on flat terrain at a single site, research regarding the hydrologic impacts of mountain pine beetles has largely been speculative, said Pugh.

"Our study is the first to analyze the multiple stages of tree death from mountain pine beetles and their different impacts on snow accumulation and snowmelt," said Pugh. "There is no on/off switch here -- only gradual changes.

"The effects of the beetle-killed tree stands in terms of snow accumulation are not going to affect ski resort seasons by any means," he said. "What we can say is there likely will be additional water resources for water managers. Additional snowpack coupled with dead trees that are no longer sucking up water will likely lead to more runoff."

For more information visit geode.colorado.edu/~small/foresthydro.html

Contact

Evan Pugh, 303-900-2018
Evan.Pugh@colorado.edu
Eric Small, 303-818-0243
Eric.Small@colorado.edu

In this interactive workshop you will explore the relationship between the health of our mountain forests and the quantity and quality of our drinking water. Do you know your connection to the Gulf of Mexico? To the western slope of Colorado? To your own watershed?

Learn how to use interdisciplinary, inquiry and content-rich activities to teach “how to think, not what to think” about complex environmental issues that incorporate technology and literacy as well as how to present material to a culturally diverse audience and include multicultural perspectives. Get wet in the Plum Creek watershed, and help with a forest restoration project.

Dress for the out-of-doors, be prepared for hiking, and splashing!

Date: Sat, 07/16/2011 - 9:00am - Sun, 07/17/2011 - 5:00pm
Who: 4th—12th grade formal and non-formal educators
Materials: Take home both PLT and Project WET activity guides, plus other materials and resources.
Cost: $75.00  For registration information click here or call 303-380-7984. Optional 1 semester credit is an additional $50.00.
Meals: Lunch Saturday through lunch Sunday.
Lodging: Optional camping Saturday night. Bring your own camping equipment. Limited space is available in our dormitory style cabins (you will need to bring your own sheets or sleeping bag, blanket, pillow, and towel).
Instructors: Shawna Crocker, Pavlos Stavropoulos, and guests.

Learn more about Project Learning Tree at www.plt.org and Project WET at www.projectwet.org

Sponsored by the Colorado State Forest Service, Mile High Million (GreenPrint Denver), and Woodbine Ecology Center.

For students in the San Juan Basin, the water cycle no longer starts with a passing cloud dropping rain on a distant mountaintop. Thanks to a new curriculum resource, students can learn how water flows through the San Juan Mountains – from Engineer Mountain to the Animas River – and about the wildlife it encounters and the local reservoirs where it is stored.

The program, designed for third- through fifth-graders, is called “My Water Comes From the San Juan Mountains” and includes a storybook, lesson plans and activity kit. The project was a collaboration between the Mountain Studies Institute, San Juan Public Lands, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Fort Lewis College.

To read more about the program, click here.

The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness (CLEAN) Pathway project (http://www.cleanet.org/) is pleased to announce the continuation of our professional development opportunities to support teachers and faculty who teach
about climate and energy.

For undergraduate faculty, join our online workshop to be held June 7-8 and 14-15: "Navigating Climate Complexities in the Classroom.”  Workshop activities will include presentations about the climate system, examples of successful activities that illustrate the interactions between components of the climate system, work time to develop new classroom activities for teaching these concepts, and opportunities to collaborate and network with other faculty.

The workshop is free of charge and will be  held online so no travel is necessary. Space is limited and pre-registration is required by Friday, May 20. You must attend both sessions.  

For details about this event and to register, go to: http://cleanet.org/clean/community/climateworkshop/index.html

June 13-15

An educational tour of the Colorado River Basin organized by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education will take place on June 13-15, 2011. Together with 100 local experts, educators, elected officials and water professionals, we will visit the Colorado River headwaters and hike in Rocky Mountain National Park, key tributaries such as the Blue River, tour energy facilities, a working vineyard in Palisade and water supplies on Grand Mesa.

Teachers can get 1.5 credits for participating in the "Forests to Faucets" Project WET/ Project Learning Tree workshop activities along the way. Cost to teachers (who register in time): only $100, because the $400 total registration fee is being subsidized by donors, including the City of Grand Junction Water Department, the Mesa County Water Association and the Forests to Faucets program Colorado State Forest Service).   Cost includes bus, lodging, meals and materials; to get the 1.5 credits is an additional $80. The tour is sold out, but we are holding a few places for teachers.

There are a limited number of scholarships available, so register as soon as possible by contacting Kristin Marharg at (303) 377-4433 or kmaharg@cfwe.org

Click here for complete tour information, including itinerary.

Thursday May 19th 4:30-5:30

Who: Anyone who is interested in Service Learning, Energy Conservation or Climate Change in the classroom.

What: Join us for an exciting webinar focused on bringing Energy Conservation into the classrooms using Service Learning. This event is sponsored by the Alliance for Climate Education, Audubon Colorado, and Earth Force and is open to educators, community partners, school administrators, support staff, and anyone else who is interested in learning how to save energy in schools. Expect to learn about hands on opportunities for students, learn how to conduct energy audits (including how to use kilowatt meters, laser thermometers and light meters), gather tools to use in your classroom or community setting, discover community resources to help you tackle environmental/energy issues in your classroom and network with others interested in service learning!

How: Contact Stephanie DeMattee and she will send you all of the details on how to
log-in to the webinar. 303-415-0130 or sdemattee@audubon.org

How are BMPs incorporated into well field developments and who decides? Are BMPs effective? How do we know? How much do they cost? Can they save operators money?

These questions will be explored through presentations and discussions. Participants are encouraged to listen, learn, and share their experience with other workshop participants.


For Workshop Agenda and Registration and other logistic information, click here.

The workshop is sponsored by the Intermountain Oil and Gas BMP Project of the Natural Resources Law Center. Funding is provided through an Outreach Grant from the University of Colorado and a project grant from the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America through the Environmentally Friendly Drilling Program.

When: May 7, 2011

Where: Nederland, Colorado

What: The NAAEE Guidelines for Excellence provide a set of recommendations for developing and administering high quality environmental education programs in schools, museums, parks, camps and nature centers.  Participants will receive copies of Excellence in Environmental Education: Guidelines for K-12 Learning and Nonformal Environmental Education Programs: Guidelines for Excellence, as well as other resources for staff training, curriculum development and program administration.

Workshop Objectives:

·        To identify the key characteristics of high quality environmental education programs;
·        To discuss the relationship between program design and program evaluation; and
·        To describe how other documents in the National Project for Excellence in Environmental Education series can be used to develop quality programs.

Who Should Attend?

Pre-Service and K-12 Teachers, Environmental and Nonformal Educators, Rangers, Interpreters and Guides, Education Designers, School and Program Administrators

Details and Registration:

This FREE workshop will be held at the Wild Bear Mountain Ecology Center, 20 Lakeview Drive, Suite 107, Nederland Colorado, from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM, on May 7th with an optional drive and hike to the historic Caribou mining area and stellar views of the continental divide later in the day.  Participants should bring drinks and brown bag lunches, though other food options are available nearby. 

There is limited space and resources so pre-registration is required.

For more information or to register for the workshop please email Eric Carpenter at: eric@rockymountained.com or call 805.705.6026

That's the question addressed by a film screening and discussion tomorrow on CU campus:

The Burning Ice film screening and Creative Climates discussion will invite both community members and Communikey Festival goers to explore the important relationships between culture, creativity, and complex environmental issues. Join us April 14^th to learn what some of the world’s most cutting edge artists and some of our very own local Boulder artists and climate scientists have to say about how the arts and sciences can unite to combat climate change and unleash creative problem solving for a sustainable future.

More information about the film and event here.

When:  April 14, Film at 1 pm, discussion at 2:45 pm. 

Where:  CU ATLAS Blackbox Theatre.
Contact: Sarah Dawn Haynes
Additional information: http://ecenter.colorado.edu
 

You can see all the CU Environmental Center's upcoming events on their calendar page.  They have a plethora of events, and are hosting CU's Carbon Cleanse this week.  Next week:  Public lecture by Winona LaDuke on indigenous practices for environmental justice. 

You may have heard a little pika calling at you from an alpine boulder-field, or you may have seen one scampering over the rocks with a mouthful of flowers.  Sometimes called the “little chief hare,” this small member of the rabbit family is a vocal and bustling icon of alpine communities. It is also threatened by climate change.

Research Associate Christine Ray from CU-Boulder’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology will explore the nature and conservation status of pikas worldwide, with an emphasis on her research on the local species during her presentation, “Climate and the American Pika,” on Thursday, April 7.

The program is part of CU-Boulder’s “Learn More About Climate” initiative that brings climate change-related topics to communities across the state.  LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu is an online tool that features five videos that localize climate change by pairing interviews with leading scientists and everyday Coloradans to explain how climate change is affecting our state.  The site also offers resources for teachers, students, policy makers and community members who want to learn more about this critical issue. 

Dr. Ray has studied pikas throughout the western US for more than 20 years and is the author of many scientific papers on threatened plants and animals.  She has taught field studies centered on the pika almost every summer since 1989 and has been interviewed about the plight of the pika for national and international news broadcasts. Her knowledge of pika behavior helped the producers of David Attenborough’s “Life of Mammals” film a special sequence on pikas.

The April 7 program is co-sponsored by the CU-Boulder Office for University Outreach, Arkansas Valley Audubon Society, Pueblo Zoological Society, Pueblo City-County Library District and the Nature and Raptor Center of Pueblo. It will be held at 7 p.m. in the InfoZone at the Robert Hoag Rawlings Public Library, 100 East Abriendo Ave., in Pueblo. Tickets or reservations are not required and the event is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact outreach@colorado.edu.

"Teaching Energy Awareness: Understanding Sources and Uses"

April 11-12 and 18-19
Description: For undergraduate faculty, an online workshop will be held April 11 - 12 and 18 - 19: "Teaching Energy Awareness: Understanding Sources and Uses.”  Workshop activities will include presentations about sources of energy, examples of successful activities illustrating the relationship between energy types and their uses, work time to develop new classroom activities or courses for teaching these concepts, and opportunities to collaborate with other faculty. The workshop is free of charge and will be held online so no travel is necessary. Space is limited and pre-registration is required by Friday, April 1. You must attend both sessions.  For details about this event and to register, go to: http://cleanet.org/clean/community/energyworkshop/index.html

"It's a Feast! Climate Resources Galore on NASA's Global Climate Change Website"

April 11
Description: For middle and high school teachers, CLEAN will host a one hour webinar on Monday, April 11 :  “It’s a Feast! Climate Resources Galore on NASA’s Global Climate Change Website," presented by Laura Faye Tenenbaum, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. Time – 4pm Pacific / 5pm Mountain / 6 pm Central / 7 pm Eastern . This event is free of charge but space is limited and pre-registration is required by Monday, April 4. For details about this event and to register, go to http://www.cleanet.org/clean/community/webinars/nasa.html 

More events are coming up in May and June – find the full schedule on the CLEAN Community page.

RAFT

"What is climate change?"

Tuesday, April 12th, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Description: “How do I know if Colorado’s climate is changing and how it will affect me?” this is the driving question that you and your students will investigate in a lesson designed by Colorado elementary and middle school teachers to integrate nature of science and climate science content. Join two science educators, Stephanie Chasteen and Deb Morrison, from the University of Colorado at Boulder for this evening workshop to explore this lesson designed for middle school science students. Adaptations for younger or older students will be highlighted. The inquiry-based lesson is student-centered with numerous internet resources. Students become familiar with the topic by discussing media coverage of climate change in Colorado, their own opinions about the topic, and evidence supporting their hypothesis. Featuring video, data analysis and group discussions and presentations, the lesson concludes with each student writing a newspaper article summarizing the class findings.

Cost: Members: FREE; Non-Members: $10

This workshop is made possible by the CU-Boulder Learn More About Climate project.

Sign up for the workshop here.

Project WILD and Project Learning Tree

"Using Sheltered Instruction"

April 16 & 17, 2011
Description: Projects WILD and Learning Tree are interdisciplinary, supplemental environmental, and hands-on education programs suitable for learners of all ages, types, cultures and ethnic groups. Activities have been correlated with the Colorado Model Content Standards for Science, Geography, History, Math, and Reading/Writing, and are available in Spanish. This workshop is designed for educators who teach Linguistically Diverse Students. Participants will participate in demonstrations of sheltering techniques for content area instruction and practice using rubrics for evaluating and modifying activities and text materials.

Click here to learn more and download the registration form.

Project WILD

"The Best of Books and Bears"

April 16, 2011 8:30am – 4:30pm

Coyote Ridge Elementary, Fort Collins

Description: Just as talking to the animals was a boon for Dr. Doolittle, reading about them and linking the reading to a wide variety of exciting activities can give a real boost to students’ basic and advanced comprehension skills! Use critter books, together with standards-based Project WILD activities, to improve comprehension strategies for all elementary levels. Participants will be provided with dozens of indoor and outdoor activities to enhance learning and motivation.

Cost: $15.00
1⁄2 continuing ed credit is available thru CSM for $35.00

To register:

Thompson Teachers use Coursewhere for TIC credit.

All registrants need to send a $15 check to: Betsy Perna, 1500 Lakeside Ave, Fort Collins, CO 80521. Include your grade, school, and email address.

For more info email betsy.perna@thompsonschools.org

Rocky Mountain Nature Association

"Spring Ecology"
April 16
Explore Rocky Mountain National Park as it wakes up from winter.  Learn about the biological changes happening within the plants and animals of this mountain ecosystem with CU professor Tim Kittel and how these changes help shape the decisions Park managers make about the valuable resources within this diverse area. Click here for more information.
 
For more information or to register for an educational adventure through RMNA, please visit www.rmna.org or call the Field Seminars Center at 970-586-3262.
 

Mile High Youth Corps-Colorado Springs is a regional, non-profit, AmeriCorps affiliated organization that provides employment, education and leadership opportunities for young adults ages 18-24. MHYC offers summer opportunities from May through August/October. Youth work on environment conservation projects. Various positions have the opportunities to camp, use a chainsaw and work in the office, learning about non-profit practices. Benefits include weekly stipends and scholarships for Crewmembers and a weekly salary for Crew Leaders.  The position is open until filled, but interviews are currently starting to take place, so apply ASAP.  

Learn more at www.milehighyouthcorps.org
 

May 16-21

Learn skills and techniques to effectively teach and engage others about the environment while earning credit for NRRT365-Environmental Education.

Participants will spend one day in the classroom in Fort Collins followed by five days of field work at the KMAC campus in Estes Park. This course requires participants to: Live in a group camp environment with shared responsibilities, camp on hard surfaces, hike daily, hike 8 miles with a one-way elevation gain of 2,500 feet, be willing to try rock climbing in an outdoor setting, and have fun!

Cost: $610

College credit (optional): $210 additional for 3 credits of Environmental Education (NRRT 365) from Colorado State University

To register, click here.
 

The 2011 Arctic sea ice extent maximum that marks the beginning of the melt season appears to be tied for the lowest ever measured by satellites, say scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The CU-Boulder research team believes the lowest annual maximum ice extent of 5,650,000 square miles occurred on March 7. The maximum ice extent was 463,000 square miles below the 1979-2000 average, an area slightly larger than the states of Texas and California combined. The 2011 measurements were tied with those from 2006 as the lowest maximum sea ice extents measured since satellite record keeping began in 1979.

Virtually all climate scientists believe shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures in the region caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth's atmosphere. Because of the spiraling downward trend of Arctic sea ice extent in the last decade, some CU scientists are predicting the Arctic Ocean may be ice free in the summers within the next several decades.

The seven lowest maximum Arctic sea ice extents measured by satellites all have occurred in the last seven years, said CU-Boulder Research Scientist Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who participated the latest study. "I'm not surprised by the new data because we've seen a downward trend in winter sea ice extent for some time now."

Scientists believe Arctic sea ice functions like an air conditioner for the global climate system by naturally cooling air and water masses, playing a key role in ocean circulation and reflecting solar radiation back into space, said Meier. In the Arctic summer months, sunlight is absorbed by the growing amounts of open water, raising surface temperatures and causing more ice to melt.

"I think one of the reasons the Arctic sea ice maximum extent is declining is that the autumn ice growth is delayed by warmer temperatures and the ice extent is not able to ‘catch up' through the winter," said Meier. "In addition, the clock runs out on the annual ice growth season as temperatures start to rise along with the sun during the spring months."

Since satellite record keeping began in 1979, the maximum Arctic sea ice extent has occurred as early as Feb. 18 and as late as March 31, with an average date of March 6. Since the CU-Boulder researchers determine the maximum sea ice extent using a five-day running average, there is small chance the data could change.

In early April CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center will issue a formal announcement on the 2011 maximum sea ice extent with a full analysis of the winter ice growth season, including graphics comparing 2011 to the long-term record.

For more information visit nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews.

Contact

Walt Meier,303-492-6508
Walt@nsidc.org
Katherine Leitzell, 303-492-1497
Leitzell@nsidc.org

Videos:  Changing Planet

Lesson Plans: Windows to the Universe

These videos could be useful to screen in your classroom, and even come with lesson plans about coral reefs, warming in the Arctic, drought, and more.

NSF will be hosting three town halls with NBC TV personalities at US universities: Yale in January with Tom Brokaw, George Washington University in April, and an Arizona university in August. These panel discussions, at which the high school and college students making up the live audience can ask questions, focus on various aspects of climate change and are taped for later airing on TV. The Yale event focused on the impacts of climate change on lives; GWU will focus on clean energy; and Arizona on water resources.

Middle level math and/or science teachers are encouraged to apply for these intense professional development content courses. Selected teachers will be part of a 5-week research experience where they will work along side of their peers and professionals in their field conducting research and analyzing data.

Participating teachers will raise their level of understanding of relevant mathematics by engaging important topics in a “hands on” way in the workshop. They will be able to transform what they have learned into new curricular materials that will improve the mathematics and science capabilities of their students and hopefully stimulate students to consider careers in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

A $5,000 stipend will be rewarded to participants who successfully complete the program. Graduate credit hours (1-6) are available for these programs.

Participants will:
1) Participate in a six hour, five day a week, hands on workshop.
2) Meet weekly with RET teachers studying other topics in the mathematical sciences
3) Meet weekly with RET teachers from biology, chemistry, and physics in a interdisciplinary math/science consortium
4) Develop at least one inquiry based module for use in the classroom in the upcoming academic year

Anyone can apply for these programs. However, priority will be given to those who are already active participants in the RMMSMSP and have taken courses through the partnership before. Previous RET participants are encouraged to reapply, however, priority will be given to those in the RMMSMSP who have not yet done one of these experiences. Applications will be taken until all spaces are filled.

Please see our website for more information or to apply for the program.
http://rmmsmsp.ucdenver.edu/RET.html

303-735-1750


Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The carbon resides in permanently frozen ground that is beginning to thaw in high latitudes from warming temperatures, which will impact not only the climate but also international strategies to reduce fossil fuel emissions, said CU-Boulder's Kevin Schaefer, lead study author. "If we want to hit a target carbon dioxide concentration, then we have to reduce fossil fuel emissions that much lower than previously thought to account for this additional carbon from the permafrost," he said. "Otherwise we will end up with a warmer Earth than we want."

The escaping carbon comes from plant material, primarily roots trapped and frozen in soil during the last glacial period that ended roughly 12,000 years ago, he said. Schaefer, a research associate at CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center, an arm of CIRES, likened the mechanism to storing broccoli in a home freezer. "As long as it stays frozen, it stays stable for many years," he said. "But if you take it out of the freezer it will thaw out and decay."

While other studies have shown carbon has begun to leak out of permafrost in Alaska and Siberia, the study by Schaefer and his colleagues is the first to make actual estimates of future carbon release from permafrost. "This gives us a starting point, and something more solid to work from in future studies," he said. "We now have some estimated numbers and dates to work with."

The new study was published online Feb. 14 in the scientific journal Tellus. Co-authors include CIRES Fellow and Senior Research Scientist Tingjun Zhang from NSIDC, Lori Bruhwiler of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Andrew Barrett from NSIDC. Funding for the project came from NASA, NOAA and the National Science Foundation.

Schaefer and his team ran multiple Arctic simulations assuming different rates of temperature increases to forecast how much carbon may be released globally from permafrost in the next two centuries. They estimate a release of roughly 190 billion tons of carbon, most of it in the next 100 years. The team used Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios and land-surface models for the study.

"The amount we expect to be released by permafrost is equivalent to half of the amount of carbon released since the dawn of the Industrial Age," said Schaefer. The amount of carbon predicted for release between now and 2200 is about one-fifth of the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere today, according to the study.

While there were about 280 parts per million of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere prior to the Industrial Age beginning about 1820, there are more than 380 parts per million of carbon now in the atmosphere and the figure is rising. The increase, equivalent to about 435 billion tons of carbon, resulted primarily from human activities like the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Using data from all climate simulations, the team estimated that about 30 to 60 percent of Earth's permafrost will disappear by 2200. The study took into account all of the permanently frozen ground at high latitudes around the globe.

The consensus of the vast majority of climate scientists is that the buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere is the primary reason for increasingly warm temperatures on Earth. According to NOAA, 2010 was tied for the hottest year on record. The hottest decade on record occurred from 2000 to 2010.

Greater reductions in fossil fuel emissions to account for carbon released by the permafrost will be a daunting global challenge, Schaefer said. "The problem is getting more and more difficult all the time," he said. "It is hard enough to reduce the emissions in any case, but now we have to reduce emissions even more. We think it is important to get that message out now."

CIRES is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NOAA.

To view a short video of Schaefer talking about thawing permafrost visit www.colorado.edu/news and click on the story headline.

Contact

Kevin Schaefer, 303-492-8869
Kevin.Schaefer@colorado.edu

Katherine Leitzell, NSIDC, 202-492-1497
Leitzell@nsidc.org

The first part of the collection was launched in the fall of 2010. Each featured teaching material has undergone a rigorous review process and provides teaching tips by experts on how to implement the materials in the classroom. All materials are aligned with Benchmarks for Science Literacy. The alignment with the National Science Education Standards and the Excellence in Environmental Education Guidelines for Learning through interactive strandmaps will be completed by the fall of 2011.

Efforts to build a community of practitioners in climate education have started and will continue in the following years. In the spring of 2011 the CLEAN team will offer professional development opportunities related to the collection.

View the video here.

Contact

Mark Williams, 303-492-8830
markw@culter.colorado.edu
Brian Lazar, 303-381-8000
BLazar@stratusconsulting.com

Wind turbines in Midwestern farm fields may be doing more than churning out electricity. The giant turbine blades that generate renewable energy might also help corn and soybean crops stay cooler and drier, help them fend off fungal infestations and improve their ability to extract growth-enhancing carbon dioxide from the air and soil.

The preliminary findings of a months-long study that examines how wind turbines on farmlands interact with surrounding crops were presented today at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The presentation was made by researcher Gene Takle of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and Julie Lundquist, assistant professor in the University of Colorado at Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic studies department.

"We've finished the first phase of our research, and we're confident that wind turbines do produce measureable effects on the microclimate near crops," said agricultural meteorology expert Takle, who also is the director of the Climate Science Program at Iowa State University.

According to Takle, turbine blades channel air downward, in effect bathing the crops below with the increased airflow they create.

"Our laser instrument could detect a beautiful plume of increased turbulence that persisted even a quarter-mile downwind of a turbine," said Lundquist, who also is a joint appointee at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and a fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NREL.

Lundquist's team uses a specialized laser known as lidar to measure winds and turbulence from near the Earth's surface to well above the uppermost tip of a turbine blade.

Both Lundquist and Takle stressed their early findings have yet to definitively establish whether or not wind turbines are beneficial to the health and yield potential of soybeans and corn planted nearby. However, their finding that the turbines increase airflow over surrounding crops suggests this is a realistic possibility.

"Because wind turbines generate turbulence and the mixing of air downwind, they may accelerate the natural exchange processes between crops and the lower part of the atmosphere," said Lundquist.

For example, the sun warms crops and some of that heat is given off to the atmosphere. Extra air turbulence likely speeds up this heat exchange, so crops may stay slightly cooler on hot days, Lundquist said. On cold nights, the turbulence created by the wind turbines stirs the lower atmosphere and keeps nighttime temperatures around the crops warmer.

"In both the spring and in the fall, we suspect that turbines' effects are beneficial by warming and perhaps preventing a frost, thus extending the growing season," said Lundquist.

Wind turbines also may have positive effects on crop moisture levels. Extra turbulence may help dry the dew that settles on plants, minimizing the amount of time fungi and toxins can grow on plant leaves. Additionally, drier crops at harvest help farmers reduce the cost of artificially drying corn or soybeans.

Another potential benefit to crops is that increased airflows could enable corn and soybean plants to more readily extract CO2, a needed fuel for crops, from the atmosphere and the soil, thus helping the crops' ability to perform photosynthesis.

Takle's wind turbine predictions are based on years of research on so-called agricultural shelter belts, which are rows of trees in a field designed to slow high-speed natural winds.

"In a simplistic sense, a wind turbine is nothing more than a tall tree with a well-pruned stem," said Takle. "For a starting point for this research, we adapted a computational fluid model that we use to understand trees, but we plan to develop a new model specific to wind turbines as we gather more data."

The team's initial measurements consisted of visual observations of wind turbulence upwind and downwind of the turbines. The team also used wind-measuring instruments called anemometers to determine the intensity of the turbulence. The bulk of the wind-turbulence measurements and the crop-moisture, temperature and CO2 measurements took place in the spring and summer of this year.

"We anticipate the impact of wind turbines to be subtle, but in certain years and under certain circumstances the effects could be significant," said Takle. "When you think about a summer with a string of 105-degree days, extra wind turbulence from wind turbines might be helpful. If turbines can bring the temperature down below 100 degrees that could be a big help for crops."

The CU-Boulder and ISU teams hope to continue their measurements throughout the next growing season.

"These data are quite encouraging, and we look forward to collecting more data to ensure the certainty of these results," said Lundquist. "As wind energy expands in future years to provide a domestic source of energy, we'll need robust measurements to understand and predict the impacts of that expansion."

The research was funded or supported by Ames Laboratory, the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the U.S. National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment, CU-Boulder and NREL.

To view a video of Takle discussing the study of wind turbines on farmland visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7qNNvYVKI4&feature=player_embedded

Contact
Julie Lundquist, 303-492-8932
julie.lundquist@colorado.edu

Elizabeth Lock, 303-492-3117
elizabeth.lock@colorado.edu

A novel project using cameras mounted on unmanned aircraft flying over the Arctic is serving double duty by assessing the characteristics of declining sea ice and using the same aerial photos to pinpoint seals that have hauled up on ice floes.

The project is the first to use aircraft to monitor ice and seals in remote areas without putting pilots and observers at risk, said Elizabeth Weatherhead of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who is leading the study team. Weatherhead is a senior scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint venture of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Monitoring the seals is important because the Arctic is rapidly warming as a result of human-produced greenhouse gases building up in Earth's atmosphere, according to climate scientists. Warming temperatures and sea ice loss are of concern to biologists because they are impacting at least some Arctic marine and terrestrial mammals.

"Because ice is diminishing more rapidly in some areas than others, we are trying to focus on what areas and types of ice the seals need for their survival," said Peter Boveng, leader of the Polar Ecosystems Program at NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

"By finding the types of ice they prefer, we can keep track of that ice and see how it holds up as the Arctic sea ice extent shrinks," said Weatherhead.

Weatherhead gave a presentation on the subject at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in San Francisco Dec. 13 to Dec. 17. Other scientists involved in the project include Boveng, Robyn Angliss, deputy director of NOAA's National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, NMML researchers Michael Cameron and Erin Moreland, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Greg Walker.

The four species of Arctic seals of most interest to the research team are the bearded, ringed, spotted and ribbon seals, each of which rely in some way on sea ice for breeding, resting and as a safe haven from predators.

Known as the "Scan Eagle," the unmanned aircraft was launched in May and June of 2009 from the NOAA vessel McArthur II over the Bering Sea west of Alaska. The drone has a 10-foot wingspan and is owned and operated by the University of Alaska.

The image recognition software was developed by Boulder Labs Inc. in Boulder, Colo., and used to automate the identification of seals in 27,000 images that were collected during the flights. "The results show that the seals have distinct preferences for specific types of ice, demonstrating that ice extent is not the only factor affecting seal populations," said Weatherhead.

The Scan Eagle flights lasted from two to eight hours and flew at altitudes ranging from 300 to 1,000 feet. While the amount of ocean and ice scanned by the unmanned aircraft was small -- it flew 3- to 5-mile-long transects over the Bering Sea -- the researchers were eager to see whether the image recognition system would work for characterizing both the ice and the seals. "The answer was a resounding yes," Weatherhead said.

The analysis of sea ice by the team included edge-to-area calculations of ice floes as well as ice floe size and distribution. "There is an incredible variety of ice and we are trying to come up with mathematical ways to describe it," she said. "One thing that really interests us is how broken up the ice is in particular areas."

According to CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center, the total loss of Arctic sea ice extent from 1979 to 2009 was an area larger than the state of Alaska. Scientists there believe the Arctic may become ice-free during the summers within the next several decades.

In December 2010, NOAA's Fisheries Service proposed to list the Arctic ringed seal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of diminishing sea ice and snow cover. Arctic ringed seals do not come ashore, but use sea ice for whelping, nursing and resting. Ringed seal pups are born in snow caves on the ice, and their survival can be affected by snow depths and the timing of spring snowmelt and ice breakup.

"Biologists are thrilled about the image recognition software because it could change the way we monitor seal populations," said Weatherhead. "We can send an unmanned craft out from a ship, collect 4,000 images, and have them analyzed before dinner. This is a great example of physicists working closely with biologists who are concerned with the health of seal populations."

Typically, seals appear in less than 1 percent of the images, said Weatherhead. But on the ice floes or ice edges where they are found, the software can help researchers identify seals by species. In the future, researchers might be able to identify the relative age and gender for some seal species. The software could even be adjusted to look for polar bears and their tracks.

Weatherhead said the team wants to combine its results with forecasts not only of future sea ice extents, but also of future ice characteristics that will allow for predictions regarding the impacts of changing and disappearing ice types on seal populations.

CIRES has even turned the project into a middle school game akin to "Where's Waldo" by posting aerial images of ice floes from the air and challenging students to try to find the seals. Visit the website at cires.colorado.edu/blogs/hmm/2010/09/09/find-the-seals/.

To view a short video of the project visit www.colorado.edu/news and click on the story headline.

For more information on CU-Boulder visit www.colorado.edu/. For more information on CIRES visit cires.colorado.edu/. For more information on NOAA visit www.noaa.gov/

Contact

Elizabeth Weatherhead, 303-497-6653
Elizabeth.Weatherhead@colorado.edu

http://instaar.colorado.edu/research/science_spotlights.html#pjbr

PHOENIX, AZ—At a meeting of water leaders from the seven Colorado River Basin states in Phoenix today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that the Department of the Interior has chosen the University of Arizona as home base for a regional Climate Science Center and selected the Colorado River Basin for the launch of the first U.S. water census since 1978.

“The Colorado River Basin is ground zero for assessing the effects of climate change on our rivers and taking creative management actions to head off the related dangers posed to our water supplies, hydroelectric power generation and ecosystems,” the Secretary said. “We are with you for the long haul to protect our region and its water.”

The Southwest Climate Center is the fourth of eight planned regional Climate Science Centers—or CSCs--to be established by the Department. With the University of Arizona in Tucson as home base, the center will be led by a consortium of that school and others -- University of California, Davis; University of California, Los Angeles; Desert Research Institute, Reno; University of Colorado, Boulder; and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

“The consortium headed by the University of Arizona brings a wide range of scientific and impact assessment capabilities to the Southwest Climate Center because it includes institutions located in and familiar with the incredible diversity of ecosystems and human settlements and activities that characterize the U.S. Southwest,” the Secretary noted. The consortium is well versed in issues such as coastal management, drought and its impacts on people and the environment, water management in the Colorado and other Southwest rivers, and the impacts of exploding populations of bark beetles on western forests.

Selected through an open competition, the six universities announced today host the Southwest Climate Alliance, which has a combined world-class scientific expertise–including hundreds of faculty working on climate- and resource-related work essential for meeting the climate challenge. In addition to the six host institutions, the Southwest Climate Alliance also includes the following as partners: Arizona State University; Northern Arizona University; University of California, Merced; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; NASA Ames Research Center, Calif.; and the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, Tucson.

In addition to the climate center announcement, the Secretary told water leaders that today’s meeting also marked the launch of the Colorado River Basin Geographic Focus Study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)—Interior’s scientific experts.

The study is part of the WaterSMART Water Availability and Use Assessment for the Colorado River Basin. It is planned as a three-year, $1.5 million effort that will provide an inventory of water supply and demand, including water needed to support ecosystems, and report on significant competition over water resources and the factors causing that competition. (The “SMART” in WaterSMART stands for “Sustain and Manage America’s Resources for Tomorrow.”)

“You can’t manage a resource that you don’t measure,” Salazar said. “The WaterSMART initiative is all about measuring our water supplies and how we use them. This water census will provide crucial information to water managers to improve our efforts to wisely balance competing demands.”

BACKGROUND ON CLIMATE SCIENCE CENTERS

The Department of the Interior previously announced:

    * The Alaska Climate Science Center hosted by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in Anchorage.
    * The Southeast Climate Science Center hosted by North Carolina State University
    * The Northwest Climate Science Center led by a consortium of three universities--Oregon State University, University of Washington and the University of Idaho.

Today’s announcement covered:

    * The Southwest Climate Science Center—University of Arizona, Tucson; University of California, Davis; University of California, Los Angeles; Desert Research Institute, Reno; University of Colorado, Boulder ; and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego. In addition to the six host institutions, the CSC also includes the following as partners: Arizona State University; Northern Arizona University; University of California, Merced; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; NASA Ames Research Center, Calif.; and the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, Tucson.

Announcements to come include:

    * The North Central Climate Science Center—announcement by end of October
    * The Northeast, South Central, and Pacific Islands Climate Science Centers-- Interior intends to invite proposals in the spring of 2011 to host the remaining regional centers
    * Secretary Salazar initiated a coordinated climate change strategy in September 2009, with Secretarial Order 3289. The order called for establishing not only regional CSCs but also a network of “Landscape Conservation Cooperatives” that engage federal agencies, local and state partners, and the public in crafting practical, landscape-level strategies for managing climate change impacts on natural resources. Twenty-one LCCs are planned through FY 2012.

The CSCs will serve as regional “hubs” of the National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center, located at the headquarters of Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey. USGS is taking the lead on establishing the CSCs and providing initial staffing. Ultimately, funds and staff from multiple Interior bureaus will be pooled to support these centers and ensure collaborative sharing of research results and data. Together, the CSCs and Landscape Conservation Cooperatives will assess the impacts of climate change that typically extend beyond the borders of any single national wildlife refuge, national park or Bureau of Land Management unit and identify strategies to ensure that resources across landscapes are resilient.

BACKGROUND ON USGS COLORADO RIVER BASIN GEOGRAPHIC FOCUS STUDY AND NEW NATIONAL WATER CENSUS

This Colorado River Basin Geographic Focus Study is part of the ongoing effort outlined in the WaterSMART Secretarial Order signed in February 2010. It reflects a national commitment to understanding water availability in the country and managing that resource for current and future generations. The last comprehensive assessment of water availability for our nation was in 1978 and it is overdue for a new one.

The USGS WaterSMART initiative will produce a water census for the nation, a new and on-going appraisal for water availability that links both water quality and quantity, tracks changing flow, use, and storage of water, as well as developing models and predictive tools to guide its decisions . A relatively new area of science evaluates how much water needs to be left in the streams to support important ecological values. This initiative includes a significant research and assessment effort to help wildlife managers characterize the flow needs for aquatic species and their habitat. Knowing our nation’s water “assets” and rates of use on an ongoing basis is crucial to wise management.

The USGS WaterSMART Colorado River Basin Geographic Focus Study will complement the River Basin Supply and Demand grant awarded for the Colorado Basin by the Bureau of Reclamation in 2010 and is one of three such studies on major river basins across the nation planned to begin this year. Future geographic focus areas will be identified through the application of criteria being developed as part of the implementation plan for the USGS strategic science direction focused on our nation’s water resources. A critical first step will be meetings with Colorado River Basin stakeholders to collaboratively develop a detailed scope for the effort.

Contact: Joan Moody, DOI (202) 208-6416

http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Secretary-Salazar-Launches-New-Regional-Climate-Science-Center-and-Water-Census-at-Meeting-of-Colorado-River-Basin-Water-Leaders.cfm

While this year's September minimum extent was greater than 2007 and 2008, the two record-setting and near-record-setting low years, it is still significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, according to CU-Boulder's NSIDC scientists. Most researchers believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth's atmosphere.

On Sept. 10 the sea ice extent dropped to 1.84 million square miles, or 4.76 million square kilometers, and is likely the lowest ice extent of the year as sea ice appears to have begun its annual cycle of growth.

The 2010 minimum ice extent is 93,000 square miles, or 240,000 square kilometers, above the 2008 numbers and 240,000 square miles, or 630,000 square kilometers, above the record low in 2007. The 2010 sea ice extent is 130,000 square miles, or 340,000 square kilometers, below 2009, according to Serreze.
"We are still looking at summers with an ice-free Arctic Ocean in perhaps 20 to 30 years," said Serreze, also a professor in CU-Boulder's geography department.

The 2010 minimum is 753,000 square miles, or 1.95 million square kilometers, below the 1879-2000 average minimum and 625,000 square miles, or 1.62 million square kilometers, below the 1979 to 2010 average minimum.

Since NSIDC researchers determine the minimum sea ice extent using a five-day running average, there is still a small chance the sea ice extent could fall slightly, said Serreze. CU-Boulder's NSIDC will provide more detailed information in early October with a full analysis of the 2010 Arctic ice conditions, including aspects of the melt season and conditions heading into the winter ice-growth season.

NSIDC is part of CU-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences -- a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- and is funded primarily by NASA.

For more information contact NSIDC's Jane Beitler at 303-492-1497 or Jim Scott in the CU-Boulder Office of News Services at 303-492-3114.

Contact
Jane Beitler, NSIDC, 303-492-1497
 (Jbeitler@nsidc.org
)

Jim Scott, CU News Services, 303-492-3114
 (Jim.Scott@colorado.edu)
 

BOULDER – Professor Jeff Mitton of the CU-Boulder Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department is hitting the road this year in an effort to educate Coloradans about the state’s pine beetle epidemic and the devastating toll the small insects are taking on Colorado’s forests.

The mountain pine beetle is in the midst of its largest epidemic in recorded history. The geographic infestation extends more than 1,000 miles, from New Mexico to the Yukon Territory.  Mitton will visit eight Colorado communities where he will offer a public presentation on the life history of pine beetles and describe the struggle between attacking beetles and trees. 

In addition to describing how tiny beetles can kill immense trees, he will discuss the role climate change has played in creating the epidemic.  Small shifts in climate have expanded the geographic range in which pine beetles can thrive and extended their life cycle from one generation per year to two.  Professor Mitton will also explain a surge in the populations of beetle predators, offering some hope for Colorado’s forests.

Mitton’s tour is sponsored by LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu, an online tool developed by CU-Boulder faculty and area scientists working in conjunction with the Office for University Outreach, which features five videos that localize climate change by pairing interviews with leading scientists and everyday Coloradans to explain how climate change is affecting our state.  The site also offers teacher-developed and –tested model lessons for middle and high school students, including one that focuses on the pine beetle epidemic.  The lessons are available at Learn More About Climate by clicking the “For Educators” tab.

During the fall semester, Mitton will make presentations at the following venues:
•    Thursday, September 23, 2010 – The Longmont Public Library at 7 p.m.
•    Tuesday, September 28, 2010 – Fort Lewis College Noble Hall, Room 125 at 7 p.m. in Durango
•    Friday, October 1, 2010 – Blue Sage Center for the Arts at 7 p.m. in Paonia
•    Tuesday, November 2, 2010 – Trinidad State Junior College in the Massari Theatre at 7 p.m.

The tour will resume during the spring semester with visits to Silverthorne, Vail, and Alamosa.  The dates and locations of these presentations have yet to be finalized.

All presentations are free and open to the public.

CONTACT:      Wynn Martens
                        303-492-4471
                        outreach@colorado.edu

Led by Denmark and the United States, the team recovered ice from the Eemian interglacial period from about 115,000 to 130,000 years ago, a time when temperatures were 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above today's temperatures. During the Eemian -- the most recent interglacial period on Earth -- there was substantially less ice on Greenland, and sea levels were more than 15 feet higher than today.

While three previous ice cores drilled in Greenland in the last 20 years recovered ice from the Eemian, the deepest layers were compressed and folded, making the data difficult to interpret. The new effort, known as NEEM, has allowed researchers to obtain thicker, more intact annual ice layers near the bottom of the core that are expected to contain crucial information about how Earth's climate functions, said CU-Boulder Professor Jim White, lead U.S. investigator on the project.

"Scientists from 14 countries have come together in a common effort to provide the science our leaders and policy makers need to plan for our collective future," said White, who directs CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and is an internationally known ice core expert. "I hope that NEEM is a foretaste of the kind of cooperation we need for the future, because we all share the world."

Annual ice layers formed over millennia in Greenland by compressed snow reveal information on past temperatures and precipitation levels, as well as the contents of ancient atmospheres, said White. Ice cores from previous drilling efforts revealed temperature spikes of more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit in just 50 years in the Northern Hemisphere.

White said the new NEEM ice cores will more accurately portray past changes in temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations in the Eemian, making it the best analogue for future climate change on Earth. An international study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week showed the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record for the planet.

The NEEM project involves 300 scientists and students and is led by Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, director of the University of Copenhagen's Centre of Ice and Climate. The United States portion of the effort is funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs.

The two meters of ice just above bedrock from NEEM -- which is located at one of the most inaccessible parts of the Greenland ice sheet -- go beyond the Eemian interglacial period into the previous ice age and contains rocks and other material that have not seen sunlight for hundreds of thousands of years, said White. The researchers expect the cores to be rich in DNA and pollen that can tell scientists about the plants that existed in Greenland before it became covered with ice.

The cores samples are being studied in detail using a suite of measurements, including stable water isotopes that reveal information about temperature and moisture changes back in time. The team is using state-of-the art laser instruments to measure the isotopes, as well as atmospheric gas bubbles trapped in the ice and ice crystals to understand past variations in climate on a year-by-year basis, said White.

As part of the project, the researchers want to determine how much smaller the Greenland ice sheet was 120,000 years ago when the temperatures were higher than present, as well as how much and how fast the Greenland ice sheet contributed to sea level. "We expect that our findings will increase our knowledge on the future climate system and increase our ability to predict the speed and final height of sea level rise during the Eemian," said Dahl-Jensen.

The NEEM facility includes a large dome, a drilling rig to extract 3-inch in diameter ice cores, drilling trenches, labs and living quarters. The United States is leading the laboratory analysis of atmospheric gases trapped in bubbles within the cores, including greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.
Other nations involved in NEEM include Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Other U.S. institutions involved in the effort include Oregon State University, Penn State, the University of California, San Diego and Dartmouth College.

Other CU-Boulder participants include postdoctoral researcher Vasilii Petrenko and doctoral student Tyler Jones. White also is a professor in CU-Boulder's geological sciences department.

The vast majority of climate scientists attribute rising temperatures on Earth to increased greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere as a result of human activity. In 2008 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that temperatures on Earth could rise by as much as 10 degrees F above today's temperatures in the next century, primarily due to atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Additional information and photos on the NEEM effort can be found on the web at http:// www.neem.ku.dk.

More information on the international NEEM deep drilling project can be obtained either by emailing White or contacting NEEM Field Operation Manager J.P. Steffensen at +299 84 11 51 or +299 52 41 25 or emailing him at neem-fom@gfy.ku.dk
-CU-

Contact
Jim White, 303-492-5494
James.White@colorado.edu
Jim Scott, 303-492-3114

Jim.Scott@colorado.edu
 

Professor and water treatment expert Karl Linden will lead the one-year study, which is funded by an $82,319 RAPID-response grant from the National Science Foundation. Linden will work with Assistant Professor Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, who brings additional expertise in environmental chemistry and oxidation processes.

"Dispersants are designed to break up large globules of oil into smaller droplets that enhance biodegradation," Linden said. "However, the use of dispersants is being carried out in ways never envisioned."

Dispersants are being sprayed onto the ocean in larger quantities than ever before and injected deep underwater at the source of the oil leak, a new practice with unknown consequences, according to Linden.
The investigations will focus on Corexit, a proprietary chemical being used by BP, and on photochemical degradation -- driven by sunlight -- which is believed to be an important mechanism in the breakdown of the dispersant.

"Our research will focus on how efficient sunlight-driven processes are at degrading these compounds," Rosario-Ortiz said. "This represents a significant challenge based on the chemical complexity of these dispersants, and the different environmental factors that will interfere with these processes."

The team plans to travel to the Gulf area in late August to obtain water samples and coordinate with other studies in the area. Prior to that, the researchers will develop an analytical method to monitor the chemical constituents in the dispersant, and investigate fundamentals of the dispersant's decay in the laboratory using model ocean water and a solar simulator.

At the conclusion of the study, the team will model and estimate the half-life of identifiable chemicals in the dispersant based on sunlight conditions experienced in the Gulf of Mexico and predict their photochemical fate.
Linden and Rosario-Ortiz also plan to integrate their activities and findings into their fall undergraduate and graduate classes on environmental engineering and water chemistry.

Contact
Karl Linden, 303-492-4798
Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, 303-492-7607
Carol Rowe, 303-492-7426

Aixue Hu, NCAR, 303-497-1334
ahu@ucar.edu

Jim Scott, 303-492-3114

Ashley.Ballantyne@colorado.edu

Jaelyn Eberle, 303-492-8069
Jaelyn.Eberle@colorado.edu

Jim Scott, 303-492-3114
Jim.Scott@colorado.edu

These problem-based lessons were developed by teams of Colorado middle and high school teachers along with university scientists and science education researchers who participated in the "Making the Global Local:  Colorado Climate Curriculum Workshop" hosted by CU-Boulder last summer.  During the fall 2009 semester, teachers tested the lessons in their own classrooms and worked with other workshop participants to refine them.
The result is a set of model lessons that focus on the following single driving questions:

•    Evidence of Climate Change — How would we know if Colorado's climate is changing and how will it affect me?

•    Mountain Pine Beetles — Why are our forests dying?

•    Zoo Poo — Does burning poo at the Denver Zoo reduce CO2?

•    Modeling Climate — What makes you hot?

All of these topics are linked to one or more of five Learn More About Climate videos, which localize climate change by pairing interviews with leading climate scientists with everyday Coloradans who explain how climate change is affecting Colorado communities. 

Each lesson outlines the essential principles, learning objectives and Colorado State Science Standards addressed and is accompanied by a variety of classroom materials that can be adapted for learners in grades 5-12.  Suggestions for potential extensions and links to additional climate change curricula and other classroom resources are also provided.

To access the model lessons, visit LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu and click on the “For Educators” tab. 
“Making the Global Local” and LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu are collaborative initiatives that involve CU-Boulder faculty and national institute scientists. Both are coordinated by the Office for University Outreach in the Division of Continuing Education and Professional Studies (CEPS).
 

Contact:

Erin Furtak                        
Assistant Professor, School of Education       
303-885-6426
Erin.Furtak@Colorado.edu

Wynn Martens
Office for University Outreach
303-908-1103
Wynn.Martens@Colorado.edu

• Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months. Environmental Defense Fund
• About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is just 28%. Environmental Protection Agency
• Over ½ million trees are saved each year by recycling paper in Boulder County. Eco-Cycle
• Recycling creates 6 times as many jobs as landfilling. Colorado Recycles
• Recycling glass instead of making it from silica sand reduces mining waste by 70%, water use by 50%, and air pollution by 20%. Environmental Defense Fund
• Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to operate a TV for 3 hours. Eco-Cycle
• If we recycled all of the newspapers printed in the U.S. on a typical Sunday, we would save 550,000 trees--or about 26 million trees per year. California Department of Conservation
• The energy saved each year by steel recycling is equal to the electrical power used by 18 million homes each year - or enough energy to last Los Angeles residents for eight years. Steel Recycling Institute
• If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 1,000 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 373,000 trees, 1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space, and 155 million gallons of water. Seventh Generation Co.
• Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for 6 months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of air pollution. Trash to Cash

(Compiled by the International English Center in the Division of Continuing Education and Professional Studies at CU-Boulder)

Thousands of miles away in a lab tucked in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, scientists take data measurements and use the latest computer models to predict weather. They are two practices serving the same purpose that come from disparate worlds.

But in the past 20 years, something has run amok with Inuit forecasting. Old weather signals don't seem to mean what they used to. The cloud that scatters could signal a storm that comes in an hour instead of a day.

Now researchers are combining indigenous environmental knowledge with modern science to learn new things about what's happening to the Arctic climate.

"It's interesting how the western approach is often trying to understand things without necessarily experiencing them," said Elizabeth Weatherhead, a research scientist with the University of Colorado at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "With the Inuit, it's much more of an experiential issue, and I think that fundamental difference brings a completely different emphasis both in defining what the important scientific questions are, and discerning how to address them."

For years, researchers had heard reports of unpredictable weather coming in from Arctic communities. But the stories didn't seem to match up with the numbers. By scientific measurement, weather around the world appeared to be growing more persistent with less variation. The disparity left scientists scratching their heads, said Weatherhead.

"I had been hearing about this problem from other environmental statisticians for a number of years," said Weatherhead, who also works closely with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., and who is chief author on a new study on the subject. "But the Inuit used a different language than what we statisticians used, and none of us could really figure out what matched up with their observations."

That's where Shari Gearheard, a scientist with CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center, also part of CIRES, comes in. Gearheard lives in Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada, an Inuit community on eastern Baffin Island, and for the past 10 years has been working with Inuit hunters and elders to document their knowledge of the environment and environmental change.

Weather has a special importance in Arctic environments, where a reliable forecast can mean the difference between life and death. There are members of the Inuit community who possess the skills to predict the weather, but that knowledge is dying off as both the culture and climate change, according to the scientists.
"The impacts of that are a loss of confidence in those forecasters and concerns about incorrect forecasts," said Gearheard. Forecasters don't want to send somebody out to go hunting if they're going to be unsafe and be in poor weather conditions."

Gearheard meticulously collects the stories told to her by the Inuit and makes systematic records of indigenous environmental knowledge. Through this, patterns begin to emerge, she said.
Of special importance were changes experienced by the Inuit during the spring, a time of transition for many environmental processes. During spring, the Inuit would notice that the top layer of the snow melted during the day and then would refreeze at night, forming a crust.

"In fact, in a lot of places, the season is named after a particular process by the Inuit," said Gearheard. "In cases like this where the Inuit are not seeing that process anymore, it is an indicator to them that something had changed."

Gearheard's records created a resolution of detail for Arctic weather observation that, by bringing the two studies together, gave Weatherhead the information she needed to bridge indigenous knowledge with scientific knowledge. "What was incredibly helpful was Shari's detailed description of what they were experiencing on what sort of timescales," said Weatherhead. "That really allowed us to start focusing on our statistical tests and try to find exactly what matched their observations."

Statistical analysis of day-to-day temperatures at Baker Lake, Nunavut, showed that in May and June the persistence of temperature had recently declined, matching Inuit reports of greater unpredictability at that season. "People hadn't previously looked at persistence in this way," said CIRES fellow Roger Barry, also director of the World Data Center for Glaciology at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at CU-Boulder and a study co-author along with Gearheard.

What they found was a scientific story more in line with what people were witnessing on the ground. Weather along the Arctic latitudes was behaving more unpredictably than in other parts of the world.

"That's an incredibly important parameter to care about," said Weatherhead. "The way I try to describe it to some people is if we get an inch of rain out at my house in the month of July, I don't need to turn on the sprinklers. But if we get an inch of rain on July 1, and no rain after that, my lawn is dead.

"Ecosystems have evolved under a certain type of pattern. So if that is changing, that could be just as important as a small increase in temperature or some of the other changes we're talking about," Weatherhead said.

The new study helps scientists refine and test climate models, while also providing such models with a new category of information to consider, said Weatherhead. And Gearheard's work with the Inuit is demonstrating the value of indigenous environmental knowledge to modern climate science.

"When we first started talking about this, indigenous knowledge didn't have the place it does now in research," Gearheard said. "It's growing. People are becoming more familiar with it, more respectful of it."

Weatherhead and Gearheard said they are intrigued by the insights that incorporate indigenous knowledge and climate studies, but they don't want to stop there. The new study has sparked an interest in the type of environmental knowledge other communities could provide to climate scientists, from ranchers and farmers to indigenous groups. "When you treat these perspectives as different forms of evidence or knowledge and see where that takes you, that is when exciting stuff happens," said Gearheard.

The study appears this month in the journal Global Environmental Change. The National Science Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided funding for the study. Photos and a podcast interview with the study authors can be downloaded at cires.colorado.edu/news.

Contact:
Elizabeth Weatherhead, 303-497-6653
Betsy.Weatherhead@colorado.edu
Roger Barry, 303-492-548
Roger.Barry@colorado.edu
Morgan Heim, CIRES, 303-492-6289
Morgan.Heim@cires.colorado.edu

Ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet, which has been increasing during the past decade over its southern region, is now moving up its northwest coast, according to a new international study.
 

Led by the Denmark Technical Institute's National Space Institute in Copenhagen and involving the University of Colorado at Boulder, the study indicated the ice-loss acceleration began moving up the northwest coast of Greenland starting in late 2005. The team drew their conclusions by comparing data from NASA's Gravity and Recovery Climate Experiment satellite system, or GRACE, with continuous GPS measurements made from long-term sites on bedrock on the edges of the ice sheet.
 

The data from the GPS and GRACE provided the researchers with monthly averages of crustal uplift caused by ice-mass loss. The team combined the uplift measured by GRACE over United Kingdom-sized chunks of Greenland while the GPS receivers monitor crustal uplift on scales of just tens of miles. "Our results show that the ice loss, which has been well documented over southern portions of Greenland, is now spreading up along the northwest coast," said Shfaqat Abbas Khan, lead author on a paper that will appear in Geophysical Research Letters.
 

The team found that uplift rates near the Thule Air Base on Greenland's northwest coast rose by roughly 1.5 inches, or about 4 centimeters, from October 2005 to August 2009. Although the low resolution of GRACE -- a swath of about 155 miles, or 250 kilometers across -- is not precise enough to pinpoint the source of the ice loss, the fact that the ice sheet is losing mass nearer to the ice sheet margins suggests the flows of Greenland outlet glaciers there are increasing in velocity, said the study authors.
 

"When we look at the monthly values from GRACE, the ice mass loss has been very dramatic along the northwest coast of Greenland," said CU-Boulder physics Professor and study co-author John Wahr, also a fellow at CU-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
 

"This is a phenomenon that was undocumented before this study," said Wahr. "Our speculation is that some of the big glaciers in this region are sliding downhill faster and dumping more ice in the ocean."
 

Other co-authors on the new GRL study included Michael Bevis and Eric Kendrick from Ohio State University and Isabella Velicogna of the University of California-Irvine, who also is a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. GRL is published by the American Geophysical Union.
 

A 2009 study published in GRL by Velicogna, who is a former CU-Boulder research scientist, showed that between April 2002 and February 2009, the Greenland ice sheet shed roughly 385 cubic miles of ice. The mass loss is equivalent to about 0.5 millimeters of global sea-level rise per year.
 

"These changes on the Greenland ice sheet are happening fast, and we are definitely losing more ice mass than we had anticipated, " said Velicogna. "We also are seeing this ice mass loss trend in Antarctica, a sign that warming temperatures really are having an effect on ice in Earth's cold regions."
 

Researchers have been gathering data from GRACE since NASA launched the system in 2002. Two GRACE satellites whip around Earth 16 times a day separated by 137 miles and measure changes in Earth's gravity field caused by regional shifts in the planet's mass, including ice sheets, oceans and water stored in the soil and in underground aquifers.
 

"GRACE is unique in that it allows us to see changes in the ice mass in almost real time," said Velicogna. "Combining GRACE data with the separate signals from GPS stations gives us a very powerful tool that improves our resolution and allows us to better understand the changes that are occurring."
 

In addition to monitoring the Thule GPS receiver in northwest Greenland as part of the new GRL study, the team also is taking data from GPS receivers in southern Greenland near the towns of Kellyville and Kulusuk. An additional 51 permanent GPS stations recently set up around the edges of the Greenland ice sheet should be useful to measure future crustal uplift and corresponding ice loss, said Wahr.
 

"If this activity in northwest Greenland continues and really accelerates some of the major glaciers in the area -- like the Humboldt Glacier and the Peterman Glacier -- Greenland's total ice loss could easily be increased by an additional 50 to 100 cubic kilometers (12 to 24 cubic miles) within a few years," said Khan.
 

The study was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
 

Greenland is about one-fourth the size of the United States and the massive ice sheet covers about 80 percent of its surface. It holds about 20 percent of the world's ice, the equivalent of about 21 feet of global sea rise. Air temperatures over the Greenland ice sheet have increased by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1991, which most scientists attribute to a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
 

A 2006 study by Wahr and Velicogna using the GRACE satellite indicated that Greenland lost roughly 164 cubic miles of ice from April 2004 to April 2006 -- more than the volume of water in Lake Erie.
 

The animated movie of the spread of ice loss into northwest Greenland observed by GRACE from 2003 through 2009 shows a shift in the color spectrum beginning with turquoise and ending in black over the seven-year time span. The movie was created by CU-Boulder's Wahr.

Contact
John Wahr, 303-492-8349      John.Wahr@colorado.edu
Shfaqat Abbas                        Khanabbas@space.dtu.dk                       

Isabella Velicogna, 949-824-5419

Peter Weiss, AGU, 202-777-7507

Jim Scott, CU, 303-492-3114

Mass media have been a key vehicle by which climate change contrarianism has traveled, according to Maxwell Boykoff, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.

Boykoff, an assistant professor of environmental studies, presented his research today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego. He spoke during a panel discussion titled "Understanding Climate Change Skepticism: Its Sources and Strategies."

Boykoff's segment was titled "Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change" and discussed prominent pitfalls.

"One problem occurs when outlier viewpoints are not individually evaluated in context," said Boykoff. "A variety of influences and perspectives typically have been collapsed by mass media into one general category of skepticism. This has been detrimental both in terms of dismissing legitimate critiques of climate science or policy, as well as amplifying extreme and tenuous claims."

Such claims are amplified when traditional news media position noncredible contrarian sources against those with scientific data, in a failed effort to represent opposing sides, said Boykoff.

Another issue in mass media is the tendency to flatly report on both the claims of contrarians, as well as the accusations made about their claims and motives, he said. The ensuing finger-pointing plays into the conflict, drama and personalized stories that drive news. It also distracts attention from critical institutional and societal challenges regarding carbon consumption that calls citizen behaviors, actions and decisions to account.

"Reducing climate science and policy considerations to a tit-for-tat between dueling personalities comes at the expense of appraising fundamental challenges regarding the necessary de-carbonization of industry and society," said Boykoff.

Among various and ongoing research strategies, Boykoff -- in partnership with Maria Mansfield from Exeter University and the University of Oxford -- has tracked climate change coverage in 50 newspapers in 20 countries and six continents since 2004. Boykoff also has looked at how climate science and policy find meaning and traction in people's everyday lives through work in the United States, United Kingdom and India.

Speakers Stephen Schneider from Stanford University; Naomi Oreskes from the University of California, San Diego; William Freudenburg from the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Riley Dunlap from Oklahoma State University joined Boykoff on the panel.

For more information on Boykoff's research visit sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/max_boykoff/

Contact
Maxwell Boykoff, 303-735-6316

Boykoff@Colorado.edu

Elizabeth Lock, CU News Services, 303-492-3117
Elizabeth.Lock@Colorado.edu

Professionals who are interested in training and development face a conundrum. When they are working full-time, possibly with the additional pressure of supporting their families, finding time to fit in coursework is a challenge.  Finding the financial means to pay for training can also be difficult.  For workers who are between jobs, being able to pay for training may become an even greater concern.

Although finding unused time is still a chimera for many of us, finding a way to pay for coursework may be an easier question to tackle.  While federal loans are reserved for students enrolled in degree programs, other options do exist for those who seek help to pay for non-degree programs, such as professional development and training certificates.

Federal and State Workforce Funding

Some workers may be eligible for free financing for their chosen training program through federal and state workforce funding. This avenue is particularly attractive for workers who may be between jobs and who want to make a career shift. The major benefit of financing your training this way is that it is usually 100% paid for. However, not every worker will qualify, and the application and proposal process takes time and effort to complete.

So where does workforce funding come from? The 1998 Workforce Investment Act addressed the changing needs surrounding training, adult education, federal employment, and vocational rehabilitation programs. In Colorado, for example, county workforce centers provide free services for workers in a one-stop-shop environment:  training, job listings, Internet access, career counseling, and other services. They focus on helping people from varied backgrounds and occupations.

Employment advisors at Workforce Boulder County helped Adam Cahn, a student enrolled in both the Building & Energy Certificate and the Sustainability Management Certificate. While attending an unemployment seminar, Cahn heard a fellow participant talk about her training, which she was able to finance with Workforce Investment Act funding.

Cahn said, “I was unemployed and had been trying to make a career shift. I googled the Workforce Investment Act and realized that I might be able to get funding to complete the Sustainable Practices coursework I’d already started. I knew where my gaps were and how I could fill them with the Sustainable Practices certificates; the workforce funding will help me get there.”

If you are a worker interested in how the Workforce Investment Act might be able to help you with your career needs, where should you begin? Cahn suggests you contact your county or state Workforce Center for help.  Center Employment advisors will schedule you to attend a Workforce Investment Information Meeting, if appropriate, and help you submit a Training Request Proposal to the Workforce Investment Act Scholarship Committee.

Lee is another Sustainable Practices student who is receiving workforce development funding, in this case through Douglas County. She worked to get Sustainable Practices approved with the Colorado Workforce Center training navigator.  She said, “I am on the older side; I have good credentials but they’re thirty years old. The workforce center told me I needed to update them. Workforce is a good program; it helps people get back into the job market.”

For more information on Colorado’s Workforce Centers, visit http://www.coworkforce.com/emp/WFCs.asp.

Financing Through Your Local Bank

During times of unemployment or underemployment, some of us may be tempted to turn to our credit cards to fill the gap.  However, the drawback is obvious:  credit cards demand higher interest than most loans; you don’t come away with new skills or applicable experience; and credit card debt can be difficult to pay down once financial difficulties let up.

However, there is an alternative to using credit cards to finance debt. Some workers can finance professional development and training through their local bank. To find out about alternative student loan programs, start with the educational institution where you are seeking training.  For example, Rosanne Romano, a financial aid officer here at the CU-Boulder Division of Continuing Education and Professional Studies, has helped many students find creative bank financing for education.

Romano said, “Bank loans are tied to a specific academic term in which a student is enrolled.  So, if a student enrolls for summer and fall term, the university would certify the loan to cover the student’s expenses during that time frame—including tuition, student fees, and living expenses like room and board.”

Because they are tied to a specific term and are flexible in the types of expenses they can be used for, bank loans can be a great way to finance education and professional development. This is particularly true for workers who are between jobs or who anticipate increasing their earnings after completing their education.

A Note about Employer Financing

For workers who are employed but who would like financial support to receive training, consider asking your employer to pay for all or part of your training.  Many companies stand behind their employees’ need to grow professionally; however, it can help if you make a business case for your training.

Janice  Godard, an employee at Avaya in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, is earning her Sustainable Practices certificate with the financial support of her company.  Godard said, “I think it’s important to go to your company and make the argument that this training that you want to get will benefit them somehow—for example, that they’ll become more energy efficient.”

Also plan to work with the education program that you are considering enrolling with; training staff can tell you about paid-in-full discounts or help with documenting the potential benefits to your employer.

Finally, consider that professional development often equates with attending annual professional conferences.  While such events can be valuable, attendance may not give you a new credential the way that focused training or a professional certificate might. This can be a selling point when you make the case to substitute annual conference attendance with employer-paid training.

Special Scholarships and Work-Exchange Arrangements

In addition to the avenues above, don’t forget to explore financial support offered through nonprofit foundations or even through the educational institution you plan to attend. Educational institutions or training centers sometimes offer special scholarships to applicants. An example of this is our Sustainability Management Certificate Scholarship, a one-time scholarship to award 100% tuition to five recipients (learn more and apply: PDF WORD).

Geoffrey Rubinstein, Director of Sustainability Management, said, “We are passionate about the need to educate a new cadre of sustainability experts, and we thought a scholarship would be a great way to show how serious we are about making this program accessible.”

Some institutions may also occasionally offer free training in exchange for program support.  For example, a training center may give you a free class or a tuition discount for work in their marketing or communications department.

In Conclusion

Creative financing for training does exist.  The key is to explore as many different ways of potential funding as you can.  Take advantage of the financial experts available to you through educational institutions, your state or local government, your local bank, and other avenues that are there to help. And remember to view the time and money that you are putting into your training is an investment in you, your future, and that of your community.

Lee said, “With the state of the economy the way it is right now, it’s hard for some people to get a job. Getting professional training is important. Sustainable Practices, in particular, will help get people into the new energy economy.”

It's no secret that the emissions leaving a car tailpipe or factory smokestack affect climate and air quality. Even trees release chemicals that influence the atmosphere. But until now, scientists have struggled to know where these organic molecules go and what happens to them once they leave their source, leading to models for predicting climate and air quality that are incomplete or less than accurate.

A major collaborative effort of more than 60 scientists led by Jose-Luis Jimenez, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has discovered common ground in the jumble of organic material floating through the skies. The finding presents a workable solution that will improve the speed and accuracy of prediction models used to understand how these aerosols affect climate and human health, said Jimenez, also a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.

"We're providing a key piece of machinery that is needed to make accurate predictions of air quality and climate and that is also relatively simple and practical to use," said Jimenez, lead author of the study that appears in the Dec. 11 issue of Science. CIRES is a joint institute of CU and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Organic compounds coat airborne particles like a lacquer of spray paint and make up as much as 90 percent of all fine particle mass aloft in the atmosphere. These particles influence cloud formation and subsequent rainfall. They also affect human health and can lead to illnesses like asthma, heart disease and lung cancer.

But so far only about 10 to 30 percent of the thousands of individual compounds have been identified, and past research has focused on following specific molecules with the idea that these compounds remain relatively static in nature once they enter the atmosphere. Recent discoveries show that the life cycle of these compounds is much more complex, with organic molecules reacting many times over in many different ways. Attempts by atmospheric scientists to track this life cycle often leave researchers with a vast array of divergent paths to follow.

To find some order in this chaos, Jimenez and his colleagues began looking at organic particles with a more holistic mindset. Through a series of field observations and lab experiments conducted all over the world, they found that organic matter ultimately tends to evolve toward a similar end, regardless of the source or where the matter occurs in the atmosphere

"What surprised us is how similar the organic matter looked as we went from the heart of Mexico City to an island in Japan to a forest in Finland or a mountain in the Swiss Alps," said Jimenez.

"The atmosphere acts like Dan Aykroyd's Bass-O-Matic, making similar-looking goop almost no matter what you start with," said Neil Donahue, a study co-author with Carnegie Mellon University.

The study found that this particle soup can be boiled down into a few measurable characteristics, such as the oxygen-to-carbon ratio, which are key variables for predicting climate and air quality.

"Using a novel aerosol mass spectrometer, we found that the atmosphere blurs the differences between aerosols emitted by different sources relatively quickly," said Manjula Canagaratna, a co-author from Aerodyne Research in Boston. "This is potentially a very important simplification, which is key to improving air quality and climate models."

Of importance in the study was the creation of a chemical "map" by Donahue. The map provides some of the first clear visualization of how these organic aerosols change once they become a part of the particle soup.

The map tracks two key properties -- volatility, or the tendency to evaporate, and the oxygen-to-carbon ratio -- that evolve as organics make their way through the atmosphere. This ratio is important because it is an indicator of how much the organic matter is gaining oxygen and building up on particles floating in the air, a process that influences air quality and climate. "And as a bonus, this road map has the promise to let people predict the ability of the organics to participate in cloud formation," Donahue said.

"These results allow us to do a better job in predicting future climate and air quality," Jimenez said. "And we need good predictions in order to be able to do the right thing."

The research study was funded with grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It included scientists from more than 30 institutes, including Carnegie Mellon University, Aerodyne Research Inc., and international collaborators from England, Switzerland, China, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Sweden and Finland.

Contact

Jose-Luis Jimenez, 303-492-3557

jose.jimenez@colorado.edu

Morgan Heim, CIRES, 303-492-6289
morgan.heim@cires.colorado.edu

The northern coastline of Alaska midway between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay is eroding by up to one-third the length of a football field annually because of a "triple whammy" of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity, according to new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The conditions have led to the steady retreat of 30 to 45 feet a year of the 12-foot-high bluffs -- frozen blocks of silt and peat containing 50 to 80 percent ice -- which are toppled into the Beaufort Sea during the summer months by a combination of large waves pounding the shoreline and warm seawater melting the base of the bluffs, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Robert Anderson, a co-author on the study. Once the blocks have fallen, the coastal seawater melts them in a matter of days, sweeping the silty material out to sea.

Anderson, along with collaborators Cameron Wobus of Stratus Consulting and Irina Overeem of CU's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, or INSTAAR, each presented results from components of their study at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco held Dec. 14-18.

The problem is caused by several factors, including increased erosion along the Alaskan coastline due to longer ice-free summer conditions and warmer seawater bathing the coast, Anderson said. The third potential factor is that the longer the sea ice is detached from the coastline, the further out to sea the sea-ice edge will be. This open-ocean distance between the sea ice and the shore, known as the "fetch," increases both the energy of waves crashing into the coast and the height to which warm seawater can come into contact with the frozen bluffs, said Anderson.

"What we are seeing now is a triple whammy effect," said Anderson. "Since the summer Arctic sea ice cover continues to decline and Arctic air and sea temperatures continue to rise, we really don't see any prospect for this process ending."

In addition to Wobus and Overeem, co-authors on the studies include Gary Clow and Frank Urban of the U.S. Geological Survey in Lakewood, Colo., and Tim Stanton of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

The shoreline bluffs are made up of contiguous, polygon-shaped blocks, primarily made of permafrost and each roughly 70 to 100 feet across, he said. Ice "wedges" created by seeping summer surface water that annually freezes and thaws are driven deeper and deeper into the cracks between individual blocks each year. The blocks closest to the sea are undermined as warm seawater melts their base, and eventually split apart from neighboring blocks and topple during stormy conditions, said Anderson.

The researchers used a variety of instruments and methods in the study to examine the dynamic transition between the land and the sea, including time-lapse photography of shoreline erosion, global positioning systems (GPS), meteorological measurements including temperature and wind speed, and sediment analyses of the coastal bluffs. Offshore measurements included sea-ice distribution, ocean floor depth, sea-surface temperatures and wave dynamics, said Anderson, also a fellow at INSTAAR.

The time-lapse images were taken with four tripod mounted "game cameras" often used by hunters and wildlife biologists and which were set up parallel to the shoreline. The cameras snapped pictures every six hours during the 24-hour summer daylight months to track the effects of the waves on the coastline, said Anderson.

"Once one of these blocks topples, the process continues on to the next block," Anderson said. "These images are very powerful, because they pick up activity during severe storms when we aren't there to watch." The images also illustrate the steady melting along the water's edge that helps to undermine the bluffs even in the absence of storm activity.

The research team also deployed four submerged ocean buoys attached to metal sleds with sensors to measure the wave activity at different depths in the shallow coastal waters, comparing wave power with the shoreline fetch. The team attached temperature sensors to the buoy mooring lines to monitor seawater temperatures, which have been warming in recent summers due to increased solar radiation, he said.

When the sea ice is further from the shore, currents from the Beaufort and Chukchi seas transport warmer water to the coastline, said Anderson. While the temperature hovers around 45 degrees during the summer months, the shallow coastal water warmed to as much as 59 degrees during the 2007 field season -- the same year the largest loss of summer Arctic sea was recorded, he said.

As the ice wedges cut down through the polygon blocks, the surface soil above them -- which thaws each summer -- is pushed up slightly, forming small ridges that eventually surround each polygon, said Anderson. Small ponds form above individual polygons during the summer months as the surface ice and snow melts, providing habitat for migrating birds that feed and breed along the Beaufort Sea coastline.

"This is an important habitat for birds and other wildlife," said Anderson. "One of the concerns we have is that some larger ponds and lakes located slightly further inland may begin draining into the sea as the shoreline continues to recede."

While there are no towns adjacent to the specific study area, coastal erosion threatens abandoned military and petroleum infrastructure, he said. Coastal erosion occurs at similar sites elsewhere along Alaska's coastline. Bank stabilization measures using sandbags, for example, have been undertaken at the Alaskan town of Kaktovik on the Beaufort Sea in an attempt to slow the problem.

According to a 2009 CU-Boulder study, Arctic sea ice during the annual September minimum is now declining at a rate of 11.2 percent per decade. Only 19 percent of the ice cover was more than two years old -- the least ever recorded in the satellite record and far below the 1981-2000 summer average of 48 percent.
To view a video featuring Anderson and time-lapse photography of the eroding coastline visit www.colorado.edu/news.

Contact

Robert Anderson, 303-735-8169

Robert.S.Anderson@colorado.edu

Jim Scott, 303-492-3114

Jim.scott@colorado.edu
 

A surprising new CU-Boulder study indicates subalpine forests in the West will soak up less carbon dioxide as the climate warms and the growing seasons lengthen. Image courtesy Steve Miller, CIRES.

Contrary to conventional belief, as the climate warms and growing seasons lengthen subalpine forests are likely to soak up less carbon dioxide, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.

As a result, more of the greenhouse gas will be left to concentrate in the atmosphere.

"Our findings contradict studies of other ecosystems that conclude longer growing seasons actually increase plant carbon uptake," said Jia Hu, who conducted the research as a graduate student in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department in conjunction with the university's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.

The study will be published in the February edition of the journal Global Change Biology.

Working with ecology and evolutionary biology professor and CIRES Fellow Russell Monson, Hu found that while smaller spring snowpack tended to advance the onset of spring and extend the growing season, it also reduced the amount of water available to forests later in the summer and fall. The water-stressed trees were then less effective in converting CO2 into biomass. Summer rains were unable to make up the difference, Hu said.

"Snow is much more effective than rain in delivering water to these forests," said Monson. "If a warmer climate brings more rain, this won't offset the carbon uptake potential being lost due to declining snowpacks."

Drier trees also are more susceptible to beetle infestations and wildfires, Monson said.

The researchers found that even as late in the season as September and October, 60 percent of the water in stems and needles collected from subalpine trees along Colorado's Front Range could be traced back to spring snowmelt. They were able to distinguish between spring snow and summer rain in plant matter by analyzing slight variations in hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the water molecules.

The results suggest subalpine trees like lodgepole pine, subalpine fir and Englemann spruce depend largely on snowmelt, not just at the beginning of the summer, but throughout the growing season, according to the researchers.

"As snowmelt in these high-elevation forests is predicted to decline, the rate of carbon uptake will likely follow suit," said Hu.

Subalpine forests currently make up an estimated 70 percent of the western United States' carbon sink, or storage area. Their geographic range includes much of the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and high-elevation areas of the Pacific Northwest.

Study co-authors included David Moore of King's College London and Sean Burns of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and CU-Boulder.

CIRES is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For more information about CIRES visit cires.colorado.edu.

Contact 

Jia Hu, 303-492-5796

Jia.Hu@colorado.edu

Russell Monson, 303-492-6319

Monsonr@colorado.edu

Morgan Heim, 303-492-6289

morgan.heim@cires.colorado.edu

While environmental changes at the lake over the past millennia have been shown to be tightly linked with natural causes of climate change -- like periodic, well-understood wobbles in Earth's orbit -- changes seen in the sediment cores since about 1950 indicate expected climate cooling is being overridden by human activity like greenhouse gas emissions. The research team reconstructed past climate and environmental changes at the lake on Baffin Island using indicators that included algae, fossil insects and geochemistry preserved in sediment cores that extend back 200,000 years.

"The past few decades have been unique in the past 200,000 years in terms of the changes we see in the biology and chemistry recorded in the cores," said lead study author Yarrow Axford of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. "We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes."

The study was published Oct. 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study included researchers from CU-Boulder, the State University of New York's University at Buffalo, the University of Alberta, the University of Massachusetts and Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

The sediment cores were extracted from the bottom of a roughly 100-acre, 30-foot-deep lake near the village of Clyde River on the east coast of Baffin Island, which is several hundred miles west of Greenland. The lake sediment cores go back in time 80,000 years beyond the oldest reliable ice cores from Greenland and capture the environmental conditions of two previous ice ages and three interglacial periods.

The sediment cores showed that several types of mosquito-like midges that flourish in very cold climates have been abundant at the lake for the past several thousand years. But the cold-adapted midge species abruptly began declining in about 1950, matching their lowest abundances of the last 200,000 years. Two of the midge species adapted to the coldest temperatures have completely disappeared from the lake region, said Axford.

In addition, a species of diatom, a lake algae that was relatively rare at the site before the 20th century, has undergone unprecedented increases in recent decades, possibly in response to declining ice cover on the Baffin Island lake.

"Our results show that the human footprint is overpowering long-standing natural processes even in remote Arctic regions," said co-author John Smol of Queen's University. "This historical record shows that we are dramatically affecting the ecosystems on which we depend."

The ancient lake sediment cores are the oldest ever recovered from glaciated parts of Canada or Greenland. Massive ice sheets during ice ages generally scour the underlying bedrock and remove previous sediments.

"What is unique about these sediment cores is that even though glaciers covered this lake, for various reasons they did not erode it," said study co-author Jason Briner of the University at Buffalo. The result is that we have a really long sequence of sediment that has survived Arctic glaciations."

Axford emphasized the multiyear research project required expertise from each of the five institutions involved in the PNAS study. "This was a team effort all the way around, and each of the institutions has a unique set of skills that allowed us to carry out this study," she said. "We needed people who understood algae, insects, glaciers and geochemistry, not to mention how to drive snowmobiles and extract the cores."

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Geological Society of America.

A study published in Science magazine last month that involved CU-Boulder researchers and reconstructed past temperatures in the Arctic using ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments concluded that recent warming around the Arctic is overriding a cooling trend caused by Earth's periodic wobble. Earth is now about 0.6 million miles further from the sun during the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice than it was in 1 B.C. -- a trend that has caused overall cooling in the Arctic until recently.

INSTAAR researcher and CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Gifford Miller was a co-author on both the PNAS study and the recent Science study.

Contact:
Yarrow Axford, 303-492-7641
Yarrow.axford@colorado.edu

Gifford Miller, 303-492-6962
gmiller@colorado.edu

Jim Scott, 303-492-3114
Jim.scott@colorado.edu

According to the CU-Boulder center, the 2009 minimum sea ice extent was the third lowest since satellite record-keeping began in 1979. The past five years have seen the five lowest Arctic sea ice extents ever recorded.

"It's nice to see a little recovery over the past couple of years, but there's no reason to think that we're headed back to conditions seen in the 1970s," said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze, also a professor in CU-Boulder's geography department. "We still expect to see ice-free summers sometime in the next few decades."

The average ice extent during September, a standard measurement for climate studies, was 2.07 million square miles (5.36 million square kilometers). This was 409,000 square miles (1.06 million square kilometers) greater than the record low for the month in 2007, and 266,000 square miles (690,000 square kilometers) greater than the second-lowest extent recorded in September 2008.

The 2009 Arctic sea ice extent was still 649,000 square miles (1.68 square kilometers) below the 1979-2000 September average, according to the report. Arctic sea ice in September is now declining at a rate of 11.2 percent per decade and in the winter months by about 3 percent per decade. The consensus of scientists is that the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth's atmosphere, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Sea surface temperatures in the Arctic this season remained higher than normal, but slightly lower than the past two years, according to data from University of Washington Senior Oceanographer Mike Steele. The cooler conditions, which resulted largely from cloudy skies during late summer, slowed ice loss compared to the past two years. In addition, atmospheric patterns in August and September helped to spread out the ice pack, keeping extent higher.

The September 2009 ice cover remained thin, leaving it vulnerable to melt in coming summers, according to the CU-Boulder report. At the end of the summer, younger, thinner ice less than one year in age accounted for 49 percent of the ice cover. Second- year ice made up 32 percent of the ice cover, compared to 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008.

Only 19 percent of the ice cover was over two years old -- the least ever recorded in the satellite record and far below the 1981-2000 summer average of 48 percent, according to the CU-Boulder report. Measurements of sea ice thickness by satellites are used to determine the age of the ice.

Earlier this summer, NASA researcher Ron Kwok and colleagues from the University of Washington in Seattle published satellite data showing that ice thickness declined by 2.2 feet between 2004 and 2008.

"We've preserved a fair amount of first-year ice and second-year ice after this summer compared to the past couple of years," said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier of CU-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "If this ice remains in the Arctic thorough the winter, it will thicken, which gives some hope of stabilizing the ice cover over the next few years. However, the ice is still much younger and thinner than it was in the 1980s, leaving it vulnerable to melt during the summer."

Arctic sea ice follows an annual cycle of melting through the warm summer months and refreezing in the winter. Sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the Arctic region cool and moderating global climate temperatures.

While Arctic sea ice extent varies from year to year because of changing atmospheric conditions, ice extent has shown a dramatic overall decline over the past 30 years.

"A lot of people are going to look at the graph of ice extent and think that we've turned the corner on climate change," said NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos of CU-Boulder's CIRES. "But the underlying conditions are still very worrisome."

NSIDC is part of CIRES and is funded primarily by NASA.

For more information, including charts and graphs of Arctic sea ice, visit nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/.

Contact
Katherine Leitzell, 303-492-1497
; leitzell@nsidc.org


Jim Scott, CU News Services, 303-492-3114
; Jim.scott@colorado.edu
 

Bioneers is the preeminent gathering of leading scientific innovators & environmental visionaries who offer practical solutions to the most pressing environmental and social issues of our time. Bioneers, celebrating its 20th anniversary, uniquely and authentically connects the dots between environment, health, social justice and spirit. Bioneers is inspiring a shift to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations.

The 7th annual Colorado Bioneers creates community opportunities for sharing, learning and action, and brings together the region's progressive ideas, people and organizations. The event features a live satellite downlink of the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA. Visit the Bioneers website at for more information about the Bioneers Conference.

Bioneers in Colorado is co-produced by the University of Colorado's Environmental Center, Transition Colorado, Blue and Yellow Logic, Woodbine Ecology Center, Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice, CU Continuing Education in collaboration with numerous partner organizations.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) will issue a formal press release at the beginning of October with full analysis of the possible causes behind this year's ice conditions, particularly interesting aspects of the melt season, the set up going into the winter growth season ahead, and graphics comparing this year to the long-term record.

NSIDC is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. NSIDC scientists provide Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis content, with partial support from NASA.

Full NSIDC announcement: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
NSIDC press office: leitzell@nsidc.org or 303.492.1497

Sept. 3, 2009 – A new study led by Northern Arizona University and involving the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates Arctic temperatures have reversed from a long-term cooling trend and are now the warmest they have been in at least 2,000 years, bad news for the world’s coastal cities facing rising seas in the coming decades.

High northern latitudes have experienced a long-term, slow cooling trend for several millennia, the result of a wobble in Earth’s rotation that has been increasing the distance between the sun and Earth and decreasing Arctic summer sunshine. The research team assembled high-resolution records of climate for the past 2,000 years and found that the cooling trend reversed in the mid-1990s.

The decade from 1999 to 2008 was the warmest in the last 200 decades and corresponds with a continuing buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, said lead author Darrell Kaufman of Northern Arizona University. “Scientists have known for a while that the current period of warming was preceded by a long-term cooling trend, said Kaufman.  “But our reconstruction quantifies the cooling with greater certainty than ever before.”

Since the Earth is still moving away from the sun -- it’s about 0.6 million miles further during the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice than it was in 1 B.C. -- it appears greenhouse gases began “overriding” the natural cooling of Earth in the middle of the last century, said Professor Gifford Miller of CU-Boulder’s Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, a study co-author.  “We expect the Arctic will continue to warm in the coming decades, increasing land-based ice loss and triggering global increases in sea-level rise,” he said.

The study was published in the Sept. 4 issue of Science.  Other institutions participating in the study included the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the University of Arizona, the University of Massachusetts, the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.  The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. 

The research team reconstructed past temperatures on a decade-by-decade basis during the past 2,000 years using information gleaned from ancient lake sediments, ice cores, tree rings and other samples.  As part of the study, the decade-by-decade climate data reconstruction was compared with sophisticated climate model simulations run by NCAR researchers. 

The NCAR climate simulations agreed closely with the ground-based Arctic data used in the study, said NCAR scientist David Schneider, a co-author on the study. “This result is particularly important because the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change,” Schneider said.  “This study provides us with a long-term record that reveals how greenhouse gases from human activities are overwhelming the Arctic’s natural climate system.” 

The new Science study dovetails with a report published earlier this year by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program on changes in the Arctic and at high latitudes.  The CCSP study’s five lead authors -- including Miller and CU-Boulder INSTAAR Director Jim White -- concluded climate warming in the Arctic and at high latitudes likely will continue at a rapid pace given human-caused changes in Earth’s atmosphere. 

Arctic temperatures have reached their highest level in the past decade, averaging 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than would have been expected if the 2,000-year cooling trend had continued through the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st century, said Kaufman.  Kaufman received his doctorate from CU-Boulder in 1991 while studying under Miller at INSTAAR. 

Previous research has shown that Arctic temperatures increased three times faster during the 20th century than temperatures in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere -- a phenomenon known as “Arctic amplification,” said Miller, also a professor of geological sciences at CU-Boulder.  The amplification is caused by decreased Arctic sea ice and an increased absorption of the sun’s heat by exposed ocean as well as “darker” land areas caused by decreases of Arctic snow and ice, he said.

“With less sea ice in winter, the ocean returns the heat stored in summer to the atmosphere, resulting in warmer winters throughout the Arctic,” said Miller.

“Because we know that the processes responsible for past Arctic amplification are still operating, we can anticipate that it will continue into the next century,” said Miller. “The magnitude of change was surprising, and reinforces the conclusion that humans are significantly altering Earth’s climate.”

“As we are confronted with evidence of global warming, it is extremely helpful to be able to use paleoclimate data to provide context for today’s climate relative to the range and trajectory of recent climate regimes,” said Neil Swanberg, director of NSF’s Arctic System Science Program.  

Contact:     

Gifford Miller, 303-492-6962

Gmiller@colorado.edu

Jim Scott, 303-492-3114

Jim.Scott@colorado.edu

The project, known as the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling, or NEEM, is being undertaken by 14 nations and is led by the University of Copenhagen.  The goal is to retrieve ice from the last interglacial episode known as the Eemian Period that ended about 120,000 years ago. The period was warmer than today, with less ice in Greenland and 15-foot higher sea levels than present -- conditions similar to those Earth faces as it warms in the coming century and beyond, said CU-Boulder Professor Jim White, who is leading the U.S. research contingent.

While three previous Greenland ice cores drilled in the past 20 years covered the last ice age and the period of warming to the present, the deeper ice layers representing the warm Eemian and the period of transition to the ice age were compressed and folded, making them difficult to interpret, said White.  Radar measurements taken through the ice sheet from above the NEEM site indicate the Eemian ice layers below are thicker, more intact and likely contain more accurate, specific information, he said.

"Every time we drill a new ice core, we learn a lot more about how Earth's climate functions," said White, "The Eemian period is the best analog we have for future warming on Earth."

Annual ice layers formed over millennia in Greenland by compressed snow reveal information on past temperatures and precipitation levels and the contents of ancient atmospheres, said White, who directs CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.  Ice cores exhumed during previous drilling efforts revealed abrupt temperature spikes of more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit in just 50 years in the Northern Hemisphere.

The NEEM team reached a depth of 5,767 feet in early August, where ice layers date to 38,500 years ago during a cold glacial period preceding the present interglacial, or warm period.  The team hopes to hit bedrock at 8,350 feet at the end of next summer, reaching ice deposited during the warm Eemian period that lasted from roughly 130,000 to 120,000 years ago before the planet began to cool and ice up once again.

The NEEM project began in 2008 with the construction of a state-of-the-art facility, including a large dome, the drilling rig for extracting 3-inch-diameter ice cores, drilling trenches, laboratories and living quarters.  The official drilling started in June of this year.  The United States is leading the laboratory analysis of atmospheric gases trapped in bubbles within the NEEM ice cores, including greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, said White.

The NEEM project is led by the University of Copenhagen's Centre of Ice and Climate directed by Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen.  The United States and Denmark are the two leading partners in the project. The U.S. effort is funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs.

"Evidence from ancient ice cores tell us that when greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere, the climate warms," said White.  "And when the climate warms, ice sheets melt and sea levels rise.  If we see comparable rises in sea level in the future like we have seen in the ice-core record, we can pretty much say good-bye to American coastal cities like Miami, Houston, Norfolk, New Orleans and Oakland."

Increased warming on Earth also has a host of other potentially deleterious effects, including changes in ecosystems, wildlife extinctions, the growing spread of disease, potentially catastrophic heat waves and increases in severe weather events, according to scientists.

While ice cores pinpoint abrupt climate change events as Earth has passed in and out of glacial periods, the warming trend during the present interglacial period is caused primarily by human activities like fossil fuel burning, White said.  "What makes this warming trend fundamentally different from past warming events is that this one is driven by human activity and involves human responsibility, morals and ethics."

Other nations involved in the project include the United States, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Other CU-Boulder participants in the NEEM effort include INSTAAR postdoctoral researcher Vasilii Petrenko and Environmental Studies Program doctoral student Tyler Jones.  Other U.S. institutions collaborating in the international NEEM effort include Oregon State University, Penn State, the University of California, San Diego and Dartmouth College.

For more information on the NEEM project, including images and video, visit http://www.neem.ku.dk.

Contact:      

Jim White, 303-492-790; Jwhite@colorado.edu

Jim Scott, 303-492-3114; Jim.scott@colorado.edu

Contact:

James Maslanik, 303-492-8974

James.Maslanik@colorado.edu

Jim.Scott@colorado.edu

Callahan discovered too late that the Piceance Basin is full of flammable rock called oil shale, and in the decades to follow it would become the center of a major debate among landowners, oil companies, environmentalists and the government.

The University of Colorado at Boulder's Center of the American West has put together an online report titled "What Every Westerner Should Know About Oil Shale" to help bring an impartial perspective to the debate over oil shale. After two previous booms and busts, including a regionally devastating downturn in the early 1980s, it looks like another oil shale development cycle is on the horizon. It's a prospect local residents, policymakers and concerned citizens throughout the country regard with a mix of anticipation and apprehension.

The report was authored by history Professor Patty Limerick, faculty director and chair of the Center of the American West's board, and Jason Hanson, a member of the center's research staff since 2004.

Hanson said the intent of the report is "to provide a safe port in the storm of data disputes that usually rage on topics like this. We want to encourage a more responsible, more informed and more productive decision-making process."

Said Limerick, "As a historian, I've read as much as I care to read and studied as much as I care to study about people acting in haste. I really don't need more of that. So it was great for me to look at a situation where there is such a process of deliberation going on."

Two years in the making, the online report details the first two oil shale booms on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains -- where the world's largest supplies of the substance lie trapped beneath the surface -- and the reasons those efforts ultimately failed.

Looking ahead to the new round of oil shale development, Limerick and Hanson survey efforts currently under way in Colorado and Utah. The report examines ways in which energy companies and other stakeholders can anticipate and manage the variety of social, economic and environmental issues raised by the prospect of creating an oil shale industry in the mountain West.

The report does not suggest that past failures necessarily predict the future for oil shale. Limerick is quick to point out that almost every human enterprise is met with adversity at first and that the day could come when oil extracted from shale is flowing out of the West by the barrel.

"There are unknowns and uncertainties," Limerick said. "There is certainly no guarantee that this will work. But its failure is not predictable, either. History offers a remarkable record of human ingenuity powering past obstacles."

Judicious estimates suggest that 800 billion barrels -- more than triple Saudi Arabia's proven reserves and enough to meet current U.S. demand for more than a century -- might one day be extracted from the Green River Formation along the T-shaped border of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. The richest known deposits are located in Colorado's Piceance Basin, an area of more than 1,300 square miles just north of Grand Junction.

One of the major environmental concerns related to U.S. oil shale development is water. Current research estimates that commercial production could require about three barrels of water for every barrel of oil, an amount many people say would be devastating in the arid West where many different interests already compete for every gallon.

Hanson said the Center of the American West takes no position either for or against oil shale production. The report grew out of a workshop funded by Chevron and people involved in its preparation on different sides of the debate have praised it.

"It's a very well balanced, very well done, comprehensive report and it has a particularly excellent historical review of oil shale in terms of the efforts that have been done in the past and kind of drawing attention to the issues that oil shale development brings to a region," said Tracy Boyd, communications and sustainability manager for Shell Exploration and Production Company on Unconventional Oil.

Karin Sheldon, executive director of Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit environmental law and policy organization headquartered in Boulder, agreed.

"I think the center's report is terrific," Sheldon said. "It gives a good overview of the issues involved in oil shale development. It's an important document for public education and to help inform the debate that we all need to have about oil shale."

Limerick is glad to see all sides on the question of oil shale development talking about the issues involved.

"It's spirit-lifting to see a society thinking, 'No, we need to really think before we move ahead on this,' " said Limerick. "At long last, we have gotten to a stage of trying to think as hard as we can about our actions and their likely consequences. This seems like a really great act of maturation as a group of human beings."

The online report will be updated to stay current with recent developments. It also will feature space for comments and discussion from stakeholders who have an interest in oil shale development.

See the CU-Boulder Center of the American West's report "What Every Westerner Should Know About Oil Shale" at http://oilshale.centerwest.org.

A CU-Boulder video news release on the topic can be accessed at http://www.colorado.edu/news by clicking on the headline about the oil shale report.

Contact:
Jason Hanson, 303-492-4879
Jason.hanson@colorado.edu

Patty Limerick, 303-492-4879
Patricia.Limerick@colorado.edu

Peter Caughey, 303-492-4007

The intention of this project of compiling BMPs is to protect all of the surface resources affected by oil and gas development - air and water quality, soils, vegetation, visual aesthetics, tranquility, health and safety, wildlife and other resources.  The database now includes more than 4000 records of BMPs currently in use, required and/or recommended in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

To access the website, visit http://www.oilandgasbmps.org

Long thought of as the sleeping giant with respect to sea level rise, Antarctica holds about nine times the volume of ice of Greenland. Its western ice sheet, known as WAIS, is of particular interest to scientists due to its inherent instability, a result of large areas of the continent's bedrock lying below sea level. But the ice sheet's potential contribution to sea level rise has been greatly overestimated, according to new calculations.

"There's a vast body of research that's looked at the likelihood of a WAIS collapse and what implications such a catastrophic event would have for the globe," said Jonathan Bamber, lead author of the study published in Science May 15. "But all of these studies have assumed a 5-meter to 6-meter contribution to sea level rise. Our calculations show those estimates are much too large, even on a thousand-year timescale."

Bamber and his colleagues found a WAIS collapse would only raise sea levels by 3.3 meters, or about 11 feet. Bamber, a professor at the University of Bristol in England, currently is a visiting fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.

The study authors used models based on glaciological theory to simulate how the massive ice sheet likely would respond if the floating ice shelves fringing the continent broke free. Vast ice shelves currently block WAIS from spilling into the Weddell and Ross seas, limiting total ice loss to the ocean.

According to theory, if these floating ice shelves were removed, sizeable areas of WAIS would essentially become undammed, triggering an acceleration of the ice sheet toward the ocean and a rapid inland migration of the grounding line.  The grounding line is the point where the ice sheet's margins meet the ocean and begin to float.

The most unstable areas of WAIS are those sections sitting in enormous inland basins on bedrock entirely below sea level. If the ice filling these basins becomes undammed by the disappearance of floating ice shelves, it quickly would become buoyant and form new floating ice shelves further inland, in time precipitating further breakup and collapse, according to existing theories.

The study authors assumed that only ice on the downward-sloping and inland-facing sides of the basins would be vulnerable to collapse.  They also assumed that ice grounded on inland bedrock that slopes upward or on bedrock that lies above sea level likely would survive.

"Unlike the world's other major ice sheets -- the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and Greenland -- WAIS is the only one with such an unstable configuration," said Bamber.

Just how rapid the collapse of WAIS would be is largely unknown. If such a large mass of ice steadily melted over 500 years, as has been suggested in earlier studies, it would add about 6.5 millimeters or a quarter of an inch per year to sea level rise -- about twice the current rate due to all sources.

"Interestingly, the pattern of sea level rise is independent of how fast or how much of the WAIS collapses," he said. "Even if the WAIS contributed only a meter of sea level rise over many years, sea levels along North America's shorelines would still increase 25 percent more than the global average," said Bamber.

Regional variations in sea level would largely be driven by the distribution of ice mass from the Antarctic continent to the oceans, according to the study. With less mass at the South Pole, Earth's gravity field would weaken in the Southern Hemisphere and strengthen in the Northern Hemisphere, causing water to pile up in the northern oceans.

This redistribution of mass also would affect Earth's rotation, which in turn would cause water to build up along the North American continent and in the Indian Ocean.

Study co-authors included Riccardo Riva and Bert Vermeersen from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and Anne LeBroq of the University of Durham in England.  The study was conducted with support from the Natural Environment Research Council.

Contact:
Jonathan Bamber, 303-492-8695
j.bamber@bristol.ac.uk

Adriana Bailey, 303-492-6289
Adriana.bailey@colorado.edu

Methane bound up in ocean sediments and permafrost, called methane clathrate, has been a concern to scientists because of its huge volume, greenhouse gas potency and potential for release during periods of warming, said Vasilii Petrenko, a CU-Boulder postdoctoral fellow and lead study author. If just 10 percent of methane from clathrates -- an ice-like substance composed of methane and water -- were suddenly released into Earth's atmosphere, the resulting increase in the greenhouse effect would be equivalent to a 10-fold increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, he said.

Using carbon 14 as a "tracer" to date and distinguish wetland methane from methane clathrates, an international team determined the methane jump 11,600 years ago likely emanated primarily from Earth's wetlands. "From a global warming standpoint, this appears to be good news," said Petrenko of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, lead author on a paper that was published in Science on April 24.

Methane is the third most powerful greenhouse gas behind water vapor and C02 and accounts for roughly 20 percent of the human-caused increase in the greenhouse effect.

As Earth emerged from the last ice age, temperatures in some places in the Northern Hemisphere shot up about 18 degrees Fahrenheit in just 20 years, said Petrenko.  Scientists have been concerned that such abrupt warming events could trigger huge oceanic methane "burps" caused by the dissociation of seafloor clathrates, providing a positive climate feedback mechanism that could drive up Earth's temperatures still further.

"If we found that clathrates release a lot of methane to the atmosphere during abrupt episodes of warming, that could signal big trouble for the planet, " said Petrenko. "But even though wetlands appear be the primary source, it's still something to be concerned about."

Methane emitted from human activities like rice cultivation, livestock, the burning of grasslands, forests and wood fuels, gas leaks from fossil fuel production and waste management activities have nearly tripled methane concentrations in Earth's atmosphere in the past 250 years, Petrenko said.  The amount of carbon held in methane clathrate deposits on Earth may equal the amount of carbon in all oil, coal and gas reserves on the planet, he said.

Study co-authors were from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Oregon State University, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, Danish Technical University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.  Petrenko conducted most of the research as part of his doctoral thesis at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography under Professor Jeffrey Severinghaus.

The research team extracted several tons of ancient ice from the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet at a site called Pakitsoq, the largest ice samples ever recovered for a climate change study.  The researchers cut the ice into blocks with electric chain saws, dumped 17 cubic feet at a time into a vacuum melting tank heated by powerful propane torches, and transferred ancient air released from bubbles in the ice into cylinders for subsequent laboratory analysis, Petrenko said.

The effort, which lasted five field-seasons, was "an undertaking of epic proportions," said Petrenko.  "This was the first measurement of its kind, and we really pushed the envelope," he said.  "It represents a major advance in analytical methods for studying ancient ice."

Methane clathrates are only stable in conditions that combine cold temperatures and high pressures. Some scientists suspect that a swift and massive warming in the early Cenozoic era about 56 million years ago may have been triggered by huge methane releases from clathrates into the atmosphere, Petrenko said.

Methane levels in Earth's atmosphere increased about 2 percent from about A.D. 1 to 1000 and decreased by 2 percent from 1000 to 1700, which may have been due in part to decreased landscape burning by indigenous people in the Americas devastated by introduced diseases, according to a 2005 CU-Boulder study. About 60 percent of atmospheric methane is now generated from human-related activities, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.

The 2009 Greenland ice study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society and several other agencies. Petrenko's postdoctoral fellowship at CU-Boulder is funded by The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Contact:
Vasilii Petrenko, 303-492-7132
Vasilii.petrenko@colorado.edu

Jim Scott, 303-492-3114

The researchers, who have been tracking Arctic sea ice cover with satellites since 1979, found that the winter of 2008-09 was the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events in the satellite record have all occurred in the past six years, according to CU-Boulder researcher Walt Meier of NSIDC.

The new measurements by CU-Boulder's NSIDC show the maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09 reached on Feb. 28 was 5.85 million square miles, which is 278,000 square miles below the average extent for 1979 to 2000, an area slightly larger than the state of Texas, said Meier.

In addition, a team of CU-Boulder researchers led by Research Associate Charles Fowler of the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, or CCAR, has found that younger, thinner ice has replaced older, thicker ice as the dominant type over the past five years, making it more prone to summer melt.

"Ice extent is an important measure of the health of the Arctic, but it only gives us a two dimensional view of the ice cover," said Meier. "Thickness is important, especially in the winter, because it is the best overall indicator of the health of the ice cover.  As the ice cover in the Arctic grows thinner, it becomes more vulnerable to summer melt."

Until recent years, measurements have shown most Arctic ice has survived at least one summer and often several, said Meier.  But the balance has now flipped, and seasonal ice -- which melts and re-freezes every year -- now comprises about 70 percent of Arctic sea ice in winter, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s, he said.  Thicker ice that has survived two or more years now comprises just 10 percent of ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent in years past.

Scientists believe Arctic sea ice functions like an air conditioner for the global climate system by naturally cooling air and water masses, playing a key role in ocean circulation and reflecting solar radiation back into space.

In a related study led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., researchers have demonstrated a way to estimate ice thickness over the entire Arctic Ocean. Using two years of data from NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, the team made the first basin-wide estimate of the thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean ice cover for 2005 and 2006.

"With the new data on the area and thickness of Arctic sea ice, we can now better understand the sensitivity and vulnerability of the ice cover to changes in climate," Kwok said.

A recent study by a team from CU-Boulder's CCAR concluded there has been a near complete loss of the oldest, thickest Arctic ice, and that 58 percent of perennial ice was only two to three years old.  In the mid-1980s, only 35 percent of that sea ice was that young and that thin, according to aerospace engineering sciences department Research Professor James Maslanik, who led the 2008 study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

"Heading into the 2009 summer melt season, the potential continues for extensive ice retreat due to the trend toward younger, thinner ice that has accelerated in recent years," said Maslanik, also a member of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.  "A key question will be whether this second year ice is thick enough to survive summer melt," said Maslanik.

"If it does, this might start a trend toward recovery of the perennial sea ice pack," Maslanik said. "If it doesn't, then this would be further evidence of the difficulty of re-establishing the ice conditions that were typical of 20 or 30 years ago."

The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and intense cold sets in. The total volume of winter Arctic ice is equal to the volume of fresh water in Lake Superior and Lake Michigan combined.

While some sea ice is naturally pushed out of the Arctic by winds, much of it melts in place. First-year sea ice usually reaches 6 feet in thickness, while ice that has lasted through more than one summer averages 9 feet and can grow much thicker in some locations near the coast.

For more information visit http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews.

Contact:
Jane Beitler, 303-492-1497
jbeitler@nsidc.org

Walt Meier, 303-492-6508
walt@nsidc.org

James Maslanik, 303-492-8974
james.maslanik@colorado.edu

Jim Scott, 303-492-3114