Climate276
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Looking at Mud to Learn About Ice Sheets
The bottom of the seafloor shows us where ice used to flow. To pinpoint when the ice retreated, the geologists on board take samples of mud and sand from the seafloor. Using a weighted steel barrel lowered to the seafloor they bore their way through sand and mud. A catcher at the bottom of the…
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When Lago Cardiel Was Larger
The lake has grown and shrunk many times over the past 20,000 years. When it grows, it leaves behind a “bathtub ring” of residue around its edge: pebbles smoothed by wave action, carbonate tufas, the remnants of the things that lived at the shore. There are at least three distinct bathtub rings (each of which…
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Geology Marches Forward
For most of our drive, I stare out the window and ask Mike questions: “Is that a glacial moraine?” and “How tall were the Andes originally?” and “Why are those sediments white?” He can respond to a stunning number of these questions. I love being around field geologists; the way they make sense out of…
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More Dust, Lago Potrok Aike
Jay and Barbara took off this morning in a rugged-looking truck while Mike and I followed in a Honda CR-V that looks more appropriate for Route 9W than Patagonia’s gravel roads. We’re hopeful that nothing terrible will go wrong. Wish us luck! I was totally entranced by the geomorphology of this place: I must have…
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Some Thoughts About Dust, Rio Gallegos
I’ve been to Stewart Island, off the southern tip of New Zealand, but I’m pretty sure this is the furthest south I’ve been. Cool! We’re here in Rio Gallegos. We’ve just rendezvoused with Dr. Jay Quade, a geologist from the University of Arizona, and his wife Barbara. We’ve got two cars, a bunch of boxes…
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Economist says climate change countermeasures make financial sense
In a New York Times article Feb. 20, Robert H. Frank, an economist at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, argues that acting to stop climate change makes economic sense.
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Arrival: Buenos Aires
We arrived in Argentina after a night in the air—maybe the first time I’ve ever gotten a (nearly) decent night’s sleep on a plane. We took a taxi across the city. It’s hot and flat, and our taxi driver explains that they’ve had torrential rains for several weeks; all the lowlands alongside the highway are…
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Following the Trail of Ancient Icebergs
A few days ago we reached our main study area in the eastern Amundsen Sea. Here we are using sonar to map the contours of the seafloor in great detail. During the last glaciation the Antarctic ice sheet was much larger and covered most of the continental shelf, an underwater extension of the continent that…
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Climate, Fires and Birds: How is the Tundra Changing?
Natalie Boelman is an ecologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who studies the effects of climate change on organisms throughout the food chain. She first visited the Alaskan Arctic in 2001, and will return to the North Slope this spring and summer to continue a wildfire-mapping project and to set up a field study that will…
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