Earth Sciences117
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Petermann Glacier: At a glacial pace?
We are beginning our focus on the land based ice of northern Greenland. Flying out of Thule places us close to Petermann Glacier situated in Greenland’s northwest corner. The focus of our first flight of this phase of the project (the overall 29th flight of the season!) is Petermann Glacier. Perhaps Greenland’s most newsworthy glacier…
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Climate News Roundup: Week of 4/24
Carbon emissions ‘hidden’ in imported goods revealed, BBC, Apr. 25 Two recent studies present that the amount of carbon dioxide emissions “hidden” in imported goods is increasing. These emissions are not currently included in national estimates. “There is a degree of delusion about emissions cuts in developed nations. They are not really cuts at all…
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Switchyard Project: Day 1 – Alert, Alert, Alert
The first day of our operation is usually filled with a lot of work preparing and testing the instruments we brought up here, preparing the airplanes, loading our equipment into the planes, setting up the equipment in the laboratory and preparing the sampling containers. Since our operation requires drilling holes through the sea ice, we…
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Keeping America Competitive by Sparking Curiosity in the Classroom
To keep America competitive in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (the STEM disciplines), a report from the National Academy of Sciences calls for strengthening the skills of some 250,000 teachers across the United States through university-run science training programs. The report asserts that when teachers gain laboratory experience and conduct fieldwork alongside active researchers, they…
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Can Big Earthquakes Disrupt World Weather?
The recent earthquake in Japan shifted the earth’s axis by half a foot. You may be wondering if that’s enough to change earth’s weather. No, not really, says Jerry McManus, a climate scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Earthquakes unleash a tremendous amount of energy, but not enough to upset the energy balance of earth’s…
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Switchyard Project: In Transit…Part 2
April 27, 2011: We spent the night in Thule in the North Star Hotel. Before we could leave Thule the crew had to load the cargo back into the C130. Equipment is loaded onto palettes, and these palettes are loaded through the rear door into the plane. A C130 can handle four palettes with two tons of cargo…
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Switchyard Project: In Transit…Part 1
Bags are packed and ready to go. April 25, 2011: We left Lamont in the afternoon to Schenectady, close to Scotia where the 109th Airlift Wing of the New York Air National Guard is located that will fly us up to CFS Alert. That unit provides extensive logistical support for all U.S. science operations in the arctic and…
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Switchyard Project: Tracking the Arctic Seascape
Arctic summer sea ice is declining rapidly: a trend with enormous implications for global weather and climate. The multi-year Arctic Switchyard project will seek to distinguish the effects of natural climate variability from those of human-induced climate change.
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A 30 year history of measuring Greenland’s Breathtaking Vistas
We flew our last science flight out of Kangerlussuaq Base (western Greenland) over the Geikie Peninsula, on the east coast of Greenland. This high priority mission had not been completed prior to this because of difficult weather in the peninsula area. The mission focus was to determine how the surface ice elevation and ice thickness…
