Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal

Your's truly looking at the ice core from 2,500 meters beneath the Greenland Ice Cap. The science trench where the drill is located is -20C and is about 10 meters below the surface. Dan's pic.

I’ve just returned today from Greenland and am looking forward to seeing my first “night” in 10 days!

The 14 countries that have supported the NEEM ice core project got their money’s worth this week. The two year project to drill an ice core through 2,500 meters of ice finally reached Greenland rock.

Where Is It

NEEM at Midnight- Dan's Pic.

The NEEM site is at 8,300 feet on top of the ice sheet. I arrived there a week ago Tuesday and was a guest for 8 nights. There were 38 of us in a small camp in the middle of a magnificent desolation of white.

The population of this tiny outpost is an international mix of young and older scientists, researchers and ice core drilling experts. Many like Jim White, the Director of the Stable Isotope Lab at INSTAAR are renowned experts in their fields.

It was a fun and fascinating 9 days with top ice scientists from Denmark, France, USA,Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.

There was a riot of different accents but everyone had one thing in common.

Scientific curiosity.

Among those in science, that always transcends national borders, languages and cultures.

About NEEM

James White of the University of Colorado and director of INSTAAR.

I was a guest of Paleoclimate expert  Jim White the director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the Uni. of Colorado. Dr. White arranged the support of the National Science Foundation. After Denmark, the NSF was the second biggest funder of NEEM.

So what did the folks at NEEM do in plain language?

They pulled up ice that was once falling as snow in Greenland around 150,000 years ago! Then they analysed and read it like a climate history book. This was the first time that a boat load of science was done on an ice core as it was being obtained.

This was during the ice age that preceded the Eemian. The Eemian is the warm period before our last ice age. This means we now have an ice core that goes all the way back through the Holocene (The warm period after the last ice age in which we now live), the ice age before the Holocene, and then the warm period before the last ice age (The Eemian) and finally into the penultimate ice age before the Eemian!

This is from the Antarctic VOSTOK ice core. Notice how stable the climate has been during the short blip of time called the Holocene. Virtually all of civilisation developed in the Holocene. Notice how unstable the climate was before! NEEM has now obtained a core from Greenland that goes back a similar period to that shown here. (NOAA)

Knowing what the climate of Earth was like in the Eemian is vitally important. The main reason is because there is overwhelming evidence the Earth will be as warm as the Eemian by the end of this century.

It should not be. The best evidence we have is that the Earth should be cooling slightly. It is actually doing just the opposite because of rapidly rising greenhouse gases.

There is no doubt among the scientists that we will continue to warm. Even if we quit burning fossil fuels tonight, the planet will continue to warm at least another degree. That’s because a lot of the warming has been stored in the oceans. If we keep burning coal and oil, the warming will be much more severe.

There is little debate about that in the science community. Almost none actually.

NEEM Camp- Dan's pic (click to make real big)

The Scary Bit Is What Is Not Known.

Could there be a rapid warming?

A significant jump in temperature that happens in a decade?

Sound crazy?

Think again., The ice core at NEEM and the other Greenland cores all show that this has happened many times in the past. Very abrupt warmings are part of our climate. The question is what are the tipping points that cause these. The bigger question is are we about to reach one.

This ice core at NEEM may hold very important clues.

Pictures and Video

I took thousands of pics and made 5 hours of video at NEEM. We will air reports on WHNT for those in North Alabama and there will be an in-depth documentary about NEEM coming as well from Dave Jones at Storm Center Communications. I was part of the three man team that Dave sent.

My colleagues, David Stroud and Robert Freeland, and I had an incredible adventure. I learned more of the latest climate science in 8 days than I could have in a year at home. (I had captive climate experts to ask questions of and I took advantage.)

We were there when NEEM reached bedrock.

Stay tuned here for the pictures and the story. I think you will find it fascinating.

One thing for sure, the phrase “snow on the toilet paper” will have a significant meaning to me for the rest of my life!

More soon after I sleep for awhile!

Dan

From NOAA- NCDC

Click or ful size- From NCDC

NOAA/NCDC released a whole slew of rather grim climate news today. It’s important to remember that besides the sun and increasing greenhouse gases there is a lot of built in variability in the climate system. It’s only been in the last couple of decades that the greenhouse warming has risen out of the noise created by weather.

That said, even with El Nino gone and the sun coming out of one of it’s quietest periods of the century, the temperatures have soared. The last 4 consecutive months have been the hottest on record. The first 6 months of the year are also the hottest on record.

The mid tropospheric temps from UAH and RSS are also running near or above the warmest ever on their much shorter record.

The Arctic sea ice also continues it’s decline. The rate of decline in June was the fastest ever measured.

From NSIDC

The Antarctic is actually gaining ice due to a complex weather pattern induced by ozone depletion and cooling in the stratosphere. This cooling is also caused by increasing greenhouse gases.

Robert Scott's hut at Hut Point near Mcmurdo Base, Antarctica. (Dan's pic Jan. 2010)

Here is a Great Google Tech talk on Antarctica. Having been in both Shackleton’s and Scott’s huts, I am of course a big advocate of preserving not only these sites but in preserving the last great unspoiled continent on Earth.

Well worth watching. It’s also nice to hear a Christ Church accent again!

What an incredible tragedy if these places and this continent is lost.

Being a history and science buff, I have often wondered what the weather and the sky looked like at great moments in history.

Today is one of those dates. At 13 minutes past 10 PM on Friday April 14, 1865, a gunshot rang out in Fords Theatre at Tenth and E street in Washington.

Forty seven years later, almost to the minute, a lookout shouted “ice berg, dead ahead!” on the Royal Mail Ship Titanic.

I’ve been researching the weather on the day Lincoln was shot, on and off, for quite a few years. It was a beautiful spring day that started with some fog and a heavy due. At the moment John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal shot, it was mostly cloudy with temps. likely in the 50’s.

Jim Bishop in the book THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT reports a full moon rising at the time. This is incorrect. The moon was nearly full, but in the gibbous phase.

It IS possible to show the exact position of the stars at the moment the shot rang out in Washington. I used Stellarium to set the date and time along with the location of Washington. The pictures below are where the stars, the moon and the planet were at that moment, when viewed from the street out front of Ford’s Theatre.

The sky over Washington at 10:14 pm Friday April 14 1865. Notice the moon low in the East-Southeast. Click image for a bigger image.

Looking North at 10:14 PM in Washington April 14th 1865. Notice the big dipper high in the sky. Clouds were likely obscuring the stars somewhat at the time. Image from Stellarium.

The Moon phase at the moment President Lincoln was shot. Click image for higher resolution.

The weather for the Titanic’s sinking is well known.

A large polar high was right on top of the ship that night. The sea was described by many witnesses as like glass. It’s thought this had something to do with not seeing the berg until it was too late. Waves would have splashed against the ice berg and made it more visible.

There was no moon that night and the air temperature was a little below freezing. Unfortunately the water was just above freezing.

Below is the sky that was visible at the moment the ship hit the iceberg. Skies were completely clear with no wind.

View of the sky from the position of the RMS Titanic at 11:40 pm local time 14 April 1912. No trees of course. Just ocean, in all directions. Notice the North Star and Big Dipper. The Milky Way was clearly visible in the Northeast.

Cold stars in a cold sea.

Dan

Sir Ernest Shackleton's Hut at Cape Royds Antarctica. Mount Erebus, an active volcano in the background.

The only continent that humans did not naturally colonise is Antarctica. As I write this there are only about 250 people on the entire continent. They will be there through the long dark polar night. It will be spring before the New York Air Guard can fly a plane back in.

Robert Falcon Scott's hut is a 15 minute walk from McMurdo Base.

The first person to reach the Pole at the bottom of the world did so just 99 years ago. Having been there, I now have a deep respect for those who came first. Antarctica is a difficult and dangerous place in the 21st century.

The early explorers who survived there were more than just brave. They were shining examples of human curiosity and endurance.

You might think that all traces of their visits are gone now. Buried under snow and ice.

You would be wrong.

Food on the shelf. A century old. The Heinz logo has changed little!

These clothes have been hanging on to dry for a century. Two world wars, the moon landing, the new millennium. They hang still. The clock has stopped at 1907.

Antarctica is a frozen desert. It preserves well everything left there. There are two spots where you can literally walk through a door and go back 100 years. One is at McMurdo Base and the other is not too far away at Cape Royds.

A newspaper in Shackleton's hut that looks like it is a month old. It's over 100 years. My travel colleague Ann Posegate took the pic.

They are the huts built by Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Scott used the hut at McMurdo on his attempt at the Pole in 1910-1912. He reached it  a month after Amundsen. Scott  died with is men before he could return.

Shackleton never reached the Pole, but is a legendary figure for the rescue of his men after his ship became trapped and crushed by the ice. He sailed in a tiny boat across the most treacherous ocean on the planet to South Georgia Island. He returned with help and rescued every single man.

That journey remains the greatest “endurance” of  humans on record.

He is buried at South Georgia, where he died suddenly, on a future expedition.

Sir Ernest Shackleton's Hut at Cape Royds

Shackleton's weather station. I had to have my pic taken here.

When you go into these huts, you walk into another world. A world that no longer exists except in history books and old pictures. Except it does still exist. It is right in front of your eyes. In colour, not an old yellowed photograph. You can touch it. You can smell it. You can feel it.

The cold and dry have preserved everything as Scott, Shackleton and their men left it. Under Shackleton’s hut they just discovered several crates of whiskey. It’s likely still good!

Interior of Shackleton's hut. Notice the hanging socks.

These huts are now protected places.

Permission is needed to enter them. Work is being done to make sure they are protected against the ravages of time and the curious. They are likely safe for a long time to come.

Very few people get this far South into Antarctica. Tourism for the most part is much further North along the Antarctic Peninsula.

I know that most people will never have the chance to stare out the same window that Shackleton looked through.

It was a humbling experience. No one who enters these huts leave them unmoved.

No One.

(Note: These pictures are for non commercial, educational use only. Any other use requires my permission.)