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 Asia Society- GRIP (1921 by G. Mallory)

The Glacier Research Imaging Project (GRIP) has released some stunning images of Everest taken from the same spot In 1921 by George Mallory and in 2007.

Go to the Asia Society web site and see the changes for yourself.

Click the pic to go to the site.

Compare that with Michael Mann’s famous graph.

More threads: Reconstructions of the Earth's temperature. Most by Dr. Micheal Mann Penn State. Image from Gavin Schmidt NASA/Real Climate.

The reason scientist come to have faith in a theory is NEVER based on one single line of evidence. A strong theory is made up of a rope of intermingled threads of independent evidence. This is why those who search in vain for that one study that will prove climate science is a big hoax are destined to always be grasping at threads that break.

The thick rope of AGW theory just added another thread in the form of two pictures. This thread is not a biggy. It doesn’t prove anything  other  than the fact that there is much less ice at Everest in 2007 than in 1921. Not much in itself, but when you add it to thousands of other interwoven threads, a thick rope forms.

There are lots of these ropes in science. Copernicus and Galileo started one that is as thick as my thigh now. So did Charles Darwin and that rope is just as thick. Alfred Wegener started one in the early 1900’s. He  did not live to see the strong rope of plate tectonic theory that holds modern Geology together.

I’m about to leave the map for two weeks.  I head to Northern Greenland on Sunday. While on the icecap at NEEM there will be no internet, TV and not much of a phone! I may be able to get a brief post out of Kangerlussuaq but no promises.

Alfred Wegener died on the Greenland Ice Cap in 1930. I will be thinking about him while looking at the midnight sun.

Dan

Standing at the Pole Jan. 11, 2010. Picture taken by Chaz Firestone.

On the 11th of January I was lucky enough to join a rather small club. Those who have stood at the very bottom of the world.

WAIS DIVIDE

While I saw a lot of the science underway in Antarctica, there was one site in Antarctica I didn’t get to see, WAIS Divide. The Western Antarctic Ice Shelf is the site of one of the most important science projects in the world right now.

Researchers there are drilling through the ice to obtain an ice core that will tell us about the past climate of Earth. It will not be the first ice core, but this one will give detail that has never been seen before.

WAIS Divide drill site- courtesy of the Nat. Science Foundation (Who took me to Antarctica)

WAIS Divide is more remote than the South Pole and the weather was too bad to get in there.  The text books will someday have a lot about these cores. They may very well ask how the nations of the world could ignore the warnings they gave (while burning fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate) as the planet warmed.

NEEM IN GREENLAND

There is another ice core being drilled at the opposite end of the world and in a place just as remote. The site is called NEEM. That stands for Northwest Greenland Eemian ice core.

The site is on top of the Greenland ice cap at over 8,000 feet. In summer, the top of the icecap is the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere )with  the exception perhaps of the top of Mt. Mckinley in Alaska).

The NEEM site was chosen because it may very well be possible to obtain ice with year to year countable layers that extend all the way back through the last ice age to the warm period before it!

The Eemian

The last ice age started about 115,000 years ago. The warm period before is called the Eemian (115,000 to 130,000 ybp). Temperatures in Greenland were likely 3-5C warmer then than they are today in the present interglacial. (The last ice age ended about 11,000 years ago)

Midnight July 1,2010 at NEEM on the Greenland Ice cap. Photo: NEEM ice core drilling project, www.neem.ku.dk.

Having two cores from opposite ends of the world will give paleoclimate researchers the best understanding of how are planets climate has changed over the last 130,000 years. They may very well confirm the estimates of what is called the climate sensitivity.

The climate sensitivity sounds complicated but like most things in science, if you take the time to understand it, it is really pretty simple.

Here are the basics and the big question all in one:

If you double the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, how much does the Earth warm?

Climate models and ice cores obtained over the last 25 years all seem to indicate a sensitivity of about 3-4 degrees C. Most research shows it is not likely less than 2C but it could be higher than 4C.

If this is indeed true, then you don’t need a climate model to forecast the weather at the end of this century. The CO2 levels are rising rapidly and will reach the doubling point long before 2100. The CO2 is actually rising faster than predicted by the IPCC and will soon hit 400 parts per million. When Thomas Jefferson signed the Declaration of Independence it was about 280 ppm.

Ice core at NEEM in 2009. Photo: NEEM ice core drilling project, www.neem.ku.dk.

Rewriting The Text Books

Previous ice cores have already rewritten the climate text books. I was taught back in the late 1970’s that climate changes very slowly. Not enough to be perceptible in one life time. The Greenland cores have shown that the climate there changed many times, to much warmer conditions in just a couple of decades!

This was stunning information.

It’s why climate experts like James Hansen worry about so called tipping points.

Now that we are controlling the CO2 (not mother nature), could something like that happen again? Hansen thinks so and believes that we are already at a level of CO2 where it could. (A world 4C warmer than today would be dramatically different with likely catastrophic consequences)

NEEM is on top of 2500 meters of ancient ice. Image ctsy. NEEM

Ancient Ice

The ice cap at NEEM is over 2,500 meters thick and at the bottom is ice from snow that fell 130,000 years ago! If all goes well, researchers in late July will be handling the most ancient Greenland  ice humans have seen. (Antarctic cores have gone back even further).

Embedded in it will be a record of the temperature, and a host of other variables. That ice has locked in it the story of what that world was like when those soft snow flakes drifted down onto the icecap so incredibly long ago.

So now that you know why these ice cores are so important, I can tell you my disappointment at not reaching WAIS Divide was short lived.

ctsy. NEEM

Would You Believe??

I’ve been invited to visit NEEM in about three weeks!

Not many people get to stand at the bottom and the top of the planet inside of one year. If ever!

If all goes well the same New York air guard unit that flew us to the South Pole will land me on top of the Greenland Ice cap, well north of the Arctic Circle, in a few weeks. A land of 24 hour daylight at the top of the world.

More coming soon about NEEM and details about the ice cores and what modern science can tell about the past by analysing them.

If all goes well, I will see history first hand in a few weeks, and yes, I am bringing cameras.

Ok, I know I shot myself in the foot with that title.

Geek books! Run!

Well, this post is for my steady readers then

I’m finishing two of the best popular science (aka science for the masses) books I have read in quite awhile. I actually love reading these type of books, because a really good expert can make me understand something you already know in a much better way. Both of these books have done that and more.

The first one is by Dr. James Hansen. The title is “Storms Of My Grandchildren”

In case you do not know, he is the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences. NASA GISS is where NASA put the scientists who are too smart for NASA. That’s saying something.

It was James Hansen who told the world in the late 1980’s that climate change would overcome the natural day to day, and month to month fluctuations of our atmosphere,  and become very noticeable by the early 21st century.

He was dead on.

His book is a mix of very well explained climate science and the insider view of dealing with politicians from both sides of the political spectrum. The science interests me much more than the politics, but I am sure many others will feel just the opposite.

I always enjoy reading Hansen’s published papers. He has a distinctive down home style that one does not often see in the peer reviewed literature. Many papers are written such that only those who are working on a particular specific problem can casually read. Not Hansen’s. Anyone with a background in the field can see what he is getting at right away. I guess I’m saying that he doesn’t write between the lines!

It’s available for Kindle and iPad as well.

The other book is by my new favorite living Physicist. Brian Cox of the UK. I wrote a post about his fabulous series on the BBC last month called “Wonders of the Solar System“. It was, in my humble opinion, the first show on science that has  surpassed Car Sagan’s COSMOS.

His book is WHY E=M C (Square).

If you think relativity is to complex to understand, then try this book. Nothing more difficult than 8th grade algebra.

Really.

REALLY!

Here is a little teaser.

Let’s say you left Earth in a spacecraft and accelerated constantly at one g (One g is the gravity you feel on Earth) for ten years then turned around and decelerated at one g for ten years, and then came home to Earth the same way.  How long would you be gone?

40 years right??

To you yes.

When you got back to Earth it would be 59,000 years later here.

Humans one day WILL travel to the future. There is just no going back!

Brian Cox covers everything from Relativity to Feynman diagrams. If you couldn’t get through Stephen Hawking’s Brief History Of Time, then you should really try this. (I know physicists who could not get through Hawking’s book!)

You can read this book on your iPhone/iPad or Kindle too.

Later,
Dan

Who has to change that clock??? Dan's picture.

The U.S. has recently lengthened by one month the annual setting of the clocks ahead by one hour. If you are in the USA, the time to do this is 2 AM this Sunday morning 14 March.

The UK, and most of western Europe, will not jump forward until 28 March.

Supposedly, the first person to have the idea was none other than Ben Franklin who argued it would save lamp oil and candles in summer. The reason being that it would get dark much later than in winter and people would go to bed soon after darkness fell. This makes sense and it likely did save energy when first enacted during the first world war.

It almost certainly does not now. There is very good evidence that it actually costs us more money.

Two studies on the past 3 years have come up with the same conclusions. The extra air conditioning use in the evening when people are home from work, costs far more energy than the lower use of lighting. As more and more compact fluorescent lights are used, the difference will be even greater I suspect.

Joe Romm over at Climate Progress has a good post on this. (He actually beat me to it!)

Better yet, read the actual paper. Mouse on the image below to read it.

Kotchen and Grant found, that in Indiana, the change to the clocks in summer cost Indiana folks around 9 million dollars a year extra in power bills! That was BEFORE the congress added a month to it!

Since we still get most of our electricity from the dirtiest method possible by  burning coal, this is adding a lot of pollution and green house gases to the atmosphere.  See A REMINDER ABOUT COAL. A report on CBS News says heart attacks go up 6% during daylight time. Not sure why.

Here is my vote for leaving the darn clocks alone!

Later,

one hour later to be exact,

Dan