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Activist indicted for boarding Japan whaling ship

April 3, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

TOKYO, April 2 (Reuters) – Japanese prosecutors on Friday criminally charged a New Zealand anti-whaling activist who boarded a whaling vessel in the Antarctic following clashes between whale hunters and environmentalists.

Regular attempts by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a hardline anti-whaling group, to block the annual whale hunt have sparked irritation in Japan, where the government says whaling is an important cultural tradition.

Some legal experts say Japan’s hunt breaches international laws such as the Antarctic Treaty System. In February, Australia set Japan a November deadline to stop Southern Ocean whaling or face an international legal challenge. [ID:nSGE61I0DD]

Pete Bethune, who Sea Shepherd said had been planning to attempt a citizen’s arrest of the Japanese whaling vessel’s skipper when he boarded the ship in February, was arrested last month in Japan after being held on board for the four-week trip. [ID:nSGE62B08M]

He was indicted on several criminal counts, including one for carrying a knife when he boarded the vessel, Japan’s top government spokesman told a news conference.

“We are dealing with this issue rigidly based on our law,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano added.

Bethune, the captain of the Ady Gil, a high-tech vessel that was damaged in a collision with a Japanese whaling ship in January, approached Japan’s Shonan Maru 2 on a jet ski, breached anti-boarding nets and climbed aboard in darkness on Feb. 15. [ID:nSGE61E01Q] (Reporting by Yoko Nishikawa; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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Antarctica’s secret water network far more dynamic than believed

September 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 15 (ANI): The first complete map of the lakes beneath Antarctica’s ice sheets reveals the continent’s secret water network is far more dynamic than we thought, and could be acting as a powerful lubricant beneath glaciers, contributing to sea level rise.

According to a report in New Scientist, Ian Joughin at the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues developed the map.

Unlike previous lake maps, which are confined to small regions, Joughin and colleagues mapped 124 subglacial lakes across Antarctica using lasers on NASA’s ICESat satellite.

The team also observed the lakes draining and filling.

While interior lakes tended to be static, many coastal lakes changed significantly. Some even appear to be connected by channels under the ice hundreds of kilometres long.

For instance, when upstream lakes under the Recovery glacier drained 3 cubic kilometres of water, lakes downstream gained a similar amount.

Water flowing under glaciers can act as a lubricant, causing land ice to accelerate into the sea and add to rising sea levels.

“The implications for the flow of ice are potentially quite significant,” said Andy Smith of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK.

“Those lakes with no clear drainage channels are of particular interest because they could be spreading a thin film of lubricating water under glaciers,” he added. (ANI)

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Declining CO2 levels helped in Antarctic formation 34 million years ago

September 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 14 (ANI): In a major research study, the link between declining carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the earth’s atmosphere and the formation of the Antarctic ice caps some 34 million years ago has been confirmed for the first time.

The research was carried out by a team of scientists from Cardiff, Bristol and Texas A and M universities, in a small East African village, where they extracted microfossils in samples of rocks which show the level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere at the time of the formation of the ice-cap.

Geologists have long speculated that the formation of the Antarctic ice-cap was caused by a gradually diminishing natural greenhouse effect.

The study’s findings confirm that atmospheric CO2 declined during the Eocene – Oligocene climate transition and that the Antarctic ice sheet began to form when CO2 in the atmosphere reached a tipping point of around 760 parts per million (by volume).

According to Professor Paul Pearson from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, who led the mission to the remote East Africa village of Stakishari, “About 34 million years ago, the Earth experienced a mysterious cooling trend. Glaciers and small ice sheets developed in Antarctica, sea levels fell and temperate forests began to displace tropical-type vegetation in many areas.”

“The period, known to geologists as the Eocene – Oligocene transition, culminated in the rapid development of a continental-scale ice sheet on Antarctica, which has been there ever since,” he said.

“We therefore set out to establish whether there was a substantial decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as the Antarctic ice sheet began to grow,” he added.

The team mapped large expanses of bush and wilderness and pieced together the underlying local rock formations using occasional outcrops of rocks and stream beds.

Eventually, they discovered sediments of the right age near a traditional African village called Stakishari.

By assembling a drilling rig and extracting hundreds of meters of samples from under the ground, they were able to obtain exactly the piece of Earth’s history they had been searching for.

According to co-author Dr Gavin Foster from the University of Bristol Earth Sciences Department, “By using the rather unique set of samples from Tanzania and a new analytical technique that I developed, we have, for the first time, been able to reconstruct the concentration of CO2 across the Eocene-Oligocene boundary – the time period about 34 million years ago when ice sheets first started to grow on Eastern Antarctica.” (ANI)

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Antarctica’s plumbing system more dynamic than previously believed

September 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 2 (ANI): Scientists, using space-based lasers on a NASA satellite have created the most comprehensive inventory of lakes that actively drain or fill under Antarctica’s ice, which has revealed a continental plumbing system that is more dynamic than previously thought.

“Even though Antarctica’s ice sheet looks static, the more we watch it, the more we see there is activity going on there all the time,” said Benjamin Smith of the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the study.

Unlike most lakes, Antarctic lakes are under pressure from the ice above. That pressure can push melt water from place to place like water in a squeezed balloon.

The water moves under the ice in a broad, thin layer, but also through a linked cavity system. This flow can resupply other lakes near and far.

Understanding this plumbing is important, as it can lubricate glacier flow and send the ice speeding toward the ocean, where it can melt and contribute to sea level change.

But figuring out what’s happening beneath miles of ice is a challenge.

Researchers led by Smith analyzed 4.5 years of ice elevation data from NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation satellite (ICESat) to create the most complete inventory to date of changes in the Antarctic plumbing system.

The team has mapped the location of 124 active lakes, estimated how fast they drain or fill, and described the implications for lake and ice-sheet dynamics.

Smith, Helen Fricker, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and colleagues extended their elevation analysis to cover most of the Antarctic continent and 4.5 years of data from ICESat’s Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS).

By observing how ice sheet elevation changed between the two or three times the satellite flew over a section every year, researchers could determine which lakes were active.

They also used the elevation changes and the properties of water and ice to estimate the volume change.

Only a few of the more than 200 previously identified lakes were confirmed active, implying that lakes in East Antarctica’s high-density “Lakes District” are mostly inactive and do not contribute much to ice sheet changes.

Most of the 124 newly observed active lakes turned up in coastal areas, at the head of large drainage systems, which have the largest potential to contribute to sea level change.

According to Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, “The survey shows that most active subglacial lakes are located where the ice is moving fast, which implies a relationship.” (ANI)

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Indian expedition to Antarctica approved

August 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug 27 (ANI): The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) today accorded its approval for the continuation of the project “Polar Science; Expedition to Antarctica” during the XI Five Year Plan period at an estimated cost of Rs.230.01 crore.

The scientific expeditions which started in 1981 have contributed substantially to the growth of polar science in the country.

Experiments mounted by Indian scientists in disciplines such as atmospheric sciences and meteorology, earth sciences and glaciology, biology and environmental sciences have also contributed directly to global experiments mounted under the aegis of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).

The Indian Antarctic research base “Maitri” (70o 45′ 56.9″S : 11o 44′ 08.62″E) is one of the few active permanent research stations in the Central Donning Maudland (CDML) of East Antarctica from where systematic scientific experiments are conducted on a year-round basis.

The facilities available at this research base include a weather observatory, geomagnetic station; a permanent seismological observatory, GPS station, ice-core drilling facilities and laboratories for environmental, human health and communication research.

The entire activities related to the planning, coordination and implementation of the Indian Antarctic Programme is managed by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) through the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR), Goa, an autonomous institute under the Ministry, established in 1998.

The objectives of this Programme are to continue the long-term scientific pursuits undertaken to understand the global processes and phenomena some of which are directly pertinent to our needs having potential applications.

The continuation emphasizes our perceptible and influential presence in Antarctica to uphold the country’s strategic interests in the Polar region and the surrounding oceans. (ANI)

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Seals quickly respond to gain and loss of habitat under climate change

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 10 (ANI): A new study has indicated that seals can quickly respond to gain and loss of habitat under climate change.

The study was conducted by an international research team, including post-doctorate Dr Mark de Bruyn and collaborators from the US, South Africa and Italy, led by Professor Rus Hoelzel from the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Durham University.

It revealed that Southern Elephant seals responded rapidly to climate and habitat change and established a new breeding site thousands of kilometres from existing breeding grounds.

The scientists found that when the Antarctic ice sheets of the Ross Sea Embayment retreated in the Holocene period 8,000 years ago, elephant seals adopted the emergent habitat and established a new population which flourished.

DNA sequences from the ancient remains of seals from the now extinct Antarctic colony showed high levels of genetic diversity, probably due to the very large population size sustained there.

According to Professor Rus Hoelzel, “We’ve shown how a highly mobile marine species responded to the gain and loss of new breeding habitat.

“The new habitat was quickly adopted, probably because seals migrate annually into Antarctic waters to feed. However, when the ice returned and the habitat was lost, only a small proportion returned to the original source population. The Antarctic population crashed and much diversity was lost,” he said.

This habitat was released after the retreat of the grounded ice sheet in the Ross Sea Embayment 7,500-8,000 years ago, and is within the range of modern foraging excursions from the Macquarie Island colony.

Using ancient mtDNA and evolutionary models, the research team tracked the population dynamics of the now extinct colony and the connectivity between this and modern breeding sites.

The team found clear signs of rapid expansion in the new colony 8,000 years ago.

This was followed by directional migration away, coupled with a loss of diversity 1,000 years ago, when the sea ice is thought to have expanded.

The data suggest that the new colony seals came initially from Macquarie Island, and that some returned there, but in much smaller numbers, when the new colony habitat was lost 7,000 years later.

“The seals that discovered the new breeding site had things good, because food was abundant and nearby, however when the ice returned, the new colony collapsed and only a few seals made it back to their original home,” Hoelzel said. (ANI)

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Factors other than trapped ice limit dune movement on Mars

July 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 8 (ANI): A study has determined that snow and ice trapped inside dunes on Mars does not entirely stop their movement, a finding which indicates that other factors are limiting the dune movement.

Planetary scientists have monitored some Martian sand dunes for more than 30 years, and the dunes have not moved during that time, leading scientists to question whether snow and ice trapped inside the dunes might be preventing movement.

However, a recent study, led by Mary Bourke, a senior research scientist at the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute, shows that snow and ice are not enough in themselves to stop dune movement.

While trapped ice and snow impedes movement of sand dunes in polar climates, compared to their counterparts in warmer areas, this does not entirely stop dune movement, the study shows.

“This indicates that other factors are limiting dune movement,” said Bourke.

Bourke also showed that two small dunes recently disappeared on Mars. The dunes, which were 20 meters wide (about 65 feet) and located in the north polar region of Mars, were completely eroded away over a period of 5.7 Earth years.

“This (dune disappearance) is fantastic new data, showing that sand is transported on Mars where and when the wind energy is available,” Bourke said. “But the bigger, larger dunes on Mars are not moving, at least in the areas we studied,” she added.

In the most recent study, Bourke and her colleagues used vertical aerial photos and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data to estimate dune migration rates in Antarctica’s Victoria Valley dune field.

The photos, taken between 1961 and 2001, came from the USGS Antarctic Resource Center.

These dunes are known to be covered by seasonal snowfalls and have snow and ice layers trapped inside.

Bourke found that the dunes migrated about 1.5 meters (5 feet) per year, which is small compared to the distance covered by dunes in warm deserts, which can be as high as 30-70 meters (about 100 to 230 feet) a year.

Factors limiting dune movement on Mars would include the planet’s thin atmosphere, which requires very high wind speeds to provide the force needed to move sand, and the water and carbon-dioxide frosts that cover dunes in Mars’ polar regions for 70 percent of the year. (ANI)

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Carbon from lush plankton blooms never reaches the deep ocean

May 7, 2009 By admin 1 Comment

Washington, May 7 (ANI): A new analysis has revealed that most of the carbon from lush plankton blooms, whether artificially fertilized or natural, never reaches the deep ocean.

The analysis was based on data collected by deep-diving Carbon Explorer that floats continuously, straight through the Antarctic winter.

The researchers who did the analysis were oceanographers Jim Bishop and Todd Wood of the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who measured the fate of carbon particles originating in plankton blooms in the Southern Ocean.

Their study reveals that most of the carbon from lush plankton blooms never reaches the deep ocean.

The surprising discovery deals a blow to the simplest version of the Iron Hypothesis, whose adherents believe global warming can be slowed or even reversed by fertilizing plankton with iron in regions that are iron-poor, but rich in other nutrients like nitrogen, silicon, and phosphorus.

The Southern Ocean is one of the most important such regions.

“Just adding iron to the ocean hasn’t been demonstrated as a good plan for storing atmospheric carbon,” said Bishop, a member of Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California at Berkeley.

“What counts is the carbon that reaches the deep sea, and a lot of the carbon tied up in plankton blooms appears not to sink very fast or very far,” he added.

The reasons, while complex, are most likely due to the seasonal feeding behavior of planktonic animal life, and specifically to the effects of the dark Antarctic winter on plant and animal growth and the mixing of surface and deep waters by winter storms.

Phytoplankton blooms in the spring may indicate that much of the zooplankton (animal) population essential for carbon sedimentation has starved during the winter.

“We would never have made these surprising observations if the autonomous Carbon Explorer floats hadn’t been recording data 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at depths down to 800 meters or more, for over a year after the experiment’s original iron signature had disappeared,” Bishop said. (ANI)

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Ozone hole caused increased growth in Antarctic sea ice

April 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 22 (ANI): A new research has determined that increased growth in Antarctic sea ice during the past 30 years is a result of changing weather patterns caused by the ozone hole.

The research, done by scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA, indicates that while there has been a dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice has increased by a small amount as a result of the ozone hole delaying the impact of greenhouse gas increases on the climate of the continent.

Sea ice plays a key role in the global environment – reflecting heat from the sun and providing a habitat for marine life. At both poles sea ice cover is at its minimum during summer.

However, during the winter freeze in Antarctica this ice cover expands to an area roughly twice the size of Europe.

Ranging in thickness from less than a meter to several meters, the ice insulates the warm ocean from the frigid atmosphere above.

Satellite images show that since the 1970s the extent of Antarctic sea ice has increased at a rate of 100,000 square kilometers a decade.

The new research helps explain why observed changes in the amount of sea-ice cover are so different in both polar regions.

According to lead author Professor John Turner of BAS, “Our results show the complexity of climate change across the Earth. While there is increasing evidence that the loss of sea ice in the Arctic has occurred due to human activity, in the Antarctic, human influence through the ozone hole has had the reverse effect and resulted in more ice.”

“Although the ozone hole is in many ways holding back the effects of greenhouse gas increases on the Antarctic, this will not last, as we expect ozone levels to recover by the end of the 21st Century. By then, there is likely to be around one third less Antarctic sea ice,” he said.

Using satellite images of sea ice and computer models, the scientists discovered that the ozone hole has strengthened surface winds around Antarctica and deepened the storms in the South Pacific area of the Southern Ocean that surrounds the continent.

This resulted in greater flow of cold air over the Ross Sea (West Antarctica) leading to more ice production in this region.

“This new research helps us solve some of the puzzle of why sea-ice is shrinking is some areas and growing in others,” said Turner. (ANI)

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Japanese fleet kills 680 whales, misses target

April 16, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Tokyo – Japan’s whaling fleet failed to achieve its target but still returned to port with the meat of 680 whales on board.

The fleet’s mothership, the Nishin Maru, returned Tuesday to its home port of Shimonoseki in south-western Japan after the close of the Antarctic hunting season, media reports said Wednesday.

The fleet had aimed to kill 900 minke and other whales, but Japan’s Fisheries Agency said the militant, US-based environmental group Sea Shepherd hampered the hunt.

A global whaling moratorium was imposed in 1986, but Japan conducts its annual hunt under a rule by the International Whaling Commission that allows whaling for scientific purposes.

Japan said it is the only country that can furnish useful data on the management of the whale population because of its long-term research programme, but critics accused Japan of using the rule as a loophole to conduct hunts for commercial purposes.

Shigetoshi Nishiwaki, the research leader of Japan’s whaling fleet, sharply criticized what he called Sea Shepherd’s aggressive tactics.

A ship belonging the group collided in February with a vessel from the Japanese fleet. No one was hurt, but Sea Shepherd activists tried to take a whaling ship’s propeller out of commission and threw bottles of butyric acid at the fleet’s vessels.

As a result, the Japanese fleet was unable to operate on 16 days of the 100-day Antarctic hunting season, Nishiwaki said. (dpa)

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Dust-swaddled galaxies light up the Universe

April 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, April 10 (ANI): An Antarctic balloon experiment has revealed that dramatic dust-swaddled stellar nurseries seem to be the main sources of a diffuse background light found in all directions in the Universe.

Astronomers have long suspected that individual galaxies are responsible for a diffuse glow of long-wavelength infrared light, called the far infrared background, that was detected by NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer satellite in the 1990s.

But, accounting for all that light has been difficult, because astronomers must look for such distant galaxies in submillimetre light, which sits between radio and infrared light in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Water vapour in Earth’s atmosphere easily absorbs this radiation, making it difficult to detect from the ground.

According to a report in New Scientist, the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) got around this problem by floating above most of Earth’s atmosphere.

The 2-metre telescope flew above Antarctica for 12 days and landed in early 2007.

By comparing BLAST’s data with that of the Spitzer Space Telescope, a team has identified some 450 individual sources that seem to be responsible for almost all of the far infrared background in the patch of sky BLAST observed.

“Essentially all the radiation came from individual galaxies,” said Mark Devlin of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

More than half of the light seems to have been created by distant starbursts – galaxies undergoing intense star formation – at a time when the universe was less than 5 billion years old.

Smashups between galaxies triggered the formation of the most extreme bursts, which can radiate 1000 times more light than the Milky Way.

Dust in these distant galaxies blocks visible light from reaching Earth, but the energy of newly forming stars is absorbed and re-radiated in the infrared part of the spectrum.

“It seems finally we have identified where most of the dust in the universe is,” said Asantha Cooray, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Irvine.

Since stars rely on dust and gas for fuel, this could be useful for mapping how stars formed over the universe’s history. (ANI)

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Aerosols play a key role in atmospheric warming in Arctic 1

April 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 9 (ANI): A new research by NASA scientists has suggested that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.

Emitted by natural and human sources, aerosols can directly influence climate by reflecting or absorbing the sun’s radiation.

The small particles also affect climate indirectly by seeding clouds and changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity.

A new study, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, used a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.

The researchers found that the mid and high latitudes are especially responsive to changes in the level of aerosols.

Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades.

Though there are several varieties of aerosols, previous research has shown that two types – sulfates and black carbon – play an especially critical role in regulating climate change.

Both are products of human activity.

Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent.

At the same time, black carbon emissions have steadily risen, largely because of increasing emissions from Asia.

Black carbon – small, soot-like particles produced by industrial processes and the combustion of diesel and biofuels – absorb incoming solar radiation and have a strong warming influence on the atmosphere.

In the modeling experiment, Shindell and colleagues compiled detailed, quantitative information about the relative roles of various components of the climate system, such as solar variations, volcanic events, and changes in greenhouse gas levels.

The regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest real-world temperature increases since 1976.

The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures increase by 1.5 degree Celsius since the mid-1970s.

In the Antarctic, where aerosols play less of a role, the surface air temperature has increased about 0.35 degree C.

That makes sense because of the Arctic’s proximity to North America and Europe.

The two highly industrialized regions have produced most of the world’s aerosol emissions over the last century, and some of those aerosols drift northward and collect in the Arctic.

According to Shindell, “It appears that aerosols have quite a powerful effect on climate.” (ANI)

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ROUNDUP: US seeks restrictions on tourism to Arctic-Antarctic region

April 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington – The United States will push for more restrictions on tourism to the North and South Poles to protect the regions’ natural environment and avoid the worst effects of global warming, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.

Opening a nearly two-week summit bringing together the two diplomatic bodies that govern the Arctic and Antarctic, Clinton warned that protecting the region was crucial to stabilizing the global climate.

“The changes under way in the Arctic will have long-term impacts on our economic future, our energy future and indeed again the future of our planet, so it is crucial that we work together,” Clinton said at an opening ceremony at the State Department in Washington.

The gathering, which brings together scientists and government officials from 47 countries, marks the first US-hosted summit on the environment since President Barack Obama took office in January, and comes as world governments are hoping to reach a new deal by December to curb the pollutants that cause global warming.

This week’s summit, which moves to Baltimore, Maryland, after Monday’s opening ceremony, will review the latest science, the impact of tourism and protecting the environment and species in the polar region.

“Strengthening environmental regulation is especially important as tourism to Antarctica increases,” Clinton said, proposing limits on larger ships and increasing safety and environmental regulations.

Scientists have warned that global warming is already having a significant impact on the world’s polar regions. Melting Arctic ice could cause a dangerous rise in global sea levels, flooding some coastlines and accelerating the impact of climate change around the world.

A study by US space agency NASA released on the sidelines of the polar summit found that Arctic ice was melting, and thinning, at a faster rate than expected. About 70 per cent of the Arctic’s sea ice now melts over the summer months, up from 40-50 per cent in the 1990s. Only 10 per cent of the ice survives two years or more.

A separate study last week by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington warned that Arctic summers could be completely devoid of ice in 30 years time. Earlier studies forecast that the Arctic ice would vanish only at the turn of the next century.

The polar conference comes on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Antarctic Treaty. Agreed to by 12 governments, the treaty designated the poles a peaceful “natural reserve” that could not be used by any governments for military purposes.

Clinton said that past agreements on protecting the poles served as a “living example” of governments’ ability to cooperate on environmental issues, and urged similar cooperation in the lead-up to a crucial Copenhagen summit on climate change at the end of the year.

“As the world prepares for climate talks in Copenhagen this December, meetings like this are more important than ever,” Clinton said.

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Ice bridge ruptures in Antarctic

April 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, April 5 (IANS) An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped, BBC reported.

Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region.

Sited on the western side of the Antarctic peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s.

Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place.

Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean.

European Space Agency satellite pictures indicated last week that cracks were starting to appear in the bridge. Newly created icebergs were seen to be floating in the sea on the western side of the peninsula, which juts up from the continent towards South America’s southern tip.

David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey who planted a GPS tracker on the ice bridge in January to monitor its movement, said the breaking of the bridge had been expected for some weeks; and much of the ice shelf behind is likely to follow.

‘We know that (the Wilkins Ice Shelf) has been very stable since the 1930s and then it started to retreat in the late 1990s; but we suspect it’s been stable for a very much longer period than that,’ he told BBC News.

‘The fact that it’s retreating and now has lost connection with one of its islands is really a strong indication that the warming on the Antarctic is having an effect on yet another ice shelf.’

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Ice bridge in Antarctica snaps, may cause Wilkins shelf to break away

April 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, April 6 (ANI): Latest reports indicate that an ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped, which could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away.

According to a report by BBC News, scientists say the collapse provides further evidence of rapid change caused by warming in the region.

Sited on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s.

Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place.

Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean.
The ice bridge has splintered at its thinnest point

European Space Agency (ESA) satellite pictures had indicated last week that cracks were starting to appear in the bridge.

Newly created icebergs were seen to be floating in the sea on the western side of the peninsula, which juts up from the continent towards South America’s southern tip.

The breaking of the bridge had been expected for some weeks; and much of the ice shelf behind is likely to follow, according to Professor David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who planted a GPS tracker on the ice bridge in January to monitor its movement.

“We know that the Wilkins Ice Shelf has been completely or very stable since the 1930s and then it started to retreat in the late 1990s; but we suspect that it’s been stable for a very much longer period than that,” he told BBC News.

“The fact that it’s retreating and now has lost connection with one of its islands is really a strong indication that the warming on the Antarctic is having an effect on yet another ice shelf,” he added.
While the break-up will have no direct impact on sea level because the ice is floating, it heightens concerns over the impact of climate change on this part of Antarctica.

Over the past 50 years, the peninsula has been one of the fastest warming places on the planet. Many of its ice shelves have retreated in that time and six of them have collapsed completely. (ANI)

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Antarctic dust helps scientists unravel details of past climate change

March 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 30 (ANI): In a new study, dust trapped deep in Antarctic ice sheets is helping scientists unravel details of past climate change.

The study, carried out by the Universities of Edinburgh, Stirling and Lille, has found that the very coldest periods of the last ice age correspond with the dustiest periods in Antarctica’s past, thus establishing a link between the two.

They found that dust blown south to Antarctica from the windy plains of Patagonia – and deposited in the ice periodically over 80,000 years – provides vital information about glacier activity.

It indicates that the ebb and flow of glaciers in the Chilean and Argentinian region is a rich source of information about past climates – which had not until now been fully appreciated by scientists.

During the last ice age, glaciers in Patagonia were at their biggest and released their meltwater, containing dust particles, on to barren windy plains, from where dust was blown to Antarctica.

When the glaciers retreated even slightly, their meltwater ran into lakes at the edge of the ice, which trapped the dust, so that fewer particles were blown across the ocean to Antarctica.

Dust from the ice cores was analysed and found to be a close match with mud of the same age in the Magellan Straits, showing that most of the dust originated in this region.

According to Professor David Sugden, of the University of Edinburgh, “Ice cores from the Antarctic ice sheet act as a record of global environment. However, the dust levels showed some sudden changes which had us puzzled – until we realised that the Patagonian glaciers were acting as an on/off switch for releasing dust into the atmosphere.” (ANI)

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Brit adventurers to follow ‘Scott of the Antarctic’s’ footsteps

March 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Mar 29 (ANI): Two British adventurers are literally set to follow the footsteps of Captain Robert Falcon Scott-who died on his return from the South Pole.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the explorer’s death, Ben Saunders and Alastair Humphreys announced their plans to travel to Antarctica today – 97 years to the day since Scott’s death.

And ever since Scott of the Antarctic’s ill-fated expedition in 1912 took his life on his way back, no one has successfully travelled to the Pole and back on foot.

Saunders and Humphreys will start their journey from Scott’s wooden hut on the coast of Antarctica in the autumn of 2011, in honour of his contribution to polar exploration and human endeavour.

The pair will drag their food and supplies on sledges, and will be alone and unaided during their 1,800-mile round-trip to the South Pole and back on foot.

They have estimated that the Scott Antarctic Expedition will take four months, and thus they will return in the centenary year of Scott’s death.

“The Scott Antarctic Expedition represents one of the most severe physical and psychological challenges on earth and the journey will be a chance to test the very limits of human potential, as well as an opportunity to fulfil a dream I’ve had since childhood,” the Daily Star quoted Plymouth-born Saunders as saying.

Saunders said that preparation would include trips to the Antarctic this year and next year, as well as numerous endurance events and fitness training. (ANI)

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Rising climate warning affecting stability of West Antarctic Ice Sheet

March 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 19 (ANI): New evidence has emerged which determines that even a slight rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, one of the gases that drives global warming, affects the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).

The massive WAIS covers the continent on the Pacific side of the Transantarctic Mountains. Any substantial melting of the ice sheet would cause a rise in global sea levels.

The evidence was collected by a 56-member team of scientists, which conducted a research on a 1,280-meter (4,100-foot)-long sedimentary rock core taken from beneath the sea floor under Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf during the first project of the ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) research program.

“The sedimentary record from the ANDRILL project provides scientists with an important analogue that can be used to help predict how ice shelves and the massive WAIS will respond to future global warming over the next few centuries,” said Ross Powell, a professor of geology at Northern Illinois University.

“The sedimentary record indicates that under global warming conditions that were similar to those projected to occur over the next century, protective ice shelves could shrink or even disappear and the WAIS would become vulnerable to melting,” he added.

“If the current warm period persists, the ice sheet could diminish substantially or even disappear over time. This would result in a potentially significant rise in sea levels,” he further added.

According to Tim Naish, director of Victoria University of Wellington’s Antarctic Research Centre, the new information gleaned from the core shows that changes in the tilt of Earth’s rotational axis has played a major role in ocean warming that has driven repeated cycles of growth and retreat of the WAIS for the period in Earth’s history between 3 million and 5 million years ago.

“It also appears that when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reached 400 parts per million around four million years ago, the associated global warming amplified the effect of the Earth’s axial tilt on the stability of the ice sheet,” he said.

“Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is again approaching 400 parts per million,” Naish added.

According to Naish, “Geological archives, such as the ANDRILL core, highlight the risk that a significant body of permanent Antarctic ice could be lost within the next century as Earth’s climate continues to warm.”

“Based on ANDRILL data combined with computer models of ice sheet behavior, collapse of the entire WAIS is likely to occur on the order of 1,000 years, but recent studies show that melting has already begun,” he added. (ANI)

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Antarctic abyss also affected by global warming

March 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, March 12 (ANI): A new research has shown that even the deepest, darkest reaches of the Antarctic abyss have been affected by global warming.

The research, conducted by Gregory Johnson, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and a team of international colleagues, suggests the changes could be responsible for up to 20 percent of the observed global sea-level rise.

As part of the CLIVAR (Climate Variability and Predictability) project, Johnson and his team have been spending weeks at a time at sea, tracing straight lines across all of the world’s oceans.

As they make these traverses, they measure the temperatures of the water from the very bottom right up to the surface.

The team takes its measurements along the same routes as expeditions carried out in the 1990s, which provides a picture of how things have changed in roughly one decade.

The researchers are particularly interested in the masses of cold water that sink down to the abyss along the shores of Antarctica before moving north along the ocean floor into the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

These three flows of Antarctic abyssal water overwhelmingly influence the deep waters of the world, says Johnson.

Water sinks off the coast of Greenland too, but the Antarctic abyssal water volume is twice that of the north Atlantic.

Early results from CLIVAR show that abyssal water is warmer now than it was in the 1990s.

The water that travels from Antarctica into the south-eastern Indian basin is roughly 0.1 degree Celsisus warmer. The deep ocean current travelling from Antarctica into the Pacific is 0.03 degree C warmer.

In the northern hemisphere, the deep abyssal Atlantic water, which sits between the ocean floor and the layer of deep water that sinks off the coast of Greenland and travels south, is 0.04 degree C warmer.

The researchers have also looked at the salinity of the deep Antarctic waters, which is important because it affects water buoyancy.

They found that here, too, there is change: in both the southeast Indian Ocean and in the Pacific, the water is less salty today than it was in the 1990s.

“Most likely, this is a direct result of dilution from the melting Antarctic ice,” said Johnson.

According to Johnson, the warming and consequent expansion of the deep water flows may be responsible for between 10 percent and 20 percent of the global sea-level rise seen during that time. (ANI)

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Sea level rise to threaten 1 in 10 humans in low-lying coastal areas by 2100

March 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 11 (ANI): New research has indicated that rising sea levels due to global warming would have major impacts around the world, with a maximum rise of one meter by 2100 endangering one in ten humans in low lying coastal areas.

The research, presented at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen shows that the upper range of sea level rise by 2100 could be in the range of about one meter, or possibly more.

In the lower end of the spectrum, it looks increasingly unlikely that sea level rise will be much less than 50 cm by 2100.

This means that if emissions of greenhouse gases is not reduced quickly and substantially, even the best case scenario will hit low lying coastal areas housing one in ten humans on the planet hard.

New insights reported include the loss of ice from the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets.

According to Dr John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, “The oceans are continuing to warm and expand, the melting of mountain glacier has increased and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are also contributing to sea level rise.”

“As a result of the acceleration of outlet glaciers over large regions, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are already contributing more and faster to sea level rise than anticipated. If this trend continues, we are likely to witness sea level rise one meter or more by year 2100,” said Eric Rignot, Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California Irvine.

“Unless we undertake urgent and significant mitigation actions, the climate could cross a threshold during the 21st century committing the world to a sea level rise of meters,” said John Church.

The impacts of sea level rise, even in the lower ranges of the current predictions, looks to be severe.

Approximately ten percent of the world’s population – 600 million people – live in low lying areas in danger of being flooded.

A previously released study led by John Church, shows that even a modest sea level rise of 50 centimeters will result in a major increase in the number of coastal flooding events.

“Our study centered on Australia showed that coastal flooding events that today we expect only once every hundred years will happen several times a year by 2100″, said Church. (ANI)

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