On the rocks

A number of witty friends suggest this is what's drawing me south, but I'm more about this.

Earth, like a dorky sweatband, soaks it up

A Brit's recent study of ice samples finds that the Earth has a surprising ability to absorb the increases in carbon dioxide in the air.
Although the rate at which we belch CO2 into the atmosphere has increased almost 18-fold since 1850, ice samples taken from Antarctica suggest the planet has soaked up almost half the carbon added to the mix by the activity of man. (Probably no small amount of it created in the manufacture of monstrous things like the one strapped to this guy's noggin.)
It could be a rosy finding, if it holds up, because conventional wisdom was that the Earth's ability to absorb CO2 would decrease as it became saturated.

Warming = less ice = more plankton = CO2 storage = less warming?

Just preliminary evidence here, but the British Antarctic Survey has found that the way melting ice allows more sunlight to shine in the ocean spurs significant blooms of tiny marine creatures. Those phytoplankton, in turn, eventually die and sink to the ocean bottom, taking carbon with them.
That means a symptom brought on by greenhouse gases, the melting of the ice, could spur a phenomenon that reduces the levels of those same greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Bad news: it doesn't look like the effect is anywhere nearly dramatic enough to offset the overall buildup of greenhouse gases.

New meaning to life list

`God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus! -
Why look'st thou so?' -"With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross." -- Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Turns out fish hooks work better (or is it worse?) than crossbows.

The top six species of sea birds at risk of extinction in the Atlantic hail from the albatross family. The British Antarctic Survey on South Georgia has found the number of those big birds flying today is just half the population of the early 1960s.

Your fish sticks might be the problem. In diving for their own seafood, an albatross is vulnerable to getting snagging by commercial fishing equipment -- either on hooks or in nets.

Now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Birdlife International are calling for a treaty monitoring panel to impose new rules on fishing to protect the albatross.

But will using albatross-safe fishing methods be more costly, less fuel efficient, more damaging to other species?

In any event, it's long been considered bad luck to kill one of the birds. Just ask the ancient mariner.

'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man?

By him who died on cross,
With his cruel bow he laid full low
The harmless Albatross.

Let's hope CO2 ain't all that

The last time carbon dioxide levels were as high as they are today was, well, quite a long time ago.

Something like 15 million years ago. That's right, even before disco.

And the world was a much different place. Global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees higher and sea levels were 75 to 20 feet higher.

How do we know? you ask.

It used to be we only knew about atmospheric levels going back about 800,000 years -- a blink of an eye in geographic time -- by studying bubbles of air trapped in long-frozen Antarctic ice.

Now comes the very clever Aradna Tripati, who has peered back further in time by looking at sea shells.

Specifically, she's charted the ratio of boron to calcium in the shells to figure out what the atmosphere was like when they were formed. That time travels a good 20 million years.

Melting, just not as fast as we thought

Good, but not great, news on the rate at which the West Antarctic (think western hemisphere -- it's confusing when you get down there) Ice Shelf is melting.

It is melting. And the debate about whether your Buick is responsible will go on. But tracking ice movements against bedrock suggests that previous estimates about the trimming of the ice shelf were overstated.

That said, the researchers say that ice is still melting.

"West Antarctica is still losing significant amounts of ice, the loss appears to be slightly slower than some recent estimates," said Ian Dalziel, a researcher with the West Antarctic GPS Network, said in a press release. "So the take home message is that Antarctica is contributing to rising sea levels. It is the rate that is unclear."

Calmest place on the planet, needs a Starbucks

You thought it was any room where that your mother-in-law wasn't in.

Sciences begs to disagree.

Turns out the calmest place on earth is a few hundred miles from the South Pole, so-called Ridge A. Things are so calm there, even the stars don't dare twinkle.

Based on studies of weather patterns, satellite data viewed from an astronomers point of view, a team of U.S. and Australian scientists have settled on the spot as the most mellow spot on Earth.

It's 13,300 feet above sea level and sits at the head of three humongous glaciers -- each muscling out over land the size of western Europe.

Calm is not paradise. At 100 times drier than the Sahara and with an average winter temperature of -94 degrees farenheit, it's the coldest and driest place on the planet.

Because the calm extends into space, scientists are noodling out the best way to plant a telescope there. If they succeed, the images could rival those of the Hubble space telescope.

CO2 giveth, and CO2 taketh away

Much as increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere create a greenhouse effect that warms the Earth, new research that explores CO2 levels from 30 million-plus years ago found that lower levels of the gas helped the formation of the polar ice caps.
CO2 was on the low side during the Eocene-Oligocene (say that five times fast) climatic transition period and allowed the planet to chill enough for ice to form at the polar extremes.
It turns out the clues rested in the East African village of Stakishari in Tanzania. There scientists were able to precisely date the time where rocks of the period were formed. Those rocks, in turn, give a look at levels of various gases in the atmosphere so long ago.
The period marked the biggest change in the planets climate since the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

OK to get out that hair spray?

The ozone hole above Antarctica may be closing.

In another 90 years or so, it may close entirely.

Australian scientists say their work suggests the hole, discovered in the 1980s and feared for the way it lets in unfiltered ultra violet rays, may be shrinking.

Some two decades ago the Montreal Protocol banned chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that were believe responsible for poking a hole in the ozone layer and keeping '80s hairstyles lookin' fine. The ban may have actually helped.

Measurements made with weather balloons and lasers provide new evidence that the hole is getting smaller. It's still three times the size of Australia. It just used to be bigger.

Keep in mind, however, that there's some suggestion that it acts as an accidental vent of greenhouse gases and may be the reason the planet hasn't heated up more quickly.

The great thaw

A fresh and comprehensive study of satellite images of Antarctica and Greenland suggest the ice there is melting more quickly than previously thought.

(At the same time, there is evidence that more ice is building up in the interior of Antarctica -- the result of shifting weather patterns.)

Lasers from NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite bounce off glaciers to give scientiests the new data and suggest that those giant bodies of ice are thinning at increasing rates.

Coastal areas are melting the quickest, and may be as thawed today as any time in recorded history. The most likely cause: warmer ocean currents.

Like hair on an old man, ice on the planet disappearing on top, increasing on bottom

Even as the Arctic has become less icy, the Antarctic has seen more sea ice.

Why?

Scientists are still noodling it out. But a couple theories are gaining traction.

First, the southern hole in the ozone serves as a bit of a heat vent, allowing for cooler temperatures at that end of the globe even as the build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases appears to be warming the Earth.

Next, ocean circulation may be changing. The waters of the ocean could be more stratified, meaning the warmer water below is mixing less with colder water on the surface. That means more ice.

Finally, it might have to do with how water logged the sea ice is. I'm a little shaky on this point, but it has to do with snow becoming wet and turning to ice.

Try reading this piece for a longer explanation.

Glaciers kick it up another gear, then get winded

Fresh research on glaciers that appeared to be moving especially fast in southeastern Greenland may raise as many questions as it answers.

In any event, it seems the frosty buggers have slowed a bit.

From the AP:

　Helheim Glacier nearly doubled its speed in just a few years, flowing through a rift in the barren coastal mountains at a stunning 100 feet (30 meters) per day.
　　　Alarm bells rang as the pattern was repeated by glaciers across Greenland: Was the island's vast ice sheet, a frozen water reservoir that could raise the sea level 20 feet if disgorged, in danger of collapse?
　　　Half a decade later, there's a little bit of good news and a lot of uncertainty.
　　　"It does seem that the very rapid speeds were only sustained for a short period of time although none of these glaciers have returned to the 'normal' flow speeds yet," says Gordon Hamilton, a glaciologist from the University of Maine, who's clocked Helheim's rapid advance using GPS receivers on site since 2005.
　　　Understanding why Greenland's glaciers accelerated so abruptly in the first half of the decade and whether they are now slowing down is crucial to the larger question of how fast sea levels will rise as the planet warms.

World warming to a shortcut

This story in The New York Times talks about how the very disappearance of summer Arctic sea ice could be a boon to shipping. It's also a reason countries have become more covetous in their claims to the sea floor below the North Pole.

I'll be writing in the coming months about ambitious territorial claims being made at the other end of the world, and how some scientific expeditions down there double as an excuse to call dibs on Antarctica.

The opposite of polar, but related

Tuvalu, a string of atolls in the Pacific, knows a thing or two about climate change. Its highest ground sits just 4.5 meters above sea level. And as sea level climbs, the islands are shrinking.
Crops are getting hit more and more by ocean salt water. Real estate is disappearing.
So the folks there are hoping to shame more industrialized countries into cutting back on CO2 emissions -- in hope of slowing down climate change -- by cutting their own carbon dioxide output down to zero by 2020.
Other random Tuvalu facts: Tuvalu has a bad problem with exotic rats. It's been largely mined out and its inhabitants get most of their income from people who work abroad and send back remittances. One of its greatest financial assets is the power to sell .tv domain names to television web sites (don't discount the value of an alphabetical coincidence).