....I approve....in fact it makes my day!
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| Photo: Scanpix/Tom Hevezi | |
 1/2 of the prize |
1/2 of the prize |
| Geneva, Switzerland | USA |
| Founded in 1988 |
This week was the semiannual 'women in science' dinner for faculty. It was held at the local botanical gardens. as my camera had been acting up I took it. I love greenhouses for arty photography almost as much as I love koi carp. The symmetry and fluid design of nature is art in its self. Then I muck around in photoshop and hey presto cool art worthy of 'changing rooms'. Big topic of discussion... after the passing of Proposition 2 we can no longer prevent men from attending these estrogen and science filled evenings... we're pretty sure however they will not be knocking down the doors to get in.
Well according to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) it was pretty average. The map explains it all. The southern states experienced colder the usual temperatures while we experienced warmer. Also the cold snap made up for the warm start to the year. But just in case you thought global warming was a hoax, globally this was the warmest year on record (records began in the 1880s). NOAA is blaming a weak El Nino, however, weather patterns are similar to last winters which was a weak La Nina (the opposite climate anomaly)... Bitchy comment removed due to lack of scientific relevance...
From the Order of Scientific Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique and I bet I know where they do their drinking.
The "talking science" badge.
Required
for all members. Assumes the recipient conducts himself/herself in such
a manner as to talk science whenever he/she gets the chance. Not easily
fazed by looks of disinterest from friends or the act of "zoning out"
by well intentioned loved ones.
As our planet warms up, another topic that greatly concerns scientists is the fate of our cryosphere or ice covered regions. There are numerous studies presently underway monitoring the Greenland Ice Sheet, Antarctica, the tropical ice caps and many, many alpine glaciers (the canaries of the cryosphere) looking for retreats or advances. We can also look at the history of these glaciers and ice sheets to determine under what climatic conditions they advanced or retreated…..or catastrophically collapsed.
One often overlooked ice sheet of the last ice age was the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. It stretched from Alaska, through British Columbia, east into Alberta and south into northern Washington and Idaho during the last ice age (30 to 15 thousand years ago). When it reached its greatest extent in the Pacific Northwest, the ice was 2 km thick over Vancouver and overflowing southern Vancouver Island. South of Georgia Strait it formed two tongues of ice, one flowing south into the Puget Sound (the Puget Lobe) and the other west into the ocean through the Juan de Fuca Strait (the Juan de Fuca Lobe). Ironically the ice sheet was most vulnerable when it was at its greatest extent with its toes in the ocean.
One of the commonly used arguments against global warming is that 'climate change is normal. All we are seeing right now is natural climate change.' If we ignore the global greenhouse gas experiment we are conducting right now and look at the implications of this argument, it is not of much comfort.
Climate change has occurred in the past. In fact there is so much information of previous runaway greenhouse time intervals I could teach a course on it. However for most of that time, humans or their evolutionary forebears did not exist, and not all organisms on the planet were happy about the changes that occurred in atmospheric chemistry. To understand how our present civilization might need to adapt to future climate change we need to look at the response of past civilizations to the climate fluctuations they experienced during their reign. Civilizations whose collapse that might have been brought about by climate change include the Vikings, the Mayans, and the 'Anasazi' or ancestral Pueblo for example. The sedimentary records that document climate change during these intervals mostly relate to rainfall or temperature. Along these lines I have a masters student who has just completed a study of sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Santa Barbara Channel using changes in the abundance of different species of floating zooplankton (animals) called foraminifera. Each species creates a calcite shell that is unique and has its own water temperature/ nutrient preferences. It is these preferences that allow us to reconstruct surface ocean conditions at the time the foraminifera lived. When they die, their shell falls to the bottom of the ocean, where it is preserved in the mud/sediment until we collect it.
I'm back safe and sound from San Francisco and am leaving momentarily for Vancouver. I was at the annual Fall American Geophysical Union Meeting (LoriZ guessed correctly, but I won't be at EGU this year although I am planning on Spring AGU in Acapulco so that I can meet up with Mexican collaborators). My presentations went very well I thunk and I hope to follow up shortly with some publications. Usually I don't talk about my research but I went to a lecture by Al Gore and found his message was very inspiring. Namely that he encouraged us to have the courage to talk about a science as often as we could with the general public. Why would we need courage? Well discussion of my research often kills a conversation....it is depressing and sometimes I get carried away and peoples eyes glaze over. Another reason is that in this political climate, climate change is politicized and climate change scientists have been censored. Gore acknowledged the censorship at his lecture and discussed the EPA closing of libraries to the public and purging of some documents. It is good to have someone remind the media of what they should be covering.
At the end of the lecture Gore signed autographs briefly. The only decent paper I had was my most recent publication that I had been handing out to colleagues, so that is what he autographed for me. Yes I am a giant GEEK. I need to put that copy somewhere safely so I don't give it away with the receiver wondering what that strange scribble is. Although this blog is primarily to show off my latest creative endeavors and I am trying to be annonymous, I have decided to blog about my research in the new year and what is means in the bigger picture of climate change.
How cool is the recent Knitty? Going back to the Cretaceous and all...you too can have your own personal ammonite. If you want to see these guys swimming around you'll have to visit the Exhibit Museum at the University of Michigan.
