News from Copenhagen
Thursday, December 10, 2009
James Balog-Copenhagen, Denmark
Fascinating day, once again. In one room at the State Dept. pavilion, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (formerly a senator from my home state of Colorado) was holding forth. Simultaneously, in a large common room immediately adjacent to the Secretary, President Obama was projected on a huge screen, delivering his Nobel Prize acceptance speech from Oslo (just across the North Sea a bit from Copenhagen; all eyes on Scandinavia today, I’m thinking…).

Salazar has drawn a lot of liberal fire for being too oriented toward resource development and not enough toward innovation and conservation. I can’t help but be frustrated at times with the administration’s policy–yet I also understand the ridiculous juggling act these guys are engaged in, trying to move toward a new future without leaving history, our functional present and the middle of the road constituents too far behind. Democracy in large countries is unbelievably difficult. It is many, many orders of magnitude more difficult than in small democracies like those of Scandinavia, as well as places like the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium. Five or six or eight million people–the size of one of our large-ish metropolises–is a LOT easier to coalesce into a coherent, crisply functioning whole than organisms like the U.S. which is over 200 times larger than Denmark.

Anyway, Salazar espoused a lot of good ideas. Here’s the one I liked best:

“Over the past eleven months, President Obama has led us out of the darkness of a failed energy policy…”

And then there was the Prez himself. What a speech maker, backed by superb writers and his own writing skills, spinning out phrase after phrase meant for the ages:

He proposed a “…continual expansion of our moral imagination.” (One of the most fundamental issues beneath the climate change debate.)

And his amazing line near the end of the speech: “So let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.” That’s where we need to be going, emotionally, mentally, and conceptually. Arguing about nuts and bolts and how we distill the dead effluvia of ancient ages will only take us so far.

News from Copenhagen
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
James Balog-Copenhagen, Denmark
Exciting day, listening to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson speaking in a small and relatively intimate setting about the agency’s “endangerment” ruling just a couple days ago. Some quotes:

“It’s time that we let the science speak for itself… Climate change is real.”

“The U.S. acknowledges the threat of climate change and we need to make up for lost time.”

“Many businesses have been wanting a clear signal on carbon. We want to make it clear….We’re using the Clean Air Act to do what it does best: to make reasonable, cost effective regulations.”

Ironically, the Clean Air Act, along with several other pieces of landmark environmental legislation, was enacted during the Nixon administration. In the late ’60’s and early ’70’s, the Nixon administration seemed terribly conservative. But now, after decades of a generally conservative trend in the country, Richard Nixon seems like a liberal visionary. Go figure…

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After I gave my EIS presentation at the U.S. pavilion to a large crowd, I was interviewed by a Brazilian TV station. The reporter asked me a real zinger: “America has invested so much money and so many people in the science that has shown the world the seriousness of climate change. You lead. You have also led the world in consumer lifestyle, and have led the world in carbon emissions. Is there, in fact, a debt you owe the developing countries, based on your knowledge and your history?” Excellent question, isn’t it? Is our prosperity based on our profligacy? If so, do we want to compensate for it? If
not, why not? If we do, how, without simply giving away the hard-earned technological advancements of American entrepreneurs?

News from Copenhagen
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
James Balog-Copenhagen, Denmark
What a perfectly terrific convergence of insight and passion this place is! The conference logo–a circle with an intricate mesh of interlocking lines–is apt: it speaks in elegant graphic terms of the global convergence of people determined to free us from the burden of our inherited history and turn us to a livable future.

The Bella Center, a truly cavernous series of meeting rooms (airplane hangars would be more like it), is a hub of activity and conversation. Rumor has it that 45,000 people are here–or will be here before this is all over. I’ve also heard 65,000. I don’t know what’s true, because I don’t stand at the door and count! But there are a LOT of people, with everyone scurrying around to their respective areas of impact and/or expertise.

Saturated as I’ve been for years with climate change knowledge, I’m still learning something new every time I turn around. NASA is showing some truly jaw-dropping imagery of the changing earth on “Science on a Sphere” (SOS for short). About six feet in diameter, SOS dangles from the ceiling of one of the US State Department rooms. Specially programmed projectors beam a spherical rendering of the earth, as seen by various satellites or computer models, onto the sphere. Many different images blew me away. But the most incredible one was a view of the lights of commercial airplanes flitting all over the globe, day and night, night and day, etching out the patterns of the hummingbird (aka Humanity) as it makes its daily migration. (Ahem, that migration pattern includes me too; in fact, I could see one little light beam marking the same trace I made in the sky the other night from New York to Frankfurt and then Copenhagen.)

Big news of the past two days is that the US EPA wants to regulate GHG as injurious to human health. Perfect: if the legislative process can’t stop the fossil madness, then the regulatory process can.

If desire can change the world, then change is indeed happening. Time, as always, will tell…

Jim

October 24, 2009
Girdwood, Alaska
From Adam LeWinter, EIS Field Operations Manager

Sometimes the temperatures just hovering above freezing can feel the coldest. Precipitation, undecided on whether to be rain or snow, falls in wet globs, soaking you to the bone. We became very intimate with these conditions when we flew from Girdwood to Columbia glacier today to check in on the six cameras we have shooting, and install a new camera further upstream. I travelled with Roman Dial: Adventurer, Naturalist, and Professor at Alaska Pacific University.

The reasons behind installing a new camera are astounding. In May of this year, our team spent a week at Columbia Glacier. Realizing that the current camera position called the “Cliff Cam” no longer saw the glacier due to its accelerated retreat, I removed the camera and installed a new position higher and further east on the mountain, hoping to keep up with the retreat. We all felt this new position would last. Oh, how we were wrong.

Returning in August with James, we found the glacier had retreated nearly out of frame again, but from the new camera position! We quickly began searching for a new site, climbing higher up the Great Nunatak Mountain, and further east still. Finding an ideal site, we returned to camp to prepare for an installation the next day. No such luck, weather crept into the bay and we were deluged with 24 hours of heavy rain, typical weather at this time of year. Knowing I was coming back in October to carry out a final visit before winter, we resolved to waiting until then to install the new site.

Upon arriving at Columbia this afternoon, with a preassembled camera system, I rappelled down a cliff face at the new chosen site, and Roman slowly lowered the system, piece by piece, in the cold rain. After two hours, we finally had new eyes on the Columbia; with a view many miles up the glacier in anticipation for the continued retreat. Cold and soaked, we then made our rounds to check in on the other cameras located around the glacier, finding every one in fine, working order.

July 20, 2009
Grinnell and Swiftcurrent glaciers, Glacier National Park, Montana
From Adam LeWinter, EIS Field Operations Manager

High up on a ridge looming above Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, Montana, sits a precariously positioned camera. The longer this project continues, the more appreciative the team is for these artificial “eyes” that endure through foul weather, searing sun, and monotonous days of whiteout snow. This camera, along with one just to the north at Swiftcurrent Glacier, had not been visited in 360 days when Chris Miller and a USGS team spent a day hiking up switchbacks on July 20 to see how they had fared.

Last year during our visit to the Grinnell camera we arrived to find it hanging by wires, its tripod head destroyed by rock fall. We had much better luck this year; both cameras shot every hour of daylight throughout the past year. In contrast to the visit in 2008, where the team spent hours rigging up a replacement tripod head to get the Grinnell camera running again, this year’s visit was a simple matter of confirming the cameras worked and swapping out the memory cards. It took just minutes to complete.

What the cameras witnessed was the summer melt season in 2008, the seasonal build up of snow in pockets and drifts over the winter, and the continuation of spring and summer melting in 2009 that will eventually render this park glacier-less.

July 9, 2009
Greenland Ice Sheet
From Adam LeWinter, EIS Field Operations Manager

Preparation for EIS fieldwork is extensive. We consider the possibility of falling into crevasses filled with water on the cusp of freezing and 100-mph-plus winds that could ravage our camp on any given day. We bring enough bacon and butter to last all winter, or so it seems. We travel with specialized climbing equipment, dry suits, and duffel bags crammed with very specific items. But all that preparation doesn’t guarantee that what we need is close at hand when we need it, as I learned in a most personal way this summer.

On June 28 we began work on the Greenland Ice Sheet for a National Geographic article. James Balog and I stopped at a melt lake east of our camp to install a time-lapse camera. The aim was to capture the draining of this half-mile-wide lake over the course of the summer melt season. We landed on the shore of the frigid water, installed a variation of our camera system on an aluminum pole drilled into the ice six feet down, and left for two weeks.

After two weeks exploring 100-foot-deep canyons carved in ice, peering down crevasses into darkness, and photographing a beautiful melt lake forming on the ice surface, our expedition was complete. As the helicopter retrieved our team and all the gear, James and I detoured to pick up the camera by the lake. As we circled the site we realized to our surprise that the camera was sticking up only a couple of feet above water that was now over three feet deep. This lake would likely drain at some point, but for the moment it was in an accelerated state of filling up.

Knowing the cost of the camera system and how important those photos would be, we had no choice but to retrieve the camera. Finding a dry suit in the mess of gear stuffed in the helicopter was out of the question, so I decided to grin and bear it—or you could say bare it—striding into the 36o F water in my long underwear, pants, and rubber boots. Martin, the pilot, reassured me that he would blast the heat in the helicopter for our 20-minute flight back to Ilulissat.

Though it was not pleasant, we did get all of our gear back, and James and Martin had a good laugh hearing me yelp with each step I took.

July 5, 2009

From Jason Box, EIS Expedition Team Member and Guest Scientist on Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise

With Sunday brunch just on my plate, the galley phone rings…it’s the captain: “We’re going to be at this position for 20 more minutes,” and “From the bridge we see a dark colored melt pool, don’t you want to take samples?” Indeed, one of my objectives is gathering chemical samples of snow and ice impurities. Concentrations of dark debris gathers in impressive amounts on the glacier surface.

The dark colored “cryoconite” consists of a mixture of wind-transported debris sourced from nearby land, forest fires, volcanoes, humans, and even outer space. A major scientific challenge is to determine what fraction of this debris is of human origin, that is, are humans darkening the glacier surface? Are humans darkening the Earth’s cryosphere via black carbon pollution either from diesel fuel combustion or biomass burning soot? Dark-colored impurities on the otherwise highly reflective snow/ice surface lead to an excess of absorbed solar energy and consequently more melting. A week ago James Balog pointed out yellow colored clouds over Illulisat that could only be from forest fires somewhere to the west, perhaps boreal Canada, perhaps Alaska. Over the years, I’ve been asking the question: how much of the snow impurities are from human biomass burning (the clearing of land for agriculture largely in the developing world) and diesel soot, forest fires, etc? A chemical sampling from the surface, given the rare opportunity to be here to obtain ground truth information, may begin to answer this question.

Besides the chemical sample bottles we’ll fill from sites surrounding the Greenland ice sheet ablation zone, I’ve brought a spectroradiometer to measure surface reflectance of impurity-laden snow/ice.

With the ground truth data from chemistry samples and spectrometer, I’ll be able to use satellite imagery covering the whole Greenland ice sheet area to determine the enhanced solar energy absorption, that is, the enhanced melt.

=====
Jason E. Box
Byrd Polar Research Center
guest scientist on Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise

June 29, 2009

From Jason Box, EIS Expedition Team Member and research scientist at Byrd Polar Research Center

The Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise is at 82.5 N with its nose up against an ice arch that has formed 450 km north of it’s normal position. This is the farthest north a Greenpeace ship has been. Our northward progress to the top of Nares St. could not have been easier with the waters almost completely ice free and winds calm.

I took thousands of aerial photos yesterday of Petermann glacier from a helicopter as part of an install of 4 Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) time lapse cameras. The distance across Petermann fjord is not too great for the two pairs of EIS cameras to “see” the goings on below thanks to 1000+ meter cliffs on either side of the glacier. The surface of Petermann has a surprising number of melt ponds and streams, some more aptly put as lakes and rivers. Numerous cracks across Petermann make the prediction of a large (100 sq. km) area seem imminent. A 5th, on-ice, camera site is equipped with an “iceberg tracker” that sends its position twice daily via Iridium satellite. At the moment the “ice camera” remains stable. Eventually, its whole world should start to move, once the ice island detaches.

Jason Box

May 15, 2009
Columbia Glacier, Alaska
From Adam LeWinter, EIS Field Operations Manager
As our helicopter approached Columbia Glacier my jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe we were at the same location as a year ago. In June 2008 we’d spent a day cruising around and exploring a large area of dead ice—ice that’s separated from the main glacier and is no longer moving and is getting covered with dirt and rock as it melts away. I’m used to seeing a glacier change from year to year, but this was my first experience of going back to a place and it’s just…gone. We were looking at exposed rock that hadn’t seen sunlight in thousands and thousands of years. Nearby was another patch of dead ice—similar to what we’d seen last year but in a different location—and every once in a while during our week of fieldwork these big towers would just drop off in the same way that calving happens off the main glacier. I’d been under the impression that dead ice melted slowly from the bottom, but watching these mini calving events made me realize that the ice we’d been running around on last year could have broken away in one fell swoop while we were on it. It was an eerie feeling, that what we’d thought was relatively permanent and stable might have disappeared in an instant.