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Displaying items by tag: Oceans
Thursday, 29 March 2007 18:42
Thinning of West Antarctic Ice Sheet Demands Improved Monitoring
The University of Texas at Austin Office of Public Affairs is providing the following news release from the recently held West Antarctic Links to Sea-Level Estimation (WALSE) Workshop. The article will also be posted in the "News Releases" section of the Office of Public Affairs Web site. 28th March, 2007 Statement: Thinning of West Antarctic Ice Sheet Demands Improved Monitoring to Reduce Uncertainty over Potential Sea-Level Rise AUSTIN, Texas-Polar ice experts from Europe and the United States, meeting to pursue greater scientific consensus over the fate of the world's largest fresh water reservoir, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, conclud...
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News And Announcements
Monday, 26 March 2007 23:15
Discovering sediment transport on the ocean floor with thorium 230
A small but nevertheless very important piece of the puzzle in the study of climatic reconstruction of the early history of the earth is Sven Kretschmer's project with his working group from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven. His scientific instruments include the Schwerelot and the multicorer. During the whole of this expedition ANTXXIII/9, it is these drilling instruments that make the ocean floor core drilling project possible. The exact positioning is determined by parasounding equipment.
The concentration of thorium 230 in sediment is particularly interesting to geochemists. This radioactive element is a disintegration product, and in water it is extremely insoluble, so it binds immediately to single minerals or other organic particles. In this way, thorium ...
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Monday, 26 March 2007 21:42
Frozen Five Expedition starts this Thursday!
The Frozen Five expedition team will be attempting to make a complete crossing of the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard from March to mid-June 2007. Our expedition team composes 5 young geoscientists (glaciology, geology, geophysics, biology, meteorology), aged 22-29 years, all with relevant Arctic experience from studying at least one year at the University of Svalbard.
The actual expedition starts on March 29 at 12:45 in Longyearbyen, the "capital" of Svalbard. The planned return date is June 14, to the same location. The route, measuring some 1,000 km, will be completed on skis using our own power. All our gear will be carried on special sledges, known as pulks. We will all pull our own sledge(s), weighing about 100 kg each. The route is divided into 5 stages, with a food...
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Monday, 19 March 2007 19:10
Palmer Station Dives into IPY
In the spirit of celebrating and commemorating the March 1, 2007 launch of the International Polar Year (IPY) the entire community of the United States Palmer Station, located on Anvers Island, Western Antarctic Peninsula, is pleased to present to this photograph, “Palmer Station Dives into the IPY”. Everyone on station on 10 March, 2007 is featured in the photograph.
Leading marine researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) are among the first U.S. teams diving into the icy Antarctic waters during the International Polar Year. The team, working out of Palmer Station, is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. It includes veteran Antarctic researchers and UAB biologists Charles Amsler, Ph.D., and James McC...
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News And Announcements
Saturday, 17 March 2007 16:58
Planet Earth IPY feature
Cape Farewell Education aims to:
facilitate learning about climate change and participation in the climate change debate among teachers and pupils in UK schools.
give school students a voice in the climate change debate and to enable them to take what they have learnt and talked about back home into their communities and families
spread enthusiasm and strategies for learning about climate change throughout UK schools.
We have a number of resources available to teachers and pupils
Life in the Water is a GSCE Science resource commissioned by Nuffield Curriculum Centre and developed with scientists at the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton as part of the 21st centu...
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Saturday, 17 March 2007 16:00
Cape Farewell Education
Cape Farewell Education aims to:
facilitate learning about climate change and participation in the climate change debate among teachers and pupils in UK schools.
give school students a voice in the climate change debate and to enable them to take what they have learnt and talked about back home into their communities and families
spread enthusiasm and strategies for learning about climate change throughout UK schools.
We have a number of resources available to teachers and pupils
Life in the Water is a GSCE Science resource commissioned by Nuffield Curriculum Centre and developed with scientists at the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton as part of the 21st centu...
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links and resources
Monday, 19 March 2007 22:53
Atlas of the Cryosphere
John Maurer, from the World Data Center for Glaciology in Boulder, is pleased to announce his new Atlas of the Cryosphere, providing interactive maps of major features of the frozen world. This should be a great tool for both scientists and educators.
John writes:
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) "Atlas of the Cryosphere" Web site (http://nsidc.org/data/atlas) allows visitors to explore and dynamically map the Earth's frozen regions. Viewed from a polar perspective, the available scenes include snow cover, sea ice extent and concentration, glaciers, permafrost, and other critical components of the Earth's cryosphere. Users can zoom in to a specific region...
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Tuesday, 13 March 2007 16:54
How to measure the magnetization of the ocean floor
The German research vessel Polarstern is now about 500km north of Prydz Bay. The engineer Konrad Kopsch from the Alfred Wegener Institute Potsdam is getting instruments (such as the so-called “bird”) ready, together with his colleagues and the geophysicist Detlef Damaske from the "Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe" (Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials) in Germany.
"The bird" is a torpedo-shaped probe that is suspended by a cable a few meters below a helicopter flying over the ocean. The measuring equipment itself, which measures the magnetization at the ocean floor, is located inside the helicopter. The researchers are looking for anomalies in the magnetization data in order to be able to record and make detailed reconstructions of co...
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Friday, 09 March 2007 02:51
How to get sediment samples from the Antarctic sea floor
Polarstern has arrived at Prydz Bay, the primary research area of the expedition ANTXXIII/9 of the Alfred Wegener Institute. The first task is to take sediment samples from the ocean floor at a depth of more than 700 meters. Geologist Bernhard Diekmann from the University of Potsdam stands on the ship's bridge and watches the monitor attached to the parasound equipment. This Sonar system graphically represents the layers of the sea floor sediment under the Polarstern. Diekmann is looking for areas where the sediment layers are even and parallel to each other, so that an interference-free baseline measurement can be taken. Icebergs dating back to the last ice age have left deep grooves in the ocean floor. The literature, however, does not describe the location of these areas very accuratel...
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Wednesday, 07 March 2007 07:02
Launch Memories
The International Polar Year has begun. What a week! With US and UK launches on the Monday stirring up media attention, followed by an event in Portugal on the Wednesday and over 20 more national events on the day itself, March 1st 2007, we definitely hit the news!
While traveling to Paris with Nicola, to prepare for the international launch, the phone didn't stop ringing, both sides of the Channel Tunnel and even on the Paris subway system! I was contacted by journalists as diverse as New Zealand Radio, an In-flight magazine, BBC World Service, Vatican Radio, Al Jazeera English, an Italian science magazine, Chinese TV networks, and Scientific American to name a few. During the International Ceremony itself, my phone kept shaking, and afterwards, on a tour of Paris, I saw ...
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