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History and the Present Through Ice Cores By Pennell Paugh and Ran Meng

Ice cores, drilled from the polar ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland most commonly, but also from places as diverse as Africa, Bolivia, China, Peru, Russia and even the United States are the most accurate means to proving a window into the paleoclimate record in Earth's history, including past climatic and environmental conditions. Drilling miles deep into glacial ice yields millennia of information on volcanic eruptions, storms, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and even meteorite activity.

Ice cores can be used to reconstruct an uninterrupted and detailed climate record extending over hundreds of thousands of years, providing information on a wide variety of aspects of climate at each point. Each layer of snow is unique in chemistry and texture. Summer brings 24 hours of sunlight to the Polar Regions. The top layer of the snow changes in texture—not melting exactly, but changing enough to be different from the snow it covers. As the season again turns cold and dark, more snow falls, forming new layers. Each of these layers gives scientists a treasure trove of information about the climate for each section. Like marine sediment cores, an ice core provides a vertical timeline of past climates.

Shallow cores, or the upper parts of cores in high-accumulation areas, can be dated exactly by counting individual layers, each representing a year. These layers may either vary chemically or in their isotopic ratio. For example, snow from colder periods has less of the heavier isotopes. Deeper into the core, the layers thin out due to ice flow and high pressure. Eventually individual years cannot be distinguished. Within air bubbles, snow and ice layers trap hydrogen and oxygen isotopes from our past. Sediment layers may contain sulfates from volcanoes and dust from violent desert storms. These layers can be used to reconstruct the history of volcanic activity and indicate the extent of desertification in prehistoric times. Oxygen isotopes within the ice are indicators of the temperature at the time the snow fell. Volcanic eruptions may be detected by visible ash layers or acidic chemistry.

Some composition changes are detected by high-resolution scans of electrical resistance. Lower down, the ages are reconstructed by modeling accumulation rate variations and ice flow.

Ice core studies reveal that today's carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide levels are the highest in 800,000 years. In the Antarctic, the levels of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—ozone depleting gases— have been measured in firn-ice (compacted snow that is not yet glacial ice). They were almost zero around 1880, but have grown in step with increasing industrialization and proliferating human population.

Ice Core Projects

In the 1960s, ice core drilling attracted wide scientific interest. In the 1980s, a US Army Corps of Engineers' project drilled to the bottom of Greenland's ice sheet, and brought to the surface 160,000 years of climate history. The revolutionary notion taken from this and subsequent ice cores was that the Earth's temperature rises and falls precipitously in a matter of decades, and has done so repeatedly. Yet the ice record also shows oscillations of ice ages stretching nearly 100,000 years and ten-thousand-year-long periods of warmth, called interglacial periods, in a fairly consistent pattern. Indeed the present temperate period, a 10,000 year stretch of stable weather—though with fluctuations—made possible the establishment of agriculture and thus civilization itself.

Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team showed that the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree- Fahrenheit spike in just 50 years, then plunged back into icy conditions before abruptly warming again about 11,700 years ago. Startlingly, according to the study authors, the Greenland ice core evidence showed that a massive "reorganization" of atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere coincided with each temperature spurt, with each reorganization taking just one or two years. The new findings are expected to help scientists improve existing computer models for predicting future climate change as increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere drive up Earth's temperatures globally.

The availability of ice core data from several locations around the world is crucial to the reconstruction of a detailed climate map globally but the current downward trend in the economy is also affecting the availability of this precious data.

The Geological Survey of Canada research lab which has an ice core archive comprising of ice from high Arctic glaciers, Mount Logan, Ellesmere, Baffin and Devon islands, is scheduled for shutdown. The fate of the collection, containing over 40 years of data is being disputed. The GSC plans to focus on other research projects, such as the melting of permafrost and the effects of pipeline construction while winding down its ice core research program.

The maintenance of ice core projects across the world should be a concern for everyone as data from ice core collections not only show the link between historical climate research and current concerns about human influenced global warming. Ice core research has the ability to influence environmental policy in governments globally. It is crucial in providing evidence of human influence on climate and atmospheric change.

References

Boswell, Randy. "Gov't Puts Climate Change Trend Archive on Ice." The StarPhoenix. Postmedia News. 14 Sept. 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2011.  TheStarPhoenix.com

Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Ice Memory." The New Yorker. 7 Jan. 2002. Web. May 2010.   Newyorker.com

Tyson, Peter. "Stories in the Ice." Nova/WGBH Online. Web. May 2010,  PBS.org

Williams, Jack. "Q & A: Ice Cores and Climate Science." USA Today. 8 Aug. 2004. Web. May 2010.  USAToday.com

Centre for Ice and Climate. "The History of Danish Ice Core Science." Niels Bohr Institute. Web. May 2010.  Iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk

Ice Core Paleoclimatology Research Group. "Our Mission." Byrd Polar Research Center. Web. 19 Nov. 2011.  Bprc.osu.edu

"Ice Core." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. May 2010.   Wikipedia.org

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Research Report: Malaysian Data Rescue 2011

By Dr Fiona Williamson, University of East Anglia

With funding from IEDRO, a project to locate potential sources of marine and terrestrial instrumental weather data began in the Spring of 2011. Dr Fiona Williamson as project lead, investigated sources of data at the Malaysian National Archives and the Malaysian Meteorological (Met) Department in Kuala Lumpur. The archive holds information on Malaysian climate dating back to the 1880s. Most data was collated by British colonial government officials.

The Met Department has a wealth of sub-daily instrumental records dating back to the 1930s for the Malayan peninsula and Singapore. Detailed accounts were taken at hill stations, hospitals and aerodromes across the country. Recordings were made for temperature, pressure, wind, humidity and unusual weather events. Carefully handwritten and annotated, these accounts are an invaluable resource and, as yet, are not imaged, digitized or available to the public. The short record available revealed only the tip of the iceberg: Malaysia remains an untapped resource for instrumental data about the climate in South-East Asia.

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By Pennell Paugh and Ran Meng

The Republic of Mozambique is in southeastern Africa, bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest. Maputo, which is the capital city, is the largest city in the country.

Mozambique is one of the most poverty stricken and underdeveloped countries of the world according to several peer-reviewed publications. Recurring natural disasters - droughts and floods – have taken their toll on the country.

"People are malnourished - they already do not have food, but when you have no water it becomes very difficult. The people in our district have been living on wild berries and fruit, but in some places we do not even have enough of that," said a gaunt Fernando Muchanga, a local government official in the Buzi area of Sofala province in central Mozambique.

Zambia, which is located in the south of central Africa, is home to the Victoria Falls – one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. The country experiences a dry winter May to September; a hot and dry season October and November; and an even hotter rainy season December to April. The temperature has increased for the country over the past 40 years, at 0.29 degrees centigrade per decade. Current predictions state that rainfall will decrease in the winter which will exacerbate drought conditions throughout the country.

Most Zambians depend on agriculture. Like Mozambique, severe drought is one of the more serious conditions to threaten the country. Additionally, floods, extreme heat, and a shorter rainy season all contribute to a decrease in the quality and quantity of water available for safe consumption or for the maintenance of crop yields. These extreme weather events affect energy, infrastructure and increase the risk of cholera, malaria and other diseases to strike a population.

The government has redirected funds from other programs to improve their disaster response system. However, help from other countries is needed to cope with the effects of climate change; a National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) was launched in early 2010 and is responsible for developing a national climate change response strategy.

The African Upper Air Data Rescue Project is concerned with conserving the pilot balloon (pibal) and radiosonde data that has been collected over the years. IEDRO's data rescue efforts in Zambia and Mozambique have been considerable. We hope to help NAPA and the government of Mozambique to improve predictions for their disaster response systems.

References

Heath, Tom. "Zambia Climate Change Briefing." 2010. Web. 4 Nov. 2011 www.wsup.com

Schleupner, Christine. "GIS as integrating tool in Sustainability and Global Change." Reports on Earth System Science (2009): n. pag. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. Web. 3 Nov. 2011. www.mpimet.mpg.de

"Climate Change: the Zambian Story." United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 5 Jan. 2010. Web. 4 Nov. 2011. www.undp.org

"Martinique." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. 3 Nov. 2011, wikipedia.org

UNEP (United Nation Environment Programme). "Climate Change in the Caribbean and the Challenge of Adaptation." Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. Oct. 2008. Web. 3 Nov. 2011. www.pnuma.org

Wikipedia, Zambia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambia

Wikipedia, Mozambique, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambique

Preventionweb, Zambia - Disaster Statistics, www.preventionweb.net

IRIN News, October 24, 2011, "Mozambique: Drought after drought". www.irinnews.org

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African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development Microfiche

In the early 1990s, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a United Nation's technical agency, with funding from Belgium, embarked on the most ambitious weather data gathering effort in history. The Project – DARE-I (Data Rescue – I - PDF) sent teams into 46 African countries to locate and image all historic weather observations then held by the national meteorological services of those countries. Over 30 million historic weather observations and climate data from nearly 1,000 sites were imaged to be used by scientists, researchers and educators worldwide in a multitude of scientific programs.

Using the technology of the time, these images were transferred to microfiche and the master set held by the Belgian National Meteorological Service. Each of the participating countries was given a copy of their rescued and microfiched weather documents along with two microfiche readers. Since the records were thought to be safely archived on the microfiche, most countries disposed of the old paper documents from which the microfiche copies were made.

A meeting at the end of September was conducted between Dr. Diallo, Director-General of the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD); Rick Crouthamel, Tom Ross and Peggy Traband from IEDRO; and Dr. Wassila Thiaw from NOAA/National Weather Service. The meeting produced a beginning in what we all hope will be a partnership in providing data rescue and digitization (DR&D) throughout Africa. Dr. Diallo expressed a willingness to let us borrow the DARE-I microfiche to digitally scan as long as we have a written agreement protecting the distribution of those data, either in images or digital form, until permission has been received from the relevant countries. He also sought our assistance in crafting proposals for funding this and other DR&D efforts and readily agreed to partner with IEDRO.

Executive Director to Attend World Meteorology Organization Meeting in Geneva

WMO has invited our Executive Director, Richard Crouthamel, to attend a meeting in Geneva in December on sector applications/climate observation community dialogue addressing gaps and opportunities for improving observations and monitoring data in support of the Global Framework for Climate Services. Before making plans, Rick is waiting for funding confirmation from the WMO.

Sphere Project in Chile

Clive Wilkinson from the RECLAIM project has sent off a proposal for a multi-year concept called the SPHERE project for the rescue of historic weather data in Chili. The concept will be further discussed and refined with the Chilean Foreign Office before a final copy is formally submitted (through the Chilean Foreign Office) to APEC. IEDRO is mentioned multiple times!

Partnership with Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth

Rob Allen has proposed that IEDRO and Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) partner for the rescue of data at Mauritius, an island off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Rick and Rob hope to meet when they both attend the World Meteorology Organization meeting in Geneva.

The Mauritius project would involve recovering, imaging, digitizing, archiving and preserving of old weather observations extracted from ship logbooks in 188 volumes of Charles Meldrum's 'anemological' journals from 1853 to 1914 and terrestrial weather observations. The books include data from Colonel Lloyd's Colonial Observatory at Port Louis from the late 18th to the early years of the 20th century which is held by the Mauritius Meteorological Services (MMS). Additionally, there are many microfiche films containing data prior to 1830 that are in poor condition. Hopefully funding can be found to have microfiche experts rescue some of those rare data.

Sharon LeDuc Acting as Liaison with NOAA

Sharon is officially acting as a liaison to NOAA on our behalf. She is working to establish a memorandum of understanding between us and NOAA. Rick worked with her to craft the wording of the agreement which she will present to NOAA shortly. From this effort, we are hopeful that we will receive some overdue promised funding from NOAA.

Google Contest in New York

Gang Fu entered us into a contest sponsored by Google. We were in the top 20% of finishing contestants. Gang presented a slide show on our behalf and our CEO, Richard Crouthamel, networked at a booth.

Gang entered our Weather Wizards program. The program will provide a web-based program that will show a table of alpha-numeric weather data with a blank form into which the user types what he or she sees in the original table.

Originally, the grants were to be $10K to the top organization with $5K to three runners up with the remaining 4 finalists not getting anything except a chance to publicize their nonprofit. We were in the second group and originally were just to receive Google's Thanks but no cash. However, at the last minute, seeing that all the finalists and presenters put forth a good effort, the last four finalist organizations were given $2,500! Finally, Rick introduced himself to several software developers who expressed interest in our cause. We are hopeful one of them will help us develop our Weather Wizards program.

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Managing Editors

 Pennell Paugh

 Ran Meng

Web Designer ..............Silvana Gabriell

Photographs/Graphics...................Ran Meng

Translators Coordinator ...............Dario Di Franco

Spanish Coordinator .....................Dario Di Franco

 Fatima Da Silva

 Silvia Barreira

Portuguese Translation..................Silvana Gabriell

Mandarin Simplified

 Yipeng Xie

 Xun He

French Coordinator...............Mark Roberts

 Magali Cicujano

 Marielle Guirlet

 Eric Paroissien

 Jonas Halverscheid

 Ima Oduok

 Geraldine Rigal

Italian

 Elisa Vitale

 Elisa De Boni

 Annalisa Cattaneo

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