Corvus people
Andrew Regan Transantarctic Expedition
Ignoring the facts at our peril
The world isn’t short of debate on climate change by the great and the good and whilst the debate stays at the forefront of the international political agenda there remains a chance that real change can take place.
Each and every one of us can choose to either join the debate, acknowledge that climate change is a threat, or not as the case may be. Equally, whether we accept the constant flow of news stories based around the whole area of climate change is an individual choice. I make no apologies for trying to add to the debate.
Most of us rely on the scientists to make their observations and provide an expert view on what’s happening to the environment around us, whilst a few of us are fortunate enough to see for ourselves, to travel to the more remote parts of the planet such as the North and South Poles, where climate change is measured as a bellwether of things to come for the rest of the planet.
I have been lucky enough to see both North and South Polar regions, most recently on an expedition to the South Pole in 2005 and I defy anyone not to be moved by the beauty and significance of that continent. In 2005 I came away from the South Pole with a desire to do more about telling people just how important that place is to us all and how important it is to listen to what the scientific community is saying - we ignore them at our peril.
In October 2007 a paper was written by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, Tom Bracegirdle, William Connelly and John Turner, which brought even greater to reality to the debate. The paper was subsequently reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The scientists had carried out an analysis of data from 18 of 25 climate models that contributed to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - it’s a highly technical paper in its content and produced some authoritative if not rather worrying conclusions on how climate change might take form through the 21st Century. The scientists were looking back over a range of models from the latter part of the last century and weighting each of them on a representative basis against the mean weather conditions over the same period to then produce some predictive conclusions.
Here is an extract form the British Antarctic Survey web site, commenting on the report in the Journal of Geophysical Research and the paper itself, it said: “BAS scientists have conducted a comprehensive assessment of climate change projections through this century. By combining results from a large number of different models, and by weighting the projections according to how well the models represent late 20th century mean climate, the results should be more reliable than those obtained from experiments with a single model.
A key focus of the study was to assess projected changes of near-surface winds over the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. The winds over the Southern Ocean are an important component in determining the exchange of heat, momentum and gases between the ocean and atmosphere. The effect of changing winds on the efficiency of the Southern Ocean CO2 sink is currently a subject of strong debate and is important to projections of atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the future.
The annual average near-surface winds over the Southern Ocean (at 60º south) are projected to increase in magnitude by approximately 20%. However, splitting up the annual average trends into seasonal trends revealed a seasonal cycle with the largest increases (27%) in the austral autumn. It was found that this seasonal cycle can be explained by changes to a large-scale weather pattern known as the semi-annual oscillation (SAO).”
The report went on to look at areas such as surface warming saying that: “The projected changes of other variables were also assessed. The surface warming averaged over the continent is projected to be 0.34ºC per decade. Projections of Southern Hemisphere sea-ice area show a decrease rate of a quarter of a million square kilometres (3%) per decade. By the end of the century the snowfall rate over the continent is simulated to increase by 20% compared to current values, which, if other effects such as melting and dynamical discharge are ignored, would result in a negative contribution to global sea-level rise of approximately 5cm.”
A report was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Vol 113, D03103, doi:10.1029/2007JD008933, 2008 and the detailed paper can be found on the BAS parent site at: Read this paper in the NERC Open Research Archive.
The British Antarctic Survey is a component of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Based in Cambridge, United Kingdom, it has, for almost 60 years, undertaken the majority of Britain’s scientific research on and around the Antarctic continent. It now shares that continent with scientists from over thirty countries.
Now I profess to be neither scientist nor politician but since our last expedition in 2005 have been part of a team putting together an educational expedition which we hope to take into classrooms around the country, with a simple aim to capture the awareness of the coming generations to the importance of our Polar regions. With a team carrying real time classroom educational science experiments we hope to bring the realities of the Antarctic into the classroom on a real time basis.
We’ll be undertaking a series of science experiments designed to illustrate how the fate of Antarctica affects the rest of the world and explain some of the work being done by scientists investigating the continent. These projects will be undertaken by the expedition team as they travel across Antarctica.
As the expedition progresses, the public will be able to watch the results unfold on the expedition website. Grouped into three categories; sub-surface, surface and atmosphere, each project will be backed up by clear and engaging explanations to ensure that everyone is able to understand the larger scientific issues revealed by the experiments. Each project will also be accompanied by student and teacher resources so that the information provided by the experiments can be used by teachers in the classroom.
Examples of the types of experiments to be undertaken;
Atmosphere
Bio-fuel testing - measuring viscosity of fluid and flame points at varying air pressures, altitude and temperatures to demonstrate the performance and capability of bio-fuels.
Weather Station - the expedition will be equipped with a mobile weather station to make daily meteorological observations across Antarctica, including air temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, weather and cloud cover. This information will give an in-depth impression of what conditions in Antarctica are really like and allow us to explain why it is such an extreme environment.
Ultra Violet - UV sensors carried by the expedition will constantly monitor UV levels as the team traverses Antarctica. The results will be compared to images of the Antarctic Ozone Hole produced by NASA’s Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) to demonstrate how the level of Ozone in the atmosphere dictates the level of hazardous UV radiation we receive on the earth’s surface.
Weather Balloons - balloons fitted with special transmitters called radiosondes will be released at a series of locations along the expedition route. As the balloons rise through the atmosphere to a height of 20km they will measure temperature, humidity and pressure to create an upper air profile. The profiles will be compared with each other and with profiles from the UK to demonstrate how atmospheric circulation changes and how Antarctica affects the weather across the globe.
Surface and sub-surface
Snow pits - by digging beneath the snow surface of Antarctica, the expedition will reveal the climate of the past. Each season the snow that falls in Antarctica forms a fresh layer on the ground. By digging a deep pit, the expedition will be able to see each layer of snow that has fallen in years past and be able to gather information about how the amount of snow that falls each year has changed. In turn, this information provides a clue to how Antarctica’s climate has changed in recent years.
Albedo - the expedition will be able to measure the reflectivity of different snow surfaces that they encounter, a characteristic known as albedo, which plays a crucial role in the delicate balance of the earth’s climate. The experiment will illustrate how the type of snow that falls in Antarctica has a direct impact on the rest of the world.
You can read more about what we’ll be trying to achieve on the expedition website at : www.transantarcticexpedition.com/
