PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet, 30/2003 - 14 March 2003
------------------------------
"For years, the American space agency NASA has relied on
amateur
astronomers to search for asteroids - huge chunks of space rock
that
may be on a collision course with the planet Earth. Many
professional
telescopes are well suited to scanning large portions of the sky
and
picking out new asteroids. But hundreds of amateur observatories
around the
globe use their narrower telescopes to zero in on the new
discoveries,
and track their progress through space."
--Curt Nickisch, VOANews, 12 March 2003
"A study of southern Caribbean sediments suggests that a
century-long dry trend may have been the killing blow in the
demise
of the Mayan civilization that once built pyramids and elaborate
cities in
Mexico. Konrad A. Hughen, a geochemist at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic
Institution, said sediments from the Cariaco Basin in northern
Venezuela
clearly record a long dry siege that struck the entire Caribbean
starting in about the seventh century and lasting more than 100
years."
--Paul Recer, associated Press
(1) WHY MAYAN CIVILIZATION DRIED UP: SEDIMENT STUDY SUPPORTS VIEW
THAT
DROUGHT WAS KILLING BLOW
MSNBC, 14 March 2003
(2) CHANGES IN SUN'S INTENSITY TIED TO RECURRENT DROUGHTS IN MAYA
REGION
CCNet, 18 May 2001
(3) ANCIENT APOCALYPSE: THE FALL OF THE MAYAN CIVILISATION
BBCi Ancient History
(4) $25,000 OBSERVATORY HELPS SCIENTISTS TRACK ASTEROIDS
VOANews, 12 March 2003
(5) SCIENTISTS DISCOVER AN EVAPORATING "COMETARY"
PLANET IN ANOTHER SOLAR
SYSTEM
ESA, 12 March 2003
(6) ASTEROIDS, SECRECY AND PUBLICITY
David Tholen <tholen@IfA.Hawaii.Edu>
(7) THANKS BRIAN ... AND BY THE WAY
Andy Smith <astrosafe22000@yahoo.com>
(8) VERY GOOD NEWS ON PROGRESS IN COUNTING CRATERS FROM THE LPI
ANNUAL
MEETING
E.P. Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
(9) AND FINALLY: NEW SPACE RACE AS CHINA ENTERS THE RING
The New York Times, 14 March 2003
========
(1) WHY MAYAN CIVILIZATION DRIED UP: SEDIMENT STUDY SUPPORTS VIEW
THAT
DROUGHT WAS KILLING BLOW
>From MSNBC, 14 March 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/884939.asp?0sl=-10
By Paul Recer, ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, March 13 - A study of southern Caribbean
sediments suggests
that a century-long dry trend may have been the killing blow in
the demise
of the Mayan civilization that once built pyramids and elaborate
cities in
Mexico.
KONRAD A. HUGHEN, a geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution,
said sediments from the Cariaco Basin in northern Venezuela
clearly record a
long dry siege that struck the entire Caribbean starting in about
the
seventh century and lasting more than 100 years.
Within this dry period, said Hughen, there were years of
virtually no
rainfall. It was in those periods of extra dryness, he said, that
the Mayan
civilization went through a series of collapses before its final
demise.
Hughen is co-author of a study appearing Friday in the journal
Science.
The Cariaco Basin is on the southern Caribbean; the Maya lived
for about a
thousand years on the Yucatan, now part of Mexico, on the
northwestern edge
of the Caribbean. Hughen said both areas share the same climate,
with a wet
season and a dry season, so the dry trend detected in the Cariaco
Basin
sediments is thought to reflect the same climate experienced on
the Yucatan.
RISE AND FALL ... AND RISE AND FALL
Hughen said the Maya flourished in what is known as the
pre-classic period
before 700 A.D., building cities and elaborate irrigation systems
to support
a population that soared above a million. The civilization
collapsed and
many of the sites were abandoned early in the 800s. They were
later
reoccupied for the Mayan classic period, only to collapse again,
with some
cities deserted in 860 and others in 910.
"Those abandonments occur synchronously with the timing of
the droughts in
our record (from the sediments), suggesting the droughts were
causing those
events," said Hughen.
The sediment records show that the gradual drying started about
1,200 years
ago, but there was still enough rain for the Maya to flourish.
"They were still getting rain, but clearly it was less than
their
grandparents did," said Hughen. "Then, all of a sudden,
there were periods
of nine, three and six years when there were very dry
conditions."
He said the populations were already stressed by a trend of
sparse rainfall
and the "exceptionally severe" periods were enough to
cause the collapses.
"A severe event didn't have to be long" to force the
Mayans to abandon some
sites, said Hughen. "Each one of those dry events resulted
in the collapse
of a certain portion of the Mayan population."
A severe dry spell in 910, he said, "was the last
straw."
Mayan communities in the southern and central lowlands collapsed
first,
perhaps because they relied more heavily on rainfall for their
water needs.
In fact, the Mayan civilization's elaborate reservoirs and
irrigation
systems may have been designed in the first place to compensate
for a dearth
of ground water sources.
The communities in the northern highlands lasted for another
century before
the final collapse, Hughen noted.
"The northern areas had access to more ground water
resources," he said.
"They were able to weather the first and second dry periods,
but not the
third."
PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION
T. Patrick Culbert, a professor emeritus at the University of
Arizona and a
noted authority on the Mayan culture, said the climate study
offers a
plausible explanation of what happened to the Maya.
"They were so vulnerable that anything could have knocked
them over," said
Culbert. "If there were these severe droughts, it would have
been a disaster
for them."
Takeshi Inomata, an associate professor at the University of
Arizona who
studies early American civilizations, said the study by Hughen
and his
colleagues supports other studies linking climate to the Mayan
collapse.
There could have been other contributing causes, he said.
"The general climate problems may have contributed to the
Mayan collapse,
but that isn't all that we need to consider," Inomata said.
"It may have
been more complex than that."
Copyright 2003, MSNBC
============
(2) CHANGES IN SUN'S INTENSITY TIED TO RECURRENT DROUGHTS IN MAYA
REGION
>From CCNet, 18 May 2001
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc051801.html
News & Public Affairs
University of Florida
Contact Information:
Mark Brenner, (352) 392-2231, brenner@ufl.edu
Writer: Aaron Hoover, ahoover@ufl.edu
Sources: David Hodell, (352) 219-8873, dhodell@geology.ufl.edu
May 17, 2001
CHANGES IN SUN'S INTENSITY TIED TO RECURRENT DROUGHTS IN MAYA
REGION
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The Maya were talented astronomers,
religiously intense
in their observations of the sun, moon and planets. Now, new
research shows
something in the heavens may have influenced their culture and
ultimately
helped bring about their demise.
In an article set to appear in Friday's issue of the journal
Science, a team
of researchers led by a University of Florida geologist reports
finding that
the Yucatan Peninsula, seat of the ancient Maya civilization, was
buffeted
by recurrent droughts. More importantly, the research shows, the
droughts --
one of which is thought to have contributed to the collapse of
the Maya
civilization -- appear to have been caused by a cyclical
brightening of the
sun.
"It looks like changes in the sun's energy output are having
a direct effect
on the climate of the Yucatan and causing the recurrence of
drought, which
is in turn influencing the Maya evolution," said David
Hodell, a UF
professor of geology and the paper's lead author.
In 1995, Hodell and two colleagues at UF published results in the
journal
Nature suggesting that the ninth-century collapse of the Maya
civilization
may have been influenced by a severe drought that lasted for more
than 150
years. The paper, co-authored by Mark Brenner, a UF assistant
professor of
geology and director of UF's Land Use and Environmental Change
Institute,
and Jason Curtis, a UF geology researcher, was based on analysis
of a
sediment "core" from Lake Chichancanab on the north
central Yucatan
Peninsula in Mexico.
Cores are samples of lake sediment retrieved by driving a hollow
tube into
the lake bottom. The sediments are deposited layer by layer, like
a wedding
cake, with the oldest layer at the bottom. Such cores provide a
timeline
that allows researchers to obtain a continuous record of changes
in climate,
vegetation and land use.
For the latest research, Hodell, Brenner and Curtis returned to
the lake and
collected a new series of cores. The researchers discovered
layers of
calcium sulfate, or gypsum, concentrated at certain levels in the
cores.
Lake Chichancanab's water is nearly saturated with gypsum. During
dry
periods, lake water evaporates and the gypsum falls to the lake
bottom. The
layers therefore represent drought episodes. The researchers
found the
recurrence of the deposits is remarkably cyclical, occurring
every 208
years, although they varied in intensity.
The 208-year cycle caught the researchers' attention because it
is nearly
identical to a known 206-year cycle in solar intensity, Hodell
said. As part
of that cycle, the sun is most intense every 206 years, something
that can
be tracked through measuring the production of certain
radioactive
substances such as carbon-14. The researchers found the drought
episodes
occurred during the most intense part of the sun's cycle.
Not only that, the researchers found the droughts occurred at
times when
archeological evidence reflects downturns in the Maya culture,
including the
900 A.D. collapse. Such evidence includes abandonment of cities
or slowing
of building and carving activity.
As Hodell said, the energy received by the Earth at the peak of
the solar
cycle increases less than one-tenth of 1 percent, so it's likely
that some
mechanism in the climate is amplifying the impact in the Yucatan.
Archaeologists know the Maya were capable of precisely measuring
the
movements of the sun, moon and planets, including Venus. Hodell
said he is
unaware, however, of any evidence the Maya knew about the
bicentenary cycle
that ultimately may have played a role in their downfall.
"It's ironic that
a culture so obsessed with keeping track of celestial movements
may have met
their demise because of a 206-year cycle," he said.
The cycle continues to the present, which happens to fall into
about the
middle of the 206-year period, Hodell said. Even a severe drought
today,
however, isn't likely to have the same impact on the culture as
in ancient
times. Brenner noted North Korea currently is suffering an
extreme drought,
but the country has the benefit of international aid.
"Nobody stepped in to help the Maya out," he said,
"and as conditions
worsened, it probably created a lot of stress among various Maya
cities
competing for resources."
Thomas Guilderson, of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
assisted
the UF scientists in the research, which was funded by the
National Science
Foundation Paleoclimate Program. The cores were collected for a
BBC program
on climate and Maya culture collapse.
=============
(3) ANCIENT APOCALYPSE: THE FALL OF THE MAYAN CIVILISATION
>From BBCi Ancient History
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/apocalypse_maya1.shtml
By Jessica Cecil
Mayan ruins
The Mayan ruins of Tikal are hidden deep in the rainforests of
Guatemala.
>From the air only a handful of temples and palaces peek
through the canopy.
The stone carvings are weather-beaten. Huge plazas are covered in
moss and
giant reservoirs are engulfed by jungle. The only inhabitants are
wild
animals and birds.
But 1,200 years ago, Tikal was one of the major cities of the
vast and
magnificent Maya civilisation that stretched across much of what
is now
southern Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. Tikal was home to perhaps
100,000
people. Thatched farmsteads and fields would have stretched as
far as the
eye could see.
The Maya were so stable and established they even had a word for
a 400-year
time period.
The Maya thrived for nearly 2,000 years. Without the use of the
cartwheel or
metal tools, they built massive stone structures. They were
accomplished
scientists. They tracked a solar year of 365 days and one of the
few
surviving ancient Maya books contains tables of eclipses. From
observatories, like the one at Chichen Itza, they tracked the
progress of
the war star, Venus.
They developed their own mathematics, using a base number of 20,
and even
had a concept of zero. They also had their own system of writing.
Their
civilisation was so stable and established, they even had a word
for a
400-year time period.
Mayan society was vibrant, but it could also be brutal. It was
strictly
hierarchical and deeply spiritual. Humans were sacrificed to
appease the
gods. The elite also tortured themselves - male Maya rulers
perforated the
foreskins of their penises and the women their tongues,
apparently in the
hope of providing nourishment for the gods who required human
blood.
In the ninth century, the Maya world was turned upside down. Many
of the
great centres like Tikal were deserted. The sacred temples and
palaces
briefly became home to a few squatters, who left household
rubbish in the
once pristine buildings. When they too left, Tikal was abandoned
forever,
and the Mayan civilisation never recovered. Only a fraction of
the Maya
people survived to face the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th
century.
For decades, archaeologists have been searching for an
explanation of the
Maya collapse. Many theories have been put forward, ranging from
warfare and
invasion to migration, disease and over-farming. Many think the
truth may
lie with a combination of these and other factors.
But none of the conventional theories were good enough for Dick
Gill. He
believed that what had devastated the Maya was drought. However,
drought as
the only explanation of the Maya collapse was highly
controversial.
Massive drought
Dick Gill was a most unusual person to put forward a bold new
theory
explaining the collapse of Mayan civilisation. When he started
his hunt for
clues, he was actually a banker.
His love affair with the Maya started back in 1968 when he
visited Chichen
Itza in Southern Mexico while on holiday. The Mayan ruins, he
says, really
touched him. He resolved to solve the riddle of the Maya collapse
- but he
still had a banking career to pursue.
In the early 1980s, fate stepped in with a Texas banking crisis.
The family
bank collapsed, and Gill was suddenly out of work and free to
follow his
dream. He went to college to study anthropology and archaeology.
His realisation of what might have caused the Maya collapse came
in a
brainwave - it was an explanation which didn't come from books
and study,
but directly from his own childhood. Gill remembered the
devastating
droughts in Texas in the 1950s, when farmland was parched and
fires raged.
The hot, sunny days seemed interminable, and he was left with an
emotional
understanding of the power of drought. His work led him to
a dramatic
conclusion - that the Maya civilisation consisted of millions of
people who
had died very suddenly.
He felt sure the Maya had faced a huge drought, but he had no
evidence to
back up his theory - so he set out to search for clues. One of
the first
people he turned to was archaeologist Dr Fred Valdez.
Valdez, from the University of Texas, worked deep in the jungles
of Belize.
He counted Maya farmsteads in order to estimate the likely total
population.
Fragments of pottery told him when the area was occupied and his
work led
him to a dramatic conclusion - that the Maya civilisation
consisted of
millions of people who had died very suddenly. Gill knew few
factors could
account for this - but one of them was drought.
In Gill's eyes, this strengthened his theory, but he still needed
direct
evidence. It was time to trawl the archives. National records
held in Mexico
City revealed that, at the start of the 20th century, a drought
in the Maya
region had lasted three years. Here was evidence that drought
could, in
fact, occur in this region.
He then stumbled upon older, colonial records from the Spanish
authorities
in the Yucatan province of Mexico, telling of repeated drought.
"I found
this plea for help", he says. "The crops had been very
bad in the year 1795
- they were running out of grain and they were afraid that the
terrible
death they had seen so often in the past was going to repeat
itself again,
so they asked for help."
Gill now had proof of devastating droughts in the past, but not
in the key
ninth century. Then he discovered an extraordinary coincidence.
He'd studied
hundreds of papers on meteorology before he stumbled on one
entitled
"Dendrochronology, mass balance and glacier front
fluctuations in northern
Sweden".
It had been extremely cold in northern Europe at just the time of
the Maya
collapse, but what could possibly be the link? Gill went back to
the
meteorological records, and found that one of the high pressure
systems in
the north Atlantic had moved towards Central America at the start
of the
20th century. This was a time of both drought in the Maya areas
and extreme
cold in northern Europe.
Conclusive proof
Though the circumstantial evidence was growing stronger, Gill
still didn't
have direct proof of devastating drought in the Maya areas in the
ninth
century. He finally got that evidence when a team from the
University of
Florida visited Lake Chichancanab in Mexico's Yucatan region.
The team was interested in past climates and measured them by
taking cores
of mud from the bottom of the lake. The mud had built up over
thousands of
years - the deeper the mud, the older the shells and seeds it
contained.
The scientists discovered that the ninth century had been the
driest time in
the region in 7,000 years.
Back at their labs in Gainesville, they looked at tiny shells
from each part
of the core, and in particular the two types of oxygen locked in
them -
heavy and light.
The surfaces of shells from times of high rainfall are dominated
by light
oxygen. More of the heavy oxygen means the water in the lake was
evaporating
at that time. A core from the ninth century showed an exceptional
surge of
heavy oxygen, indicating it was the driest time in 7,000 years.
Here at last was the clinching evidence Gill had been searching
for -
exceptional drought at the time of the Maya collapse. His quest
was over,
but it had been an emotional journey of discovery.
"There's a certain satisfaction that I have finally
understood what happened
to the Maya, but as a human being it's awful to think about what
happened",
he says.
Copyright 2003, BBCi
===============
(4) $25,000 OBSERVATORY HELPS SCIENTISTS TRACK ASTEROIDS
>From VOANews, 12 March 2003
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=CB446935-5047-4D90-914C99EFD5AD0
077&title=%2425%2C000%20Observatory%20Helps%20Scientists%20Track%20Asteroids
&catOID=45C9C787-88AD-11D4-A57200A0CC5EE46C&categoryname=Science%20%26%20Tec
h
Curt Nickisch
Quinn, South Dakota
For years, the American space agency NASA has relied on amateur
astronomers
to search for asteroids - huge chunks of space rock that may be
on a
collision course with the planet Earth. Many professional
telescopes are
well suited to scanning large portions of the sky and picking out
new
asteroids. But hundreds of amateur observatories around the globe
use their
narrower telescopes to zero in on the new discoveries, and track
their
progress through space. From the Great Plains state of South
Dakota, Curt
Nickisch recently joined one such amateur astronomer on the hunt.
Western South Dakota is perhaps better known for paleontology
than
astronomy. It's one of the world hotspots for dinosaur fossils.
Some
scientists believe the dinosaurs died out suddenly 65 million
years ago when
a colossal asteroid smashed into the Earth, drastically changing
the
climate. It's here, at the edge of rugged outcroppings called the
South
Dakota Badlands, that Ron Dyvig is searching for the next killer
asteroid.
Mr. Dyvig retired from his job at a used car lot five years ago
to build
this observatory at an abandoned medical building in the town of
Quinn. The
town's 44 residents were happy to find a use for the building,
and hoped the
Badlands Observatory would put Quinn on the map. With plywood and
planks,
Ron Dyvig and a few friends constructed the geometric dome that
caps the
white cement building like a tank turret. A hand-crank opens the
dome to the
night sky.
"It's very good to have the temperature inside the same as
the outdoor
temperature," explains Mr. Dyvig, "because the
difference in temperature
between the air column in front of the telescope and outside can
create
thermal waves that basically blur the image. That's what causes
stars to
twinkle at night and it's great for romance, but it's not good
for
astronomy!"
At first, Mr. Dyvig had to brave the cold weather here to make
observations.
Now he can direct the four-meter-long telescope with computers
from a heated
control room downstairs. Motors turn the dome to keep the opening
in front
of the telescope as it tracks across the sky.
"These motors actually came from a vending company. I
believe that they're
motors that were originally used out of Coke machines. They're
geared down
and they're very powerful at slow RPMs," he told a visitor,
referring to
revolutions per minute.
It took three years and $25,000 to build what now is a
culmination of a
lifelong love of astronomy. Mr. Dyvig says he got hooked when
spotting the
planet Mars with the naked eye on a Boy Scout camping trip 50
years ago. Now
the telescope he's built detects objects more than a million
times fainter
than Mars. That makes the Badlands Observatory particularly good
at
detecting rock masses careening through the solar system,
asteroids whose
orbits might one day crash them into the Earth.
These guys are really having a lot of fun," says Steve
Chesley, a senior
engineer at a NASA center in Pasadena, California. It's his job
to analyze
observations from the hundreds of amateur astronomers all around
the world
who spot and track such asteroids. "They like to observe.
They like to go
without sleep. And instead of just pointing their telescopes at
galaxies and
planets and saying 'ooh, ah, look at that,' they are pointing
them at
asteroids and doing something that's really valuable."
It's easier to spot the asteroids moving at the threshold of
visibility when
the sky is extremely dark. That's why Ron Dyvig chose the South
Dakota
Badlands, one of the darkest areas in the United States. He even
convinced
the town council to install hoods over the streetlights in Quinn,
and a
switch on the one closest to the observatory. Before looking for
asteroids
each night, he trudges through the snow to switch the streetlamp
off.
On a dark night like this two years ago, Mr. Dyvig re-discovered
an asteroid
heading towards Earth that was first observed briefly back in
1987 before
disappearing from view. That sighting helped other astronomers
plot its
course and determine that it would pass Earth at a safe distance.
He's also
discovered 27 asteroids that orbit beyond Mars. One of them was
officially
named after South Dakota.
Tonight, however, Ron Dyvig is getting a break from his
self-appointed task.
Clouds passing over the Badlands prevent him from detecting any
asteroids
moving through the starry heavens. So he reluctantly directs the
computer to
steer his telescope back into its stow position and looks forward
to another
night, and another hunt for faint, but potentially dangerous
asteroids.
Copyright 2003, VOANews
===========
(5) SCIENTISTS DISCOVER AN EVAPORATING "COMETARY"
PLANET IN ANOTHER SOLAR
SYSTEM
>From ESA, 12 March 2003
http://sci.esa.int/hubble/news/newsrelease.cfm?oid=31711
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, for the first time, astronomers
have
observed the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet evaporating off
into space.
Much of this planet may eventually disappear, leaving only a
dense core. The
planet is a type of extrasolar planet known as a 'hot Jupiter'.
These giant,
gaseous planets orbit their stars very closely, drawn to them
like moths to
a flame.
The scorched planet called HD 209458b orbits 'only' 7 million
kilometres
from its yellow Sun-like star. By comparison, Jupiter, the
closest gas giant
in our Solar System, orbits 780 million kilometres from our Sun.
The
NASA/ESA Hubble Space telescope observations reveal a hot and
puffed-up
evaporating hydrogen atmosphere surrounding the planet. This huge
envelope
of hydrogen resembles a comet with a tail trailing behind the
planet. The
planet circles the parent star in a tight 3.5-day orbit. Earth
also has an
extended atmosphere of escaping hydrogen gas, but the loss rate
is much
lower.
A mainly European team led by Alfred Vidal-Madjar (Institut
d'Astrophysique
de Paris, CNRS, France) is reporting this discovery in the March
13 NATURE
Magazine. "We were astonished to see that the hydrogen
atmosphere of this
planet extends over 200 000 kilometres," says Vidal-Madjar.
Studying extrasolar planets, especially if they are very close to
their
parent stars, is not very easy because the starlight is usually
too
blinding. The planet was also too close to the star for Hubble to
photograph
directly in this case. However, astronomers could observe the
planet
indirectly since it blocks light from a small part of the star
during
transits across the disk of the star, thereby dimming it
slightly. Light
passing through the atmosphere around the planet is scattered and
acquires a
signature from the atmosphere. In a similar way, the Sun's light
is reddened
as it passes obliquely through the Earth's atmosphere at sunset.
Astronomers
used Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) to
measure how
much of the planet's atmosphere filters light from the star. They
saw a
startling drop in the star's hydrogen emission. A huge, puffed-up
atmosphere
can best explain this result.
What is causing the atmosphere to escape? The planet's outer
atmosphere is
extended and heated so much by the nearby star that it starts to
escape the
planet's gravity. Hydrogen boils off in the planet's upper
atmosphere under
the searing heat from the star. "The atmosphere is heated,
the hydrogen
escapes the planet's gravitational pull and is pushed away by the
starlight,
fanning out in a large tail behind the planet - like that of a
comet," says
Alain Lecavelier des Etangs working at the Institut
d'Astrophysique de
Paris, CNRS, France. Astronomers estimate the amount of hydrogen
gas
escaping HD 209458b to be at least 10 000 tonnes per second, but
possibly
much more. The planet may therefore already have lost quite a lot
of its
mass.
HD 209458b belongs to a type of extrasolar planet known as 'hot
Jupiters'.
These planets orbit precariously close to their stars. They are
giant,
gaseous planets that must have formed in the cold outer reaches
of the star
system and then spiralled into their close orbits. This new
discovery might
help explain why 'hot Jupiters' so often orbit a few million
kilometres from
their parent stars. They are not usually found much closer than 7
million
kilometres, as is the case for HD 209458b. Currently, the current
closest
distance is 5.7 million kilometres. Hot Jupiters have orbits that
are as
brief as 3 days, but not shorter. Perhaps the evaporation of the
atmosphere
plays a role in setting an inner boundary for orbits of hot
Jupiters.
Notes for editors
HD 209458b has a diameter 1.3 times that of Jupiter, and
two-thirds the
mass. Its orbit is one-eighth the size of Mercury's orbit around
the Sun.
The parent star is similar to our Sun and lies 150 light-years
from Earth.
It is visible with binoculars as a seventh magnitude star in the
constellation of Pegasus. In 1999, this star suddenly entered the
astronomical Hall of Fame when the extrasolar planet HD 209458b
passed in
front of it and partly eclipsed it. This was the first confirmed
transiting
extrasolar planet ever discovered. In 2001, Hubble detected the
element
sodium in the lower part of HD 209458b's atmosphere, the first
signature of
an atmosphere on any extrasolar planet.
The team is composed of A. Vidal-Madjar, lead author of the
discovery,
(Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, France) A. Lecavelier
des Etangs,
J.-M. Désert (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, France),
G. Ballester
(University of Arizona, United States), R. Ferlet and G. Hébrard
(Institut
d'Astrophysique de Paris, France), and M. Mayor (Geneve
Observatory,
Switzerland). They observed three transits of the planet in front
of the
star with Hubble. The observations of the atomic hydrogen
envelope were made
in ultraviolet (Lyman-alpha) light, using Hubble's spectrograph
STIS.
Hubble's position above the atmosphere makes it the only
telescope currently
that can perform these types of ultraviolet studies.
For broadcasters, computer animations of the discovery plus
general Hubble
Space Telescope background footage is available from the ESA
Television
Service, see http://television.esa.int
The search and the study of extrasolar planets is the aim of
several of
ESA's scientific missions. Eddington, for instance, due for
launch in 2007,
will discover large numbers of transiting planets of all types,
including
many transiting 'hot Jupiters' similar to HD 209458b. These will
be ideal
targets for the same type of detailed follow-up studies with
large space-
and ground-based telescopes.
This material is being co-released with NASA/STScI/OPO.
Image credit: European Space Agency, Alfred Vidal-Madjar
(Institut
d'Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, France) and NASA.
For more information, please contact:
ESA Communication Department
Media Relations Office, Paris, France
Tel: +33 (0)1 5369 7155
Fax: +33 (0)1 5369 7690
Alfred Vidal-Madjar
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP/CNRS)
Paris, France
Tel: +33 (0)1 4432 8073
E-mail: alfred@iap.fr
Lars Lindberg Christensen
Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6306 (089 within Germany)
Cellular (24 hr): +49 173 3872 621 (0173 within Germany)
E-mail: lars@eso.org
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, United States
Tel: +1 410 338 4514
E-mail: villard@stsci.edu
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(6) ASTEROIDS, SECRECY AND PUBLICITY
>From David Tholen <tholen@IfA.Hawaii.Edu>
> This policy, however, was not followed when 2002 NT7 went
PS-positive last
> year without an IAU statement. News entities worldwide were
left to each
> sort out the facts on their own, and found themselves
collectively blasted
> for their efforts.
Benny,
There is a BIG difference between "secrecy" and making
sure you have all
your ducks in order before going public. Astronomers have been
accused of
irresponsibility by making public statements about impact
probabilities that
went away only a day later. It is hypocritical for people to
complain about
the premature release of information, and then turn around and
complain of "secrecy" if information isn't released
prematurely. They can't
have it both ways.
My own advice has been and continues to be that press releases
about the
latest virtual impactor are unnecessary while the object is still
observable, simply because the short-term potential for new
observations
results in the short-term potential for revised impact
probabilities. But we
can talk about the status of an ongoing investigation freely and
openly with
anyone who asks about it without putting out an official
IAU-sanctioned
press release. How can that be construed as
"secrecy"? Note that this
advice is completely independent of the object's value on either
the Torino
or Palermo scale.
Now, with regard to 2002 NT7, I thought I had convinced you to
adopt the "no
publicity while an object is still observable" approach, but
that didn't
stop you from publicizing the fact that 2002 NT7 "went
PS-positive". But is
it "PS-positive" now? Is it even on either the Pisa or
JPL risk pages? The
answer is "no" to both questions. The only way those
facts could be sorted
out was with additional time to make the observations, and the
object was
indeed still observable. Who would like to accept
responsibility for making
much ado about nothing? Can't blame the IAU, because as you
noted, the IAU
made no statement, which in my opinion was the right decision,
given the
fact that 2002 NT7 is not a hazardous object. If the various news
entities,
including yourself, feel "blasted" for their efforts,
it's richly deserved.
----
MODERATOR'S NOTE: What would, indeed, what should we do the next
time we
discover an asteroid with a positive Palermo Scale impact
probability? David
Tholen's comments in today's CCNet seem to suggest that we still
haven't
learned the lessons from the 2002 NT7 scare.
Let me explain: The real dichotomy is not between
"secrecy" and "publicity".
It is much more complicated than that. And unless we grasp the
systematic
difficulties in the communication of impact risk data, I fear we
may repeat
past mistakes.
1. To begin with, the current "secrecy" period of 72
hours during which "the
NEO Technical Review Committee shall review the work for
technical accuracy"
of impact risk calculations seems to be outmoded. Experience has
shown that
there is generally excellent agreement between JPL's Sentry and
Pisa
University's NEODyS impact risk computation. In other words, it
is not so
much the *technical* details that are in need of review but
rather the
appropriate forms of communicating these details.
2. When 2002 NT7 reached a positive Palermo Scale value, it
consequently
triggered an inquiry as to whether or not a technical review by
the IAU
WGNEO was warranted. That none was necessary was evident to me
the moment I
noticed the hushed publication of 2002 NT7 on the NEODyS and
SENTRY impact
risk websites. As I pointed out at the time (CCNet, 23 July
2002): "It seems
obvious to me and other critics that it is far too impractical to
submit
every positive Palermo Scale object for review. After all,
neither the
computers at NEODyS nor those used by JPL have ever experienced a
problem
with the calculation of impact probabilities. The pragmatic
approach of
turning a blind eye to the IAU procedures (if that's what
happened over the
weekend) seems sensible in the case of 2002 NT7 given that it is
almost
certain that further observations of this 2km asteroid will
eliminate any
remaining impact threats currently listed."
3. To publish extraordinary impact risk data without any
explicatory and
advice-giving information (as happened with 2002 NT7) can
sometimes be just
as detrimental as an inadequately worded or badly timed
announcement (as
happened with 2000 SG344 and other cases). It was certainly a
mistake not to
issue clear guidance. The IAU WGNEO failed to appreciate that the
publication of exceptional impact risk calculations without any
explanation
whatever - and against a generally expected statement - was bound
to invite
misinterpretation.
4. Given that neither an official IAU statement nor a taciturn
publication
is appropriate in cases of unusual impact risk, perhaps it is
prudent to
review the recommendation I made some months before the 2002 NT7
affair. In
my presentation at the International Workshop On Managing
Global-Scale
Disasters (Irvine, California, 12 April 2002), I anticipated the
2002 NT7
scenario and suggested the following:
"As far as the issue of public warnings during these phases
are concerned, I
will propose to divide the impact warning system into five
separate warning
phases. Once it is understood that any predicted impact will
advance in this
way, although not necessarily going through all the phases, it
will become
obvious that each of these phases require a completely different
approach to
publicity and information policies.
* The low probability phase - takes effect with any object
detected that has
an impact probability below 0 on the Palermo Scale. Most objects
listed on
the "impact risk pages" managed by NEODyS and JPL fall
into this category.
No specific public information is required for such an event.
* The moderate probability phase - gets underway with the
detection of an
object that has an impact probability above 0 on the Palermo
Scale. It would
be sensible to post clarifying information on the various
internet "risk
pages." However, at this stage it would be important to
emphasise that the
impact risk will be removed, in all likelihood, as a result of
additional
observational data. Accordingly, there is no need for any
official press
release during this phase."
(http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/ce072802.html)
5. In short, David Tholen's "no publicity while an object is
still
observable" approach doesn't work for "virtual
impactors" that *are*
published in a noteworthy manner due to their extraordinary
impact risk
probability and therefore draw public attention. While I share
David's
standpoint that no IAU press release is required, I strongly
suggest that
explicatory information is provided on the various websites that
publish
significant impact risk calculations.
Benny Peiser
============
(7) THANKS BRIAN ... AND BY THE WAY
>From Andy Smith <astrosafe22000@yahoo.com>
Hello Benny and CCNet,
We enjoyed the discussion, in your newsletter, today, regarding
the need for
openness and candor, as we address planetary NEO defense. The
note from
Brian Marsden was especially welcomed because he has contributed
so much to
the maintenance of the quality of our valuable data center and he
has
stood...sometimes alone...for openness.
We all raise our glasses to Brian, to 1997 XF11 and to all of
those who help
him and support his work, in the IAU and the other distinguished
institutions involved. We also urge those involved to see
that this vital
function is adequately supported and able to upgrade it's
capability...to
keep pace with the increasing and encouraging data flow.
Our Request
We also have one request for Brian and the MPC. We think the
threshold of
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA) should be lowered to
include objects
smaller than absolute magnitude (V) 22. We would like to include
everything
down to the Tunguska/Arizona/Mt.St. Helens level (objects in the
50 meter
wide range, with destructive energy levels near the equivalent of
10
megatons (million tons) of TNT.
We feel the detonation of 10 million tons of TNT, in a single
event, is
certainly potentially hazardous and could make anyone's, or any
city's, or
any country's, or any continent's day.
The V22 object is in the 1,000 megaton range...give or take a few
hundred
megatons. It is a flying rock-bomb that is about 200 meters
wide....again a
mighty show-stopper. We appreciate the fact that NEODys includes
the
smaller...but still extremely devastating objects...on it's lists
and we
urge the MPC to do the same.
Cheers
Andy Smith/IPPA/ astrosafe22000@yahoo.com
=============
(8) VERY GOOD NEWS ON PROGRESS IN COUNTING CRATERS FROM THE LPI
ANNUAL
MEETING
>From E.P. Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
Hello Benny -
I have been taking a look at the abstracts for the Lunar and
Planetary
Institute's annual meeting, and it contains very good news for
the NEO
community:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/program.pdf
For the first time in years there seems to have been adequate
attention paid
to impact science in setting out the meeting's agenda.
Importantly, significant progress in the
development of crater counting is reported on, that data which is
so vitally important in getting
a firm handle on the risk to us all arising from small to medium
impacts.
There are so many fine papers on impact science being presented
at this
meeting that it will take many hours to read through them all,
but a few of the studies appear to me
to be of especially important notice, and hence this note.
First off, new crater counts are available for some selected
sample areas of
Mars:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/2116.pdf
While small to medium impacts were recovered, unfortunately the
crater
counts still differ by nearly an order of magnitude across the
study's samples. Also, as we also
have no idea as to when each of the "pristine surfaces"
underlying each of the study's samples
was formed, it will be very difficult to convert these raw crater
counts into impact risk
estimates for the Earth over time.
But there's more good news, as the timeline for all Martian
processes,
including the formation of these pristine surfaces, is being
refined, as work is proceeding on large
craters on Mars and Mars' morphological history:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/1838.pdf
This particular work is also important for its development of
techniques for
identifying buried craters by the use of elevation data and other
techniques.
Work is also proceeding on estimating the effects of Mars'
"atmosphere" on
impact events, and this is important as it is unlikely that in
the past Mars' atmosphere was
always the near vacuum it is today:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/1418.pdf
VERY IMPORTANTLY, work on the software for automated crater
counting is
continuing:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/1756.pdf
(And a big hello to Clark Chapman and the team at SWRI - may your
funding
flow like the streams of the valley...)
This software can be applied not only to images of the surface of
Mars, but
also to the images of the surfaces of any body within our Solar
System. In the future, this
software will have to be run on other datasets, including not
only the
excellent images of Jupiter's moons provided by the
Galileo team's excellent work, but also the new datasets formed
of the moons
of Saturn by this team, with a special tip of the hat to Shenk:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/2094.pdf
As Saturn lies outside of Jupiter, work on the Saturn data set is
of
particular importance in trying to get some kind of handle in
separating out
the the risk of impact presented by comets from that presented by
asteroids.
It is clear that one significant direction for improvement in
these
automated crater counting programs is the use of elevation data
in addition to surface imagery.
Determining crater volumes is going to be quite important in
sorting out both impactors as well
underlying surface structures:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/1472.pdf
Along the well known lines of impact research, work on the
geology of large
Earth impacts is also being presented, both at
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/sess95.pdf
as well as in other
sessions, in particular one entire session devoted to Chixulub:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/sess10.pdf
As to finding out more about the nature of the impactor which
will hit us
next, there are many other papers, including those at this
session devoted to asteroids and
comets:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/sess41.pdf
Well Benny, that's it. All in all, a pretty good
haul. If work continues
at this pace, then we should have a really good handle both on
the impact risk as well as on what
we can do about it in about 2 to 3 years time.
As it has only taken about 5 years of nagging to get NASA to get
to this
point, in my opinion the question now becomes, "What can we
do now to insure
that this work is done?" Along these
lines, in closing I want to pass on the simple observation that
given NASA's
fascination with water on Mars (some would say
"fixation"), the easiest way to insure that
NASA funds impact work properly is simply to point out to them
the fact that without reliable
impact estimates they have no way of dating any geological
(marseological)
feature on Mars at all.
It will only be after NASA has those crater counts in hand, and
have
debiased their other data for both the effects of atmospheric
iron impact
dust, and the effects of the minimal atmospheric water on Mars,
that they
will be able to make statements about Mars with any degree of
reliability.
In the meantime, my advice is to always call attention to the
unreliability
("BS") of the NASA's statements about Mars. It
works.
Yours in Science,
Ed
==============
(9) AND FINALLY: NEW SPACE RACE AS CHINA ENTERS THE RING
>From The New York Times, 14 March 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/14/science/14ASTR.html?ex=1048222800&en=dcb9c78db743e69e&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
By JOSEPH KAHN
HANGHAI, March 11 - Even as Americans question the purpose of
manned space
flight after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, the world's
newest
space power, China, is recreating the glory days of Apollo.
In October China plans to send its first astronauts into orbit on
its
Shenzhou spacecraft. When their re-entry capsule parachutes back
to the
grassy steppes of Inner Mongolia, the Chinese hope to have
exceeded American
and Soviet records for the number of men, length of time in orbit
and
complexity of operations on a maiden manned voyage in space.
China plans to
have two or three astronauts aboard for the first flight, while
American and
Russia put one man in orbit on their first tries.
But China's aims go far beyond low-earth orbit. Beijing is
pursuing
multibillion-dollar programs to construct a space station and
explore the
moon. Its scientists are energetically, if still dreamily,
planning a colony
on Mars......
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
*
CCNet TERRA 12/2003 - 13 March 2003
-----------------------------------
"Remember the number 1.85. It is the lodestar of a new
demography
that will lead us to a different world. It should change the way
we think
about economics, geopolitics, the environment, culture - and
about
ourselves."
--Ben J. Wattenberg, International Herald Tribune, 12 March
2003
"The latest news from the Canadian Ice Service is that Lake
Superior
is now 100% frozen over. In addition, Lakes Huron and Erie are
also
frozen tight. This is a rare and brief occurrence, the last
events being in
1982 and 1994. The northern one third of Lake Michigan is also
ice covered.
Further east, the Gulf of St. Lawrence has 25% more ice than
normal, and
the Atlantic coast down to Halifax is covered with sea ice, a
direct result
of the deep winter freeze that has gripped Eastern Canada.
Toronto
recorded its coldest March day since 1868. This in spite of the
`urban
heat island'. The city has now had 63 days in which temperatures
failed
to rise above 0°C, more than double the number last year. The
occurrence
of such a record-breaking freeze in these greenhouse times must
raise
questions as to the validity of the greenhouse warming theory,
particularly its assumed magnitude, since the theory suggests
that the
greenhouse effect has its greatest leverage in the coldest places
and
at the coldest times."
--John Daly, 11 March 2003
(1) RECORD COLD FREEZES SURFACE OF THREE GREAT LAKES
CNN, 12 March 2003
(2) GREENLAND COOLS AS WORLD WARMS
BBC News Online, 11 March 2003
(3) RECORD COLD IN MALTA
Malta Weather, 1 March 2003
(4) THE 1991 MT. PINATUBO ERUPTION: ITS INFLUENCE ON CLIMATE
Mark Hess <Mark.S.Hess@nasa.gov>
(5) LARGE-SCALE DROUGHTS IN NORTH AMERICA DURING THE PAST 2000
YEARS
Queens University, 6 March 2003
(6) GLACIERS AND SEA LEVELS
CO2 Science Magazine, 12 March 2003
(7) GLACIERS: ARE THEY RETREATING OR ADVANCING?
CO2 Science Magazine, 12 March 2003
(8) NEGATIVE FEEDBACK: DIFFUSE-LIGHT-ENHANCED PHOTOSYNTHESIS
REVISITED
CO2 Science Magazine, 12 March 2003
(9) A GLOBALLY COHERENT FINGERPRINT OF CLIMATE CAHNGE IMPACTS
ACROSS NATURAL
SYSTEMS
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpg.com.au>
(10) ON THE BENEFITS TO HUMANS FROM CHANGE
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen <Sonja.B-C@hull.ac.uk>
(11) WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ICE AGE: THE COMPLEX SYSTEM OF
CLIMATE CHANGE
James Marusek <tunga@custom.net>
(12) GLACIERS AND GLOBAL WARMING
Nick Sault <nsault@jadeworld.com>
(13) QUESTIONS TO THE MODERATOR CCNet
Andrew Glikson <geospec@webone.com.au>
(14) GLOBAL COOPERATION
Pavel Chichikov <fishhook@erols.com>
(15) AND FINALLY: THE WORLD IS GROWING SMALLER AND SAFER
International Herald Tribune, 12 March
2003
=============
(1) RECORD COLD FREEZES SURFACE OF THREE GREAT LAKES
>From CNN, 12 March 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/03/12/canada.lakes.reut/index.html
TORONTO, Canada (Reuters) -- Three of North America's Great Lakes
-- Lake
Huron, Lake Superior and Lake Erie -- have frozen over for the
first time in
nearly a decade after icy weather lasting more than a month,
experts at
Environment Canada said.
A month of temperatures below minus 20 Celsius (minus 4
Fahrenheit) has
caused an ice blanket averaging as much as 60 cm (24 inches) on
the lakes,
creating problems for shipping companies and ferries.
"The large lakes freeze once every decade," said John
Falkingham, chief of
forecast operations, at the Canadian Ice Service, which is part
of
Environment Canada. "A sustained long, cold spell causes
such an extensive
ice cover."
Fresh water source
The three lakes are part of the five Great Lakes, including Lake
Michigan
and Lake Ontario, which constitute the largest fresh water system
in the
world and represent 18 percent of global fresh water supply and
95 percent
of the U.S. supply, according to the Great Lakes Information Web
site
(www.great-lakes.net).
Lake Superior, the largest of the five, is more than 82,000
square
kilometers (32,000 square miles) -- or almost the size of
Austria.
Canadian Ice Service said satellite images showed that Superior
and Huron
froze over for the first time this year on February 27, after
record low
temperatures, without a hint of the warming trend that is normal
for this
time of year.
That frigid weather continued into March. Last week, the
temperature fell
below minus 25 Celsius (minus 13 Fahrenheit) in southern Ontario,
the
coldest for March in a century, according to Environment Canada.
Expected to thaw in April
The cold weather has affected the St. Lawrence Seaway, which will
now open
on March 31, almost a week behind schedule, said Ivan Lantz,
director of
marine operations for the Shipping Federation of Canada, an
organization of
shipowners and agents involved in the overseas trade.
"My estimate is that before the 15th of April, shipping is
going to be very
difficult," Lantz said.
On Canada's east coast, ferry service between Sydney, Nova
Scotia, and Port
aux Basques, Newfoundland, has also experienced difficulty
because of ice. A
ferry spent part of Sunday caught in ice and had to be helped by
an
icebreaker.
Falkingham said the ice is expected to thaw by the end of April.
Copyright 2003 Reuters
================
(2) GREENLAND COOLS AS WORLD WARMS
>From BBC News Online, 11 March 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2840137.stm
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online science staff
While scientists report warming trends in many parts of the
globe, it seems
this northern polar region has been moving in the other
direction.
The finding is based on an analysis of historical meteorological
data
collected by Danish researchers.
It shows that during the period 1958 to 2001 average temperatures
in the
southern part of the island fell by 1.29 C. Sea-surface
temperatures in the
Labrador Sea also fell.
Globally, temperatures have risen over this period (+0.53 C) and
in
Greenland itself scientists have recently reported fairly
dramatic thinning
of the island's ice sheet.
But Dr Edward Hanna, from the Institute of Marine Studies at the
University
of Plymouth, UK, said that, as with all climate science, a fuller
picture
emerges when long-term data are taken into account.
Climate phenomenon
"It really depends on what timescale you are looking
at," he told BBC News
Online.
"Certainly in the late 1990s, there was some warming but
that's just over a
very short period. There are a lot of natural cycles in regional
climate and
if you take a longer trend over the last 40 or 50 years then
there has been
a statistically significant cooling, particularly in
south-western coastal
Greenland."
Greenland is central to climate studies
Dr Hanna together with Dr John Cappelen, of the Danish
Meteorological
Institute in Copenhagen, present their Greenland analysis in the
journal
Geophysical Review Letters.
It looks at data collected at eight stations. The cooling trend,
they
believe, is associated with an increased phase of the North
Atlantic
Oscillation (NAO) that has been observed over the past 35 years.
The NAO is a natural and recurring pressure pattern that has a
profound
impact on the weather experienced in the North Atlantic region -
at the
moment bringing milder, wetter winters to Northern Europe.
Hanna and Cappelen believe the NAO is likely linked with
temperature
reductions along the Greenland coast and is responsible for
slowing the
island's ice melting rate, in contrast to evidence of global
warming.
Plane study
"And in fact, I've just been looking at the 2002 data and
that appears to
show a tailing off of the recent warming," Dr Hanna said.
He added: "I think the message from all this is that global
warming is not a
uniform process and you do get regional disparities."
Nasa measured the profile of the ice in the 90s
Greenland covers more than two million square kilometres and 85%
of the
island is covered by ice, some of which is over three kilometres
thick.
Concerns about warming in the region during the 1990s first came
to the
public's attention with a US space agency (Nasa) study which flew
aircraft
equipped with laser altimeters over the island to measure the
profile of the
ice.
Nasa found the ice had lost up to five metres in thickness over a
five-year
period. Other, more recent studies have continued to document a
rapid thaw.
Greenland is important to climate studies because, having
grounded ice, any
significant melting would raise sea levels - by 6-7 metres if it
were all to
go.
Copyright 2003, BBC
============
(3) RECORD COLD IN MALTA
>From Malta Weather, 1 March 2003
http://www.maltaweather.org/news.htm
February 2003 was an extremely cold month - no wonder we were
shivering all
over! The mean monthly temperature was 10.8°C, 3.0°C less than
last month's
mean temperature and 2.3°C below the average for February.
The cold affected the maximum temperatures mostly as the mean
monthly
maximum temperature for February 2003 of 13.4°C was 2.9°C below
average!
This made February 2003 the coldest February ever since records
at Balzan
began in 1987.
At Nadur, the maximum temperature never exceeded 15.0°C during
February. At
Balzan it did so on only two occasions. At Balzan the highest
maximum
temperature throughout February 2003 was only of 15.8°C. This is
4.2°C below
average and was also a record low ever for February.
This cold snap was caused by the continued dominance of a vast
high pressure
system centred over the Eastern European and Western Russia
region. Air, in
an anticyclone, or high pressure system, circulates in a
clockwise
direction. Thus, a very cold current has been directed along the
Eastern
flank of this anticyclone towards the Eastern and Central
Mediterranean for
the past month. That, in part, explains why we had such a
prolonged spell of
cold weather.
============
(4) THE 1991 MT. PINATUBO ERUPTION: ITS INFLUENCE ON CLIMATE
>From Mark Hess <Mark.S.Hess@nasa.gov>
Krishna
Ramanujan
March 12, 2003
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-3026)
Kramanuj@pop900.gsfc.nasa.gov
Release No: 03-27
THE 1991 MT. PINATUBO ERUPTION PROVIDES A NATURAL TEST FOR THE
INFLUENCE OF
ARCTIC CIRCULATION ON CLIMATE
A recent NASA-funded study has linked the 1991 eruption of the
Mount
Pinatubo to a strengthening of a climate pattern called the
Arctic
Oscillation. For two years following the volcanic eruption, the
Arctic
Oscillation caused winter warming over land areas in the high and
middle
latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, despite a cooling effect
from volcanic
particles that blocked sunlight.
One mission of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, which funded this
research,
is to better understand how the Earth system responds to human
and
naturally-induced changes, such as large volcanic eruptions.
"This study clarifies the effect of strong volcanic
eruptions on climate,
important by itself, and helps to better predict possible weather
and
short-term climate variations after strong volcanic
eruptions," said Georgiy
Stenchikov, a researcher at Rutgers University's Department of
Environmental
Sciences, New Brunswick, N.J., and lead author on a paper that
appeared in a
recent issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.
A positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation has slowly
strengthened over the
few last decades and has been associated in prior research with
observed
climate warming.
"The study has important implications to climate change
because it provides
a test for mechanisms of the Arctic Oscillation," Stenchikov
said.
A positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation is associated with
strengthening
of winds circulating counterclockwise around the North Pole north
of 55°N,
that is, roughly in line with Moscow, Belfast, and Ketchikan,
Alaska. In
winter these winds pull more warm air from oceans to continents
causing
winter warming, and like a top spinning very fast, they hold a
tight pattern
over the North Pole and keep frigid air from moving south.
According to this research, temperature changes caused by a
radiative effect
of volcanic aerosols in two lower layers of the atmosphere, the
troposphere
and the stratosphere, can lead to a positive Arctic Oscillation
phase. The
troposphere extends from Earth's surface to an altitude of 7
miles in the
polar regions and expands to 13 miles in the tropics. The
stratosphere is
the next layer up with the top at an altitude of about 30 miles.
The study uses a general circulation model developed at the
National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
Laboratory to
simulate how volcanic aerosols following the Pinatubo eruption
impacted the
climate.
In the troposphere, volcanic aerosols reflect solar radiation and
cool the
Earth's surface, decreasing temperature differences between the
equator and
the North Pole in the bottom atmospheric layer. These changes end
up
inhibiting processes that slow counterclockwise winds that blow
around the
North Pole mostly in the stratosphere. This in turn strengthens a
positive
phase of the Arctic Oscillation.
In the stratosphere, volcanic aerosols absorb solar radiation,
warm the
lower stratosphere (about 15 miles above the Earth's surface) and
increase
stratospheric temperature differences between the equator and the
North
Pole. These changes strengthen westerly winds in the lower
stratosphere and help to create a positive phase of the Arctic
Oscillation.
In previous research, an observed positive Arctic Oscillation
trend has been
attributed to greenhouse warming that led to an increase of
stratospheric
temperature differences between equator and pole. But this study
finds that
tropospheric temperature change in the course of climate warming
may play an
even greater role.
In one type of computer simulation, Stenchikov and colleagues
isolated the
contribution of a decreased temperature difference in the
troposphere, and
found that it could produce a positive phase of the Arctic
Oscillation by
itself. That's because greenhouse heating near the
North Pole melts reflective sea ice and snow, and reveals more
water and
land surfaces. These surfaces absorb the Sun's rays and
increasingly warm
the Earth's polar regions. Polar heating at the Earth's surface
lessens the
temperature differences between the equator and North Pole in the
troposphere, which ultimately strengthens a positive phase of the
Arctic
Oscillation.
The study also finds that when aerosols get into the
stratosphere, very
rapid reactions that destroy ozone (especially in high latitudes)
take place
on the surfaces of aerosol particles. When ozone gets depleted,
less UV
radiation is absorbed in the stratosphere. This cools the polar
stratosphere, and increases the stratospheric equator-to-pole
temperature
difference, creating a positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation.
Ozone data
were obtained from NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS)
satellite
and ozonesonde observations.
For more information and images, see:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0306aopin.html
TOMS satellite:
http://jwocky.gsfc.nasa.gov/
NOAA's SKYHI Atmospheric Computer Model:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~gth/AR97/3MiddleAtmosphere.html#26583
=============
(5) LARGE-SCALE DROUGHTS IN NORTH AMERICA DURING THE PAST 2000
YEARS
>From Queens University, 6 March 2003
http://qnc.queensu.ca/story_loader.php?id=3e675c69a60e8
Changes in jet stream linked to Prairie drought
(Kingston - ON) New findings from Queen's researchers will help
experts
better predict future drought patterns and water availability in
the
prairies.
An international research team including biologists Kathleen
Laird and Brian
Cumming from the Queen's Paleoecological Environmental Assessment
and
Research Laboratory (PEARL), and Peter Leavitt from the
University of
Regina, investigated records of drought over the past 2000 years
from lake
sediments in the northern Canadian prairie region (Manitoba to
Alberta), as
well as from sites in North Dakota and Minnesota.
"Our results from the Canadian prairies show a previously
unknown and abrupt
shift in climatic conditions around AD 700, while in the northern
U.S.
prairies, the shift occurred 500 years later, at the onset of the
Little Ice
Age in North America," says Dr. Laird.
Although the mechanisms behind these patterns are poorly
understood, the
research team believes they are likely related to persistent
changes in the
shape and location of the jet stream and associated storm tracks.
"Similar large-scale shifts today would prove to be a major
challenge for
society, regardless of global warming - particularly since
persistent
periods of drought in the past have coincided with stress and
even collapse
of societies," Dr. Laird says.
The study is published in the current issue of the Proceedings of
the
National Association of Sciences (PNAS). Also on the team are
researchers
from the University of Nebraska, and NASA's National Space
Science and
Technology Center in Huntsville, AL.
In a previous study led by Dr. Cumming that spanned the past 5500
years, a
similar large-scale change in climate was observed in British
Columbia at AD
700. Additionally, they found that similar distinct shifts in
climatic
conditions occurred roughly every 1200 years throughout the
entire span.
"The persistence and abrupt nature of these millennial-scale
events
represents a scale of climate change that isn't well understood
yet," says
Dr. Cumming. "Consequently, these data have huge
implications for future
climate predictions, and particularly drought assessment, on the
prairies."
The current study was supported by a strategic grant from the
Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Contact: Nancy Dorrance, Queen's News and Media Services,
613.533.2869 or
Nancy Marrello, Queen's News and Media Services, 613.533.6000,
ext. 74040.
=============
(6) GLACIERS AND SEA LEVELS
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 12 March 2003
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n11c1.htm
Reference
Braithwaite, R.J. and Raper, S.C.B. 2002. Glaciers
and their contribution
to sea level change. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 27:
1445-1454.
Background
In the words of the authors, "modern discussions of climate
change always
give prominence to possible rises in sea level as a major impact,
and the
spectre of those 'melting polar ice caps' is alive and well in
the popular
imagination."
What was done
To bring a bit of reality to the subject, Braithwaite and Raper
review what
is known -- and what is *not* known -- about the contribution to
sea level
rise from mountain glaciers and ice caps, excluding the Greenland
and
Antarctic ice sheets.
What was learned
The authors begin their review of the subject by noting that
"the
temperature sensitivity of sea level rise depends upon the global
distribution of glacier areas, the temperature sensitivity of
glacier mass
balance in each region, the expected change of climate in each
region, and
changes in glacier geometry resulting from climate
change." They end by
reporting that "none of these are particularly well known at
present,"
concluding that "glacier areas, altitudes, shape
characteristics and mass
balance sensitivity are still not known for many glacierized
regions and
ways must be found to fill gaps." With respect to
problems standing in the
way of acquiring the needed knowledge, they estimate that
satisfactory
solutions "will probably take a decade of work by many
different groups in a
number of disciplines."
What it means
Reliable predictions of glacier behavior and sea level change
over the next
hundred years would appear to be beyond our grasp at
present. Much more
research will be required to adequately resolve the issue.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
==================
(7) GLACIERS: ARE THEY RETREATING OR ADVANCING?
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 12 March 2003
http://www.co2science.org/subject/g/summaries/glaciers.htm
The advance/buildup or retreat/melting of glacial ice is often
interpreted
as a sign of climate change; and teams of glaciologists have been
working
for years to provide an assessment of the state of the world's
many glaciers
as one of several approaches to deciphering global climate
trends. Although
this effort has only scratched the surface of what must
ultimately be done,
climate alarmists have already rendered their verdict: there has
been a
massive and widespread retreat of glaciers over the past century,
which they
predict will only intensify under continued CO2-induced global
warming.
This assessment, however, may be a bit premature.
The full story must begin with a clear recognition of just how
few glacier
data exist. Of the 160,000 glaciers presently in existence,
only 67,000
(42%) have been inventoried to any degree (Kieffer et al., 2000);
and there
are only a tad over 200 glaciers for which mass balance data
exist for but a
single year (Braithwaite and Zhang, 2000). When the length
of record
increases to five years, this number drops to 115; and if both
winter and
summer mass balances are required, the number drops to 79.
Furthermore, if
ten years of record is used as a cutoff, only 42 glaciers
qualify. This
lack of glacial data, in the words of Braithwaite and Zhang,
highlights "one
of the most important problems for mass-balance glaciology"
and demonstrates
the "sad fact that many glacierized regions of the world
remain unsampled,
or only poorly sampled," suggesting that we really know very
little about
the true state of most of the world's glaciers.
Recognizing the need for "more comprehensive, more
homogeneous in detail and
quality" glacier data (Kieffer et al., 2000), we shift our
attention to the
few glaciers for which such data exist. During the 15th
through 19th
centuries, widespread and major glacier advances occurred during
a period of
colder global temperature known as the Little Ice Age (Broecker,
2001;
Grove, 2001). Following the peak of Little Ice Age
coldness, it should come
as no surprise that many records indicate widespread glacial
retreat, as
temperatures began to rise in the mid- to late-1800s and many
glaciers
returned to positions characteristic of pre-Little Ice Age
times. What
people may find surprising, however, is that in many instances
the rate of
glacier retreat has not increased over the past 70 years; and in
some cases
glacier mass balance has actually increased, all during a time
when the
atmosphere experienced the bulk of the increase in its CO2
content.
In an analysis of Arctic glacier mass balance, for example,
Dowdeswell et
al. (1997) found that of the 18 glaciers with the longest mass
balance
histories, just over 80% displayed negative mass balances over
their periods
of record. Yet they additionally report that "almost
80% of the mass
balance time series also have a positive trend, toward a less
negative mass
balance [our italics]." Hence, although these Arctic
glaciers continue to
lose mass, as they have probably done since the end of the Little
Ice Age,
they are losing smaller amounts each year, in the mean, which is
hardly what
one would expect in the face of what climate alarmists
incorrectly call the
"unprecedented" warming of the latter part of the
twentieth century.
Similar results have been reported by Braithwaite (2002), who
reviewed and
analyzed mass balance measurements of 246 glaciers from around
the world
that were made between 1946 and 1995. According to
Braithwaite, "there are
several regions with highly negative mass balances in agreement
with a
public perception of 'the glaciers are melting,' but there are
also regions
with positive balances." Within Europe, for example,
he notes that "Alpine
glaciers are generally shrinking, Scandinavian glaciers are
growing, and
glaciers in the Caucasus are close to equilibrium for
1980-95." And when
results for the whole world are combined for this most recent
period of
time, Braithwaite notes that "there is no obvious common or
global trend of
increasing glacier melt in recent years."
As for the glacier with the longest mass balance record of all,
the
Storglaciaren in northern Sweden, for the first 15 years of its
50-year
record it exhibited a negative mass balance of little
trend. Thereafter,
however, its mass balance began to trend upward, actually
becoming positive
over about the last decade (Braithwaite and Zhang, 2000).
So, the story glaciers have to tell us about past climate change
is both far
from clear and far from being adequately resolved. Stay
tuned.
References
Braithwaite, R.J. 2002. Glacier mass balance: the
first 50 years of
international monitoring. Progress in Physical Geography
26: 76-95.
Braithwaite, R.J. and Zhang, Y. 2000. Relationships
between interannual
variability of glacier mass balance and climate. Journal of
Glaciology 45:
456-462.
Broecker, W.S. 2001. Glaciers That Speak in Tongues
and other tales of
global warming. Natural History 110 (8): 60-69.
Dowdeswell, J.A., Hagen, J.O., Bjornsson, H., Glazovsky, A.F.,
Harrison,
W.D., Holmlund, P. Jania, J., Koerner, R.M., Lefauconnier, B.,
Ommanney,
C.S.L. and Thomas, R.H. 1997. The mass balance of
circum-Arctic glaciers
and recent climate change. Quaternary Research 48: 1-14.
Grove, J.M. 2001. The initiation of the "Little
Ice Age" in regions round
the North Atlantic. Climatic Change 48: 53-82.
Kieffer, H., Kargel, J.S., Barry, R., Bindschadler, R., Bishop,
M.,
MacKinnon, D., Ohmura, A., Raup, B., Antoninetti, M., Bamber, J.,
Braun, M.,
Brown, I., Cohen, D., Copland, L., DueHagen, J., Engeset, R.V.,
Fitzharris,
B., Fujita, K., Haeberli, W., Hagen, J.O., Hall, D., Hoelzle, M.,
Johansson,
M., Kaab, A., Koenig, M., Konovalov, V., Maisch, M., Paul, F.,
Rau, F.,
Reeh, N., Rignot, E., Rivera, A., Ruyter de Wildt, M., Scambos,
T., Schaper,
J., Scharfen, G., Shroder, J., Solomina, O., Thompson, D., Van
der Veen, K.,
Wohlleben, T. and Young, N. 2000. New eyes in the sky
measure glaciers and
ice sheets. EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union
81: 265, 270-271.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
=============
(8) NEGATIVE FEEDBACK: DIFFUSE-LIGHT-ENHANCED PHOTOSYNTHESIS
REVISITED
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 12 March 2003
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2003/v6n11c2.htm
Reference
Law, B.E., Falge, E., Gu,. L., Baldocchi, D.D., Bakwin, P.,
Berbigier, P.,
Davis, K., Dolman, A.J., Falk, M., Fuentes, J.D., Goldstein, A.,
Granier,
A., Grelle, A., Hollinger, D., Janssens, I.A., Jarvis, P.,
Jensen, N.O.,
Katul, G., Mahli, Y., Matteucci, G., Meyers, T., Monson, R.,
Munger, W.,
Oechel, W., Olson, R., Pilegaard, K., Paw U, K.T., Thorgeirsson,
H.,
Valentini, R., Verma, S., Vesala, T., Wilson, K. and Wofsy,
S. 2002.
Environmental controls over carbon dioxide and water vapor
exchange of
terrestrial vegetation. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 113:
97-120.
Background
In our Editorial of 10 October 2001, we describe a negative
feedback
mechanism that may help to protect the earth against excessive
CO2-induced
warming. Very briefly, it begins with an increase in the air's
CO2 content
that increases both the amount and vitality of earth's plant
life. This
augmented vegetative activity leads to an increase in the
production of
"biosols" that function as cloud condensation nuclei
and thus enhance the
degree of cloud cover and the amount of diffuse solar radiation
reaching the
earth's surface. Penetrating deeper into plant canopies
than does the
direct solar beam, this extra diffuse radiation boosts overall
rates of
canopy net photosynthesis, leading to more CO2 being withdrawn
from the
atmosphere and completing the negative feedback loop.
What was done
The authors of this comprehensive study compared seasonal and
annual values
of CO2 and water vapor exchange across sites in forests,
grasslands, crops
and tundra that are part of an international network called
FLUXNET,
investigating the responses of these exchanges to variations in a
number of
environmental factors, including direct and diffuse solar
radiation.
What was learned
In the words of the authors, "net carbon uptake (net
ecosystem exchange, the
net of photosynthesis and respiration) was greater under diffuse
than under
direct radiation conditions." In discussing this
finding, which is the
centerpiece of the negative feedback phenomenon we describe, they
note that
"cloud-cover results in a greater proportion of diffuse
radiation and
constitutes a higher fraction of light penetrating to lower
depths of the
canopy (Oechel and Lawrence, 1985)." More importantly,
they also report
that "Goulden et al. (1997), Fitzjarrald et al. (1995), and
Sakai et al.
(1996) showed that net carbon uptake was consistently higher
during cloudy
periods in a boreal coniferous forest than during sunny periods
with the
same PPFD [photosynthetic photon flux density]." In
fact, they say that
"Hollinger et al. (1994) found that daily net CO2 uptake was
greater on
cloudy days, even though total PPFD was 21-45% lower on cloudy
days than on
clear days [our italics]."
What it means
The authors findings, as well as those of the other scientists
they cite,
provide strong support for the negative feedback phenomenon we
outline in
our Editorial of 10 October 2001, which describes but one of the
many
different ways in which earth's biosphere tempers the tendency
for global
warming produced by man's CO2 emissions.
References
Fitzjarrald, D.R., Moore, K.E., Sakai, R.K. and Freedman,
J.M. 1995.
Assessing the impact of cloud cover on carbon uptake in the
northern boreal
forest. In: Proceedings of the American Geophysical Union
Meeting, Spring
1995, EOS Supplement, p. S125.
Goulden, M.L., Daube, B.C., Fan, S.-M., Sutton, D.J., Bazzaz, A.,
Munger,
J.W. and Wofsy, S.C. 1997. Physiological responses of
a black spruce
forest to weather. Journal of Geophysical Research 102:
28,987-28,996.
Hollinger, D.Y., Kelliher, F.M., Byers, J.N. and Hunt, J.E.
1994. Carbon
dioxide exchange between an undisturbed old-growth temperate
forest and the
atmosphere. Ecology 75: 134-150.
Oechel, W.C. and Lawrence, W.T. 1985. Tiaga.
In: Chabot, B.F. and Mooney,
H.A. (Eds.), Physiological Ecology of North American Plant
Communities.
Chapman & Hall, New York, NY, pp. 66-94.
Sakai, R.K., Fitzjarrald, D.R., Moore, K.E. and Freedman,
J.M. 1996. How
do forest surface fluxes depend on fluctuating light level?
In: Proceedings
of the 22nd Conference on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
with Symposium
on Fire and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 22, American Meteorological
Society,
pp. 90-93.
Copyright © 2003. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
============
(9) A GLOBALLY COHERENT FINGERPRINT OF CLIMATE CAHNGE IMPACTS
ACROSS NATURAL
SYSTEMS
>From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpg.com.au>
Nature 421, 37 - 42 (2003)
A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across
natural
systems
CAMILLE PARMESAN* AND GARY YOHE?
* Integrative Biology, Patterson Laboratories 141, University of
Texas,
Austin, Texas 78712, USA
? John E. Andrus Professor of Economics, Wesleyan University, 238
Public
Affairs Center, Middletown, Connecticut
06459, USA
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to
C.P.
(e-mail: parmesan@mail.utexas.edu).
Causal attribution of recent biological trends to climate change
is
complicated because non-climatic influences dominate local,
short-term
biological changes. Any underlying signal from climate change is
likely to
be revealed by analyses that seek systematic trends across
diverse species
and geographic regions; however, debates within the
Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) reveal several definitions of a
'systematic trend'.
Here, we explore these differences, apply diverse analyses to
more than
1,700 species, and show that recent biological trends match
climate change
predictions. Global meta-analyses documented significant range
shifts
averaging 6.1 km per decade towards the poles (or metres per
decade upward),
and significant mean advancement of spring events by 2.3 days per
decade. We
define a diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial
'sign-switching'
responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends.
Among
appropriate long-term/large-scale/multi-species data sets, this
diagnostic
fingerprint was found for 279 species. This suite of analyses
generates
'very high confidence' (as laid down by the IPCC) that climate
change is
already affecting living systems.
c2003 Macmillan Publishers Ltd
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(10) ON THE BENEFITS TO HUMANS FROM CHANGE
>From Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen <Sonja.B-C@hull.ac.uk>
Benny,
1. Re: Andrew Glikson's "Either the terrestrial soils,
forests, hydrosphere
and atmosphere are being severely degraded, or they are not, both
can not be
true" (CCNet 14.1.03). This clash of views worries me too. I
have resolved
it for me as follows: It depends on the baseline. If, with green
ideologies,
you take the baseline as pristine nature, nature without humans,
then all
change since the Garden of Eden is degrading, and this will
continue as long
as human use the Earth. Humans are bad for Mother Nature and it
would be
better if they declined in numbers and disappeared...hence
the
anti-humanism tendencies of much green activism, but also their
'natural'
ties with environmental science. However, if we include changes
to the earth
brought about by humanity into our baseline from which to judge
degradation,
change may not be defined as degradation at all. This depends on
the
benefits to humanity from change, but included the need for the
management
of nature. In the latter case you have a different baseline, and
what one
calls degraded, the other calls a beneficial change (sometimes),
sometimes a
destructive change which is hopefully reversible or needs to
accepted as a
new state 'of nature'. Both be true because the judgement
involved is not
scientific.
2. Re: Ellenberger and the melting glaciers. Here the answer I
get from the
sceptics is simple. Not all glaciers are melting, whether they
are or are
not is as smuch related to precipitation as to temperature. Both
regimes are
very variable 'naturally' in place and time. The ones that are
growing have
remained cold enough and get more ppt. The ones that are melting
are doing
what comes naturally, for we live in a post-glacial era in which
ice is
still adjusting to a world that is generally still warming ,
though in the long term moving towards
another glacial. Some parts of the earth surface have indeed been
warming
more strongly than others during the last decade or so, for
all sorts of
reasons that have more to do with the unpredictable variability
of climate
than increased emissions. However, there are a few people with
good
correlations as evidence, who claim that most of this cyclical
variability
is caused by extra-terestrial changes, mainly in solar eruptions.
Best wishes
Sonja
Dr.Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
Reader, Department of Geography,
Editor, Energy & Environment
(Multi-science,www.multi-science.co.uk)
Faculty of Science
University of Hull
Hull HU6 7RX, UK
Tel: (0)1482 465349/6341/5385
Fax: (0)1482 466340
Sonja.B-C@hull.ac.uk
==============
(11) WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ICE AGE: THE COMPLEX SYSTEM OF
CLIMATE CHANGE
>From James Marusek <tunga@custom.net>
Dear Benny
Much of the current debate on climate change is centered on the
theory of
Global Warming. But another theory exists that has been seriously
neglected
and desperately needs a voice.
The Earth is in the middle of an Ice Age. This Ice Age has lasted
over 3
million years. The Ice Age is broken by brief warm periods called
Interglacial which typically last 10,000-13,000 years. These
brief warm
spells occur once every 100,000-200,000 years. The Earth is
presently within
an Interglacial period, which began approximately 10,800 years
ago.
A few years ago Professor Nickolas Shackleton, Cambridge
University,
spearheaded a lynchpin study that analyzed ocean sediment 200
miles off the
coast of Ecuador to derive carbon dioxide levels for the past
130,000 years.
This analysis covered the last Interglacial period. His analysis
uncovered a
rather interesting finding that the carbon dioxide levels rose
dramatically
just prior to the end of the last Interglacial period. (1)
Within the present Interglacial period, carbon dioxide levels
have hovered
in the range of 260-280 ppm for many years (4000 BC - 1700 AD).
In the last
few years, the carbon dioxide levels have risen dramatically.
Current levels
are around 370 ppm.
Why would increasing carbon dioxide levels produce Global
Cooling? The
answer is water. Carbon dioxide works as a solar heatsink because
the gas
absorbs infrared radiation very well. Greater carbon dioxide in
the
atmosphere produces higher evaporation rates and higher moisture
contents in
the air. As the oceans heat up, the temperature extremes between
the warm
oceans and the cold Polar Regions produce very energetic moisture
laden
storms. These storms produce greater snowfall amounts near the
poles. Snow
reflects sunlight very well. This effect lowers temperatures.
Storms also
provide greater cloud cover over the poles again robbing the
regions around
the Poles of solar energy. Temperatures begin to drop starting in
the Polar
Regions, glaciers begin to form and expand and the Earth is drawn
back into
the depths of the ice age.
Is there any supporting proof to this theory? Referring to
articles in the
last CCNet TERRA (11/2003 of 5 March 2003), consider the
following
statements:
"This winter has broken all-time cold records all across
North America,
Europe and Asia." (2)
Antarctica and Greenland glaciers represent 94% of the world's
total ice
mass. "The Antarctic continent has actually been cooling off
for at least
the last three and a half decades." "The Arctic region
where Greenland is
located is cooling" "Between 1955 and 1990, the Arctic
cooled by 1 degree F
and Greenland's glaciers actually expanded" "The
largest mass of polar ice
in the Northern Hemisphere, has thickened by up to seven feet
since 1980".
(3 & 4).
The British Antarctic Survey recently noted that even as the
world continues
to get warmer, that "the Antarctic ice sheet would grow
because warming
increases the amount of precipitation which leads to increased
snowfall in
the polar regions." (4)
Increasing carbon dioxide levels are part of a natural cycle that
produces
an end to an Interglacial period. Moisture loading in the
atmosphere is the
key variable in this process. Global Cooling is not caused by
mankind but
rather is a natural trend.
James A. Marusek
References:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/1/16/163043.shtml
CCNet "Record Cold - Record Warm, www.john-daly.com, 1 March
2003.
CCNet "Glaciers are Inaccurate Barometers of Climate
Change", by John
Carlisle, National Policy Centre, February 1999.
CCNet "Polar Amplification of Global Warming", CO2
Science Magazine, 5 March
2003.
================
(12) GLACIERS AND GLOBAL WARMING
>From Nick Sault <nsault@jadeworld.com>
Hi Benny
I read with interest the articles on glaciers not being accurate
barometers
of climate change. We in South Island New Zealand have two
wonderful
examples that are probably the most accessible to the public in
the whole
world. Fox and Franz Josef glaciers on our spectacular west
coast, come down
almost to sea-level in what is a mild, temperate climate, and can
be
approached by taking a short walk that any able-bodied under 100
could
undertake. More to the point, on each of the glacier approach
roads are
signs that show where the glacier face existed in the past. Most
interestingly, the first signs you see are the earliest dates,
perhaps ten
kilometers from the current face, and the dates get progressively
more
recent as you approach. And even more interestingly, the first
dates are in
the 1700s and therefore pre-date the industrial revolution.
It would seem to me that the recession of these two glaciers has
been
steadily happening since the end of the "Little Ice
Age", and if this is the
case, Fox and Franz are true barometers of the major climate
changes that
accompany inter-glacial periods. And as a laymen, I would have
thought that
since New Zealand is so far from the influence of the industrial
north, and
has a climate that is moderated by the massive Pacific Ocean, it
would be
one of the best barometers in the world.
Your expert reporters are welcome to shoot me down.
Nick Sault
============
(13) QUESTIONS TO THE MODERATOR CCNet
>From Andrew Glikson <geospec@webone.com.au>
Dear Benny,
1. In his response (CCNet 27.3.03) JMW [John Michael Williams]
states "If
Glikson got him self caught up on this point personally, I feel
sorry for
him and wish he would clarify what it was he really was trying to
say.",
which reaffirms that his previous allegation in CCNet 12.2.03
("Glikson has
corrupted his science with religious ideas, apparently, and his
religion
with scientific method") was personal in nature. JMW's
allegation was made
in response to my earlier remark "Many natural scientists,
including myself,
develop a sense of reverence toward 4 billion years of
terrestrial evolution
and are concerned with the destructive effects of Homo Sapiens
acting as if
it is God." (CCNet 29.1.03) - comments which express
admiration toward the
intelligence perceived in the laws of nature, and reservation
from ideas
which suggest that, regardless of ongoing degradation of the
biosphere,
nature can be genetically re-engineered by humans. Clearly none
of my
observations are personal in nature.
I therefore have to ask you, as moderator, whether such personal
comments as
JMW's are acceptable on the pages of CCNet?
2. I note that my last response to JMW (CCNet 5.3.03) has been
passed by the
moderator for the information/comment of JMW previous to
publication,
forming the basis of JMW's further comments in the same issue
(CCNet,
5.3.03), but that on the other hand JMW's responses were not
passed on for
my own information/comment. I therefore have to ask you as
moderator to
explain this uneven treatment of the two sides in this
discussion.
3. I note the increasing frequency of political citations in
CCNet's (both
Impact and Terra issues), including Charles Krauthammer comments
(CCNet
13.2.03) and the item "Finally: asteroids, war and French
bashing"
(10.3.03). Given the relevance of CK's comments to the role of
Homo Sapiens
as agent of catastrophism, as well as the unmistakable political
and
ideological bent of these citations, can you clarify whether
CCNet is open
to discussion/contributions in this area?
Yours Truly
Andrew Glikson
13.3.03
MODERATOR'S NOTE: Andrew claims that his views on the degradation
of the
biosphere and human efforts to genetically re-engineer our
environment (a
human activity, let's not forget, that has been going on for at
least 10,000
years) are not "personal". In contrast, he complaints
that John Williams'
criticism of his views are "personal" and asks whether
I accept such
criticism to be aired on CCNet. The simple answer to Andrew's
first question
is Yes. I adhere to a strict policy against inflammatory language
and will
not accept any such contributions. John's contribution in
question does not
fall into this category. Andrew also complaints that he did not
have a
chance to respond directly to John's latest comment. In the past,
John has
passed on his response to Andrew before being published in CCNet.
I
therefore assumed that this was also the case with his latest
comment. If
this wasn't so this time, I apologise to Andrew. Lastly,
political comments
and citations that feature in CCNet - including Andrew's own
personal views
- are mostly closely related to the main scientific topics we are
dealing
with. Of course, CCNet is open to any of these matters. I am sure
Andrew
will confirm this openess since none of his many contributions
has ever been
rejected. However, as the disclaimer at the end of every CCNet
issue makes
perfectly clear: "The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints
expressed in the
articles and texts and in other CCNet contributions do not
necessarily
reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the moderator of
this
network." Benny Peiser
==============
(14) GLOBAL COOPERATION
>From Pavel Chichikov <fishhook@erols.com>
Dear Benny,
May I point out an excellent precedent for global cooperation -
the 1987
Montreal Protocol, which outlawed stratospheric ozone depleting
chemicals.
It was negotiated quickly and signed by something like 140
countries, many
of which were mutually antagonistic.
The world was looking a dreadful possibility, and it concentrated
many
political minds. We can do it again if we have to.
All best wishes,
Pavel
fishhook@erols.com
==============
(15) AND FINALLY: THE WORLD IS GROWING SMALLER AND SAFER
>From International Herald Tribune, 12 March 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/89496.html
Ben J. Wattenberg
WASHINGTON. Remember the number 1.85. It is the lodestar of a new
demography
that will lead us to a different world. It should change the way
we think
about economics, geopolitics, the environment, culture - and
about
ourselves.
To make their calculations orderly, demographers have typically
worked on
the assumption that the "total fertility rate" - the
number of children born
per woman - would eventually average out to 2.1. Why 2.1? At that
rate the
population stabilizes over time: a couple has two children, the
parents
eventually die, and their children "replace" them. (The
0.1 accounts for
children who die before reaching the age of reproduction.)
Now, in a new report, United Nations demographers have bowed to
reality and
changed this standard 2.1 assumption. For the last five years
they have been
examining one of the most momentous trends in world history: the
startling
decline in fertility rates over the last several decades. In the
most recent
UN population report, the fertility rate is assumed to be 1.85,
not 2.1.
This yields, later in this century, to global population decline.
In a world brought up on the idea of a "population
explosion," this is a
radical notion. The world's population is still growing - it will
take some
time for it to actually start shrinking - but the next crisis is
depopulation.
The implications of lower fertility rates are far-reaching. One
of the most
profound is their potential to reduce economic inequality around
the world
and alter the balance of power among nations.
The United Nations divides the world into two groups, less
developed
countries and more developed countries. The most surprising news
comes from
the poorer countries. In the late 1960s, these countries had an
average
fertility rate of 6.0 children per woman.
Today it is 2.9 - and falling rapidly.
Huge and continuing declines have been seen in countries like
Brazil, China,
India, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and (of great importance to the
United
States) Mexico.
The more developed countries, in contrast, have seen their
fertility rates
fall from low to unsustainable. Every developed nation is now
below
replacement level. In the early 1960s, Europe's fertility rate
was 2.6.
Today the rate is 1.4, and has been sinking for half a century.
In Japan the
rate is 1.3.
These changes give poorer countries a demographic dividend. For
several
decades the bulk of their population will be of working age, with
relatively
few dependents, old or young. This should lead to higher per
capita incomes
and production levels. Nations with low fertility rates,
meanwhile, face
major fiscal and political problems. In a pay-as-you-go pension
system, for
example, there will be fewer workers to finance the pensions of
retirees;
people will either have to pay more in taxes or work longer.
Among the more developed countries, the United States is the
nation with the
highest fertility rate - just under 2.1.
Moreover, the United States takes in more immigrants than the
rest of the
world combined. Accordingly, in the next 50 years America will
grow by 100
million people. Europe will lose more than 100 million people.
When populations stabilize and then actually shrink, the economic
dislocations can be severe. Will there be far less demand for
housing and
office space? Paradoxically, a very low fertility rate can also
yield labor
shortages, pushing wages higher.
Of course, such shortages in countries with low fertility rates
could be
alleviated by immigration from countries with higher fertility
rates - a
migration from poor countries to rich ones. But Europeans are
actively
trying to reduce immigration, especially since Sept. 11. America
has mostly
resisted calls for restrictions on immigrants.
If the economy faces turbulent times, the environmental future
looks better.
Past research on global warming was based on a long-term United
Nations
projection, issued in the early 1990s, of 11.6 billion people in
2200, far
more people than we're ever likely to see. The new projections
show the
global population rising from just over six billion now to just
under nine
billion in 2050, followed by a decline, moving downward in a
geometric
progression.
With fewer people than expected, pollution should decrease from
expected
levels, as should consumption of oil. Clean water and clean air
should be
more plentiful.
Still, it is the geopolitical implications of this change that
may well be
the most important. There is not a one-to-one relationship
between
population and power. But numbers matter.
Big nations, or big groups of nations acting in concert, can
become major
powers. China and India each have populations of more than a
billion; their
power and influence will almost surely increase in the decades to
come.
Europe will shrink and age, absolutely and relatively.
Should the world face a "clash of civilizations,"
America may find itself
with weaker allies. It may then be forced to play a greater role
in
defending and promoting the liberal, pluralist beliefs and values
of Western
civilization. Americans may have to do more, not because they
want to, but
because they have to.
The writer, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
is author
of "The Birth Dearth."
Copyright © 2003 the International Herald Tribune
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