Watching the Arctic Melt, part 1

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 08:05:22 GMT

Symposium on the Arctic Ocean

Understanding Arctic Sea Ice

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:56:25 GMT

Read more about Principal Research Scientist Patrick Heimbach's work in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT News, the MITgcm website, and the website for NASA's ECCO2.

About the animation: The simulation was conducted with the MIT coupled ocean-sea ice general circulation model, or in short, MITgcm. The configuration was constructed as part of the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean Phase II, or ECCO2 project. It was run by project partners Gunnar Spreen and Dimitris Menemenlis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on NASA's supercomputer "Pleiades" at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Tim Sandstrom at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Division performed the visualization of the simulations.

Image Credits:
Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/projects/arcpac/
European Space Agency (ESA) CryoSat Mission, http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cryosat/
National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) Earth Observatory, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA/GSFC), http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/sets/
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), http://www.awi.de/

Modeling the Arctic Ocean - MITgcm on Ice

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 20:30:11 GMT

The Arctic Ocean halocline, a layer of high vertical salinity gradient and near-freezing temperature, insulates the surface sea-ice from heat stored in Atlantic water with a significant impact on sea-ice growth and melt. An understanding of its role in the general circulation is therefore of great value to an understanding of ocean - sea-ice coupling in the region.

In this video interview, polar researcher An Nguyen presents the results of a recently published ocean and sea-ice modeling study of the Chukchi Sea she co-authored with researchers at JPL.

You can find out more about An Nguyen, this project, and the MIT General Circulation Model, or MITgcm at http://mitgcm.org/2012/07/27/mitgcm-on-ice.

Video by Helen Hill

MIT Museum Talkback 360 - Visualizing Science: The Changing Arctic Ice

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:03:20 GMT

April 17, 2012

Visualizing Science: The Changing Arctic Ice

Explore the Arctic ice cap with photographer Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist John Toole, and MIT oceanographer Patrick Heimbach. See stunning images from the pole, explore the latest data from deep beneath the cap’s surface, and find out how such information can be used to forecast global environmental change.

The Energy Problem and the Interplay Between Basic and Applied Research

Tue, 12 May 2009 04:00:00 GMT

05/12/2009 4:00 PM 10"250Steven Chu, Secretary of EnergyDescription: The situation facing our planet could hardly be more dire: There's increasingly dangerous competition among nations for ever scarce energy resources, and climate change is racing ahead of predictions. Although Steven Chu believes "We are getting close to where it's very nervous time," he also sees "reason for hope." Just as science in the 1970s produced a "green revolution" in agricultural productivity, preventing mass starvation in a swelling global population, Chu is counting on transformative scientific and engineering ideas to achieve sustainable energy and cap climate change. As chief architect of new policy, and with tens of billions of dollars to pump into his vision, Chu is targeting key areas. Number one on his list: energy efficiency and conservation. Since buildings use 40% of the nation's total energy, designing more efficient homes and offices will make a big difference. There are "tune ups" possible for existing buildings, and software that can direct lighting, heating and cooling where it's needed that can achieve 50% plus energy savings, and won't break the bank. Says Chu, "This is truly low"hanging fruit, but we have to build the tools that allow architects and structural engineers to get on with it." On the supply side, Chu has his heart set on transformative technologies such as nanotech breakthroughs in solar power. He's looking for ways to scale up biomass fuel production, now that synthetic biology can make microbes manufacture gas"like fuels. Noting in particular the work of MIT's Dan Nocera, Chu says he "wants to use nature as an inspiration, but go beyond nature," performing artificial photosynthesis to create new hydrocarbons. And as the U.S. and China continue dependence on coal, figuring out how to capture and sequester carbon from these plants figures "high on the list of things we must do." He's again hoping researchers will find some analog to nature's ability to grab and neutralize CO2. The ideal environment for jumpstarting such urgent scientific efforts, believes Chu, is something like Bell Labs, where Chu himself worked. The Labs performed "mission"driven research" around communications and for U.S. war efforts, but along the way also developed the transistor, information theory, radio astronomy, and lasers, among many examples. These scientist"led labs emphasized exchange of ideas and rapid infusion of research funds to the most promising work. This led to inventions that in turn transformed the U.S. economy. Chu envisions energy lab equivalents that "deliver the goods" along with fundamental science, "so you can have the Nobel Prize and save the world at the same time." About the Speaker(s): Steven Chu was sworn into office on January 21, 2009. Prior to his appointment, he was a professor of Physics and of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Chu joined the Physics Department faculty at U.C. Berkeley in 2004. He had served earlier as professor of Physics at Stanford University. Before 1987, he was at Bell Laboratories where he conducted the research that led to his 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, which he shared with Claude Cohen"Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, for methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. Chu is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Sinica, and is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and of the Korean Academy of Science and Engineering. He serves on the Boards of the Hewlett Foundation, the University of Rochester, and NVIDIA. He served on the Augustine Committee that produced the report "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" in 2006. Chu received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976 and was a post"doctoral fellow there until 1978. He got his B.S. in 1970 from the University of Rochester. Host(s): Office of the President, Office of the President

Climate Change in a Changing World: Meeting the Needs of Humanity and the Planet

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

04/22/2009 7:00 PM Simmons HallSteven Hamburg, Chief Scientist, Environmental Defense FundDescription: The "dominant story of the next century" will be one of either gloom or redemption, says Steven Hamburg, depending on how humanity chooses to address climate change. To date, Earth's inhabitants have not meaningfully acknowledged this choice. Yet Hamburg retains a streak of optimism, based on his belief that bringing the impact of climate change home to individuals may stimulate a constructive response. First Hamburg sketches the dire facts: the planet is headed toward at least a 2 degree Celsius increase in temperature in coming decades, with consequences likely to include shifts in crop production, coral reef decline, and rising sea levels that threaten delta populations with devastating storm surges. From Hamburg's perspective, there's no serious argument that humans are major drivers of this rapid change, which is already negatively affecting many regions of the world. While affluent societies may discuss adaptation, it's already clear that "the losers are those people living on a dollar a day, with no capital." So "the question for each of us is how much change is too much change? How much can we tolerate?" Hamburg's first climate change paper in 1988, which focused on a subject he knows intimately, the ecology of New Hampshire's White Mountains, was met with "total silence." He worries that scientists are still conducting climate change research in a kind of void, with most people relatively oblivious to an unfolding cataclysm. "It's that dissonance that's a challenge for us as a society," he says. As a result, he's working with groups that attempt to communicate how climate change affects the "places we live in and care about." For instance, in Hamburg's White Mountain territory, climate change has led to a much shorter winter, and a pattern of winter warming and cooling that has decimated the once dominant red spruce forests, leaving maples to thrive (for the moment). People everywhere must be persuaded to become "agents of change." Hamburg recounts how the CEO of Walmart enlisted him to help the corporation become more sustainable, which led to the sale of millions of compact fluorescent bulbs (replacing incandescents), major profits, and massive savings in carbon emissions. Corporations are getting it, believes Hamburg (even Rupert Murdoch's chains are going green), seeing that "doing the right thing for society" can save money. But these moves must be accompanied by government regulations, in both developed and developing countries, which will require a "conversationto link impacts in our own worlds and lives, with actions we can take." About the Speaker(s): Steven P. Hamburg is an ecosystem ecologist specializing in the impacts of disturbance on forest structure and function. He came to Brown in 1995 after nine years at the University of Kansas, where he directed the Environmental Studies Program and served as Environmental Ombudsman. Today, Hamburg collaborates with 70 science institutions to create hands"on learning opportunities and exhibits for the public. He has published widely including in Nature and Science and has served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Hamburg received his M.F.S. and Ph.D. (in Forest Ecology) from Yale University. He held a post"doctoral position at Stanford University and was a Bullard Fellow at Harvard University. At Brown he is the concentration advisor for the environmental science concentration and serves as Research Director of the Global Environment Program at the Watson Institute in International Studies.Host(s): Dean for Student Life, The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values