Changing Ice,
changing coastlines
The world’s glaciers are in trouble. These spectacular formations, created over tens of thousands of years, cover about one-tenth of Earth’s landmass, mainly in Greenland and Antarctica.
From 1994 to 2017, they shed 28 trillion tons of ice, and the melt is accelerating. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes, “The global nature of glacier retreat, with almost all of the world's glaciers retreating synchronously, since the 1950s is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years.”
What the glaciers do in the next century will affect nearly everyone. About 2.5 billion people live within 60 miles of the ocean, and billions more depend on the maritime economy and transportation routes. Understanding the future of the glaciers is critical to understanding what our planet will face during the next century and beyond.
That's why our scientists are traveling to the ends of the Earth: to see firsthand what's happening, work with communities that stand to be affected, deploying new sensory and imaging technologies, and driving new scientific discoveries. Here are a few of their innovative approaches to their work.
Changing Ice, changing coastlines
Joerg Schaefer and Gisela Winckler, geochemists and paleoclimatologists at Lamont, do a forensic analysis of glaciers past and present. “We try to understand how ice responded to temperature changes in the past so we can calibrate the sensitivity of it and then better predict what’s coming in the future,” says Schaefer.
The team uses a method called cosmogenic dating. First, they identify suitable rocks or sediment left behind when a glacier retreats. They then chip away to take samples, bring those rocks to their lab, and analyze them for the presence of beryllium-10, an isotope formed from cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere; it's present on the rock when the ice doesn't cover it. Counting atoms of beryllium-10 on the rocks' surface helps scientists to determine precisely how long ago it was uncovered by ice—in turn showing how the glacier behaved in the past.
Schaefer plans to use this same dating process in a new ambitious enterprise, GreenDrill, which will drill into the ice sheet at four sites at the island's northern end. “With this project, we're entering an entire zone of the Earth that nobody has systematically studied,” Schaefer says. From the start, the researchers are working with communities that stand to be affected by the shrinking ice to co-produce knowledge together. This approach can be used as a model for other researchers in their fieldwork, which can improve the science and serve as a model for producing knowledge ethically.
How can we use technology to see inside the ice sheets? That's the question that Alexandra Boghosian, a postdoctoral researcher at Lamont, has been exploring. She and a team of programmers and scientists have been developing an augmented reality program to allow researchers to see data from radar and satellites in an entirely new way. Being able to “walk” through a virtual ice sheet in three dimensions and take measurements in the simulation promises to redefine data exploration and interpretation.
Marco Tedesco, a glaciologist at Lamont and author of The Hidden Life of Ice: Tales from a Disappearing World, conducts on-the-ground fieldwork to supplement data from drones and satellites. “Remote sensing, fieldwork, and models complement each other and help us project future changes,” he says. In 2020, Tedesco led a study that quantified the retreat of Greenland's ice sheet—600 billion tons of ice in two months in mid-2019, with the potential to raise global sea levels by 2.2 millimeters. Tedesco and the researchers attributed the loss to warmer temperatures and new atmospheric circulation patterns.
CHANGING ICE, CHANGING COASTLINES
The world’s glaciers are in trouble. These spectacular formations, created over tens of thousands of years, cover about one-tenth of Earth’s landmass, mainly in Greenland and Antarctica.
From 1994 to 2017, they shed 28 trillion tons of ice, and the melt is accelerating. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes, “The global nature of glacier retreat, with almost all of the world's glaciers retreating synchronously, since the 1950s is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years.”
What the glaciers do in the next century will affect nearly everyone. About 2.5 billion people live within 60 miles of the ocean, and billions more depend on the maritime economy and transportation routes. Understanding the future of the glaciers is critical to understanding what our planet will face during the next century and beyond.
That's why our scientists are traveling to the ends of the Earth: to see firsthand what's happening, work with communities that stand to be affected, deploying new sensory and imaging technologies, and driving new scientific discoveries. Here are a few of their innovative approaches to their work.
CHANGING ICE, CHANGING COASTLINES
The world’s glaciers are in trouble. These spectacular formations, created over tens of thousands of years, cover about one-tenth of Earth’s landmass, mainly in Greenland and Antarctica.
Joerg Schaefer and Gisela Winckler, geochemists and paleoclimatologists at Lamont, do a forensic analysis of glaciers past and present. “We try to understand how ice responded to temperature changes in the past so we can calibrate the sensitivity of it and then better predict what’s coming in the future,” says Schaefer.
The team uses a method called cosmogenic dating. First, they identify suitable rocks or sediment left behind when a glacier retreats. They then chip away to take samples, bring those rocks to their lab, and analyze them for the presence of beryllium-10, an isotope formed from cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere; it's present on the rock when the ice doesn't cover it. Counting atoms of beryllium-10 on the rocks' surface helps scientists to determine precisely how long ago it was uncovered by ice—in turn showing how the glacier behaved in the past.
Schaefer plans to use this same dating process in a new ambitious enterprise, GreenDrill, which will drill into the ice sheet at four sites at the island's northern end. “With this project, we're entering an entire zone of the Earth that nobody has systematically studied,” Schaefer says. From the start, the researchers are working with communities that stand to be affected by the shrinking ice to co-produce knowledge together. This approach can be used as a model for other researchers in their fieldwork, which can improve the science and serve as a model for producing knowledge ethically.
How can we use technology to see inside the ice sheets? That's the question that Alexandra Boghosian, a postdoctoral researcher at Lamont, has been exploring. She and a team of programmers and scientists have been developing an augmented reality program to allow researchers to see data from radar and satellites in an entirely new way. Being able to “walk” through a virtual ice sheet in three dimensions and take measurements in the simulation promises to redefine data exploration and interpretation.
Marco Tedesco, a glaciologist at Lamont and author of The Hidden Life of Ice: Tales from a Disappearing World, conducts on-the-ground fieldwork to supplement data from drones and satellites. “Remote sensing, fieldwork, and models complement each other and help us project future changes,” he says. In 2020, Tedesco led a study that quantified the retreat of Greenland's ice sheet—600 billion tons of ice in two months in mid-2019, with the potential to raise global sea levels by 2.2 millimeters. Tedesco and the researchers attributed the loss to warmer temperatures and new atmospheric circulation patterns.
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Writer/Editor: Marie DeNoia Aronsohn I Contributing Editors: Tara Spinelli and Marian Mellin I Contributing Writer: John Palmer I Design: Carmen Neal
Columbia Climate School Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Annual Report FY2021
© 2021 by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. All rights reserved.
Writer/Editor: Marie DeNoia Aronsohn
Contributing Editors: Tara Spinelli and Marian Mellin
Contributing Writer: John Palmer
Design: Carmen Neal
Columbia Climate School Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Annual Report FY2021
© 2021 by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. All rights reserved.