AAAS; What We Know – about Climate Change, Antarctica

Terra Nova Bay, Northern Victoria Land, Antarctica. Photo © B. Luyendyk

The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) recently issued a web page and a short booklet (http://whatweknow.aaas.org ) addressing issues revealed in the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes) over the past few months. One of the main goals of their statement is to address the misunderstanding among the general public that there is significant debate in the Climate Science community about the basic tenets of Climate Change. This is not true. The debate that is occurring surrounds science questions on processes and predictions among other topics, not that Climate Change is happening, is a significant threat and that humans are causing it.

FORCE Team explores Ford Ranges, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica

Hercules from VXE-6 unloads FORCE team, Marie Byrd Land,

Antarctica, December 1989. Photo © B. Luyendyk

Our work focused in on the Fosdick, Phillips and Chester Mountains in the northern Ford Ranges. Earlier geological parties had visited some locations we worked in before but many had not. We were the first to stand on many of the outcrops.

Our main focus of work was in the metamorphic massif of the Fosdick Mountains named after Admiral Byrd’s good friend Raymond Fosdick. Sledge parties from Byrd’s expeditions reached these mountains in 1934 and 1941. Geological parties explored the surrounding mountains in 1966 through 1969. New Zealand geologists visited various portions of western MBL in 1978-79 and 1987-88. The western regions of MBL including the Ford Ranges are vast, comparable to southern California in area but not climate! Because of the size of the region the earlier explorations were of a reconnaissance nature.

The FORCE Expeditions (Ford Ranges Crustal Exploration) 1989-90, 1990-91

Tucker, Steve, Cain, Dave, Bruce and Christine, Put-In day to Ford Ranges.

Photo © Bruce Luyendyk   

White Ocean of Ice deals with investigation of plate tectonic history in the Southwestern Pacific. Our team of geologists sought out information on the separation of the New Zealand subcontinent on the Pacific Plate from the main continent of Antarctica – the Antarctic Plate. The result of that separation created the modern South Pacific Ocean basin.

We knew from oceanographic studies that this sea floor had formed since about 80 million years ago but we did not know how and when that process started and led to the drifting of New Zealand away from West Antarctica. Research in New Zealand by members of our team and many others revealed some facts, but did they match observations is Antarctica? Those were few and difficult to make. We decided to go to Antarctica to find answers to these questions. The U.S. National Science Foundation supported our research.

Our work focused in the Ford Ranges of Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica, a location that was believed once joined with New Zealand. We learned from several lines of evidence that the whole process of plate breakup brewed for more than twenty million years. It began close to 105 million years ago before separation took off.

We also studied a very special variety of metamorphic rocks (rocks transformed by intense heat and pressure) in the Fosdick Mountains of the Ford Ranges. We found that these rocks had been exhumed from many miles deep in the Antarctic crust as the plate breakup process got underway. This was a result of stretching between the plates. Upper levels of crust thinned and allowed the lower levels to rise up and create the mountains. Research in this mountain range continues today by geologists at Colorado College.

White Ocean, Richard Byrd and the Ford Ranges

Birchall Peaks.  Photo © Bruce Luyendyk

Richard E. Byrd first explored Marie Byrd Land (MBL) in West Antarctica in the early part of the Twentieth Century in three expeditions. Byrd’s expeditions were the first to discover regions east of the Ross Ice Shelf visited by Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott. Based from Little America near the Bay of Whales on the eastern front of the Ross Ice Shelf, near where Amundsen had set up his base Framheim, Byrd and his crew first sighted the vast interior of parts of the subcontinent of West Antarctica on exploratory flights in 1929. He named this region Marie Byrd Land after his wife. Many other geographical features of MBL were explored by air and by dog sledge parties over the three Byrd expeditions. Significant geographic features he named after his friends and sponsors. The Ford Ranges recognize Edsel Ford of that famous family, one of the prime financial backers of his expeditions.

White Ocean of Ice is focused on my visits to the western portion of MBL and the Ford Ranges and Edward VII Peninsula during 1989-90, 1990-91 and 1992-93. The geologic expeditions to the Ford Ranges took place eight hundred miles from McMurdo Station, the main U.S. base. Our team of six explored the northern portions of the Ford Ranges by snowmobile and sledge, living in tents. These types of expeditions have special names within the Antarctic experience - Deep Field, or Remote Field - that means well beyond helicopter range, support and rapid rescue from the main base - we were alone and always in survival mode.

My memoir is a window into a special style of science investigation in Antarctica, and how it affected me, even to this day. My book conveys the experience of finding myself in a unique place of unfamiliar extremes and uncertain challenges. It is a story of the discovery of Earth’s secrets and of my own.

For more about Marie Byrd Land click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Byrd_Land

Antarctic Ice Sheet - growing or shrinking?

Posted by SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research):

"What will Antarctica and the Southern Ocean look like in 2065?"

The 1^st Martha T. Muse Fellows Colloquium; 22 April 2014; Queenstown, New Zealand

"Many forecasters and futurists tell us that in 2065:

• the world's human population will be 8.5 billion,
• atmospheric CO2 levels will exceed 650 ppm under a business as usual scenario,
• the Arctic ocean will be ice free in August and September,
• average global temperature will 4°C warmer than in 2000,
• ocean pH will be less than 8.2, and
• sea level will be ~26 cm higher than in 1990.

What will these dramatic changes to Planet Earth mean for the world's last great wilderness and a bellwether of global change – Antarctica and the Southern Ocean? To speculate about this future world and the ramifications for human societies, the "1^st Martha T. Muse Colloquium" will convene a panel of the Martha Muse Prize awardees and guests to address the topic "Beyond the Horizon – Antarctica and the Southern Ocean 2065" in Queenstown, New Zealand on Tuesday, April 22, 2014."

Barnett Glacier.  Photo © Bruce Luyendyk

We now know from at least four lines of evidence that the greatest ice sheet on Earth is shrinking under the assault of global warming.

Where is the political will to act?

A Memoir of Exploration in Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctica

My first post in my first blog.
This quotation explains why I am writing a memoir of my first expedition to Antarctica:

Steve, Christine, Bruce, Dave; Marie Byrd Land. 

photo © Steve Tucker

“We have two or three moving experiences in our lives – experiences so great and moving that it doesn’t seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way before.” F. Scott Fitzgerald