The 8th Advanced Climate Dynamics Courses – ACDC summer school took place from 8^th to 19^th August 2016 in Norris Point, Newfoundland. The topic of this year’s ACDC was understanding the basic principles and dynamics behind centennial to millennial scale climate variability and their link to past, present and future changes to high latitude climate.

 

27 European, Canadian and US-based master, PhD students and PostDocs joined lectures of climate science with both fundamental lectures on core topics and topical lectures in the two weeks. The diverse background of the students and lecturers reflected the interdisciplinary nature of topics, combining all fields from atmosphere, oceanography, glaciology to geology, from proxy analysis to climate modelling. The course was well structured with both lectures, discussions, field trips and group projects. We ended the summer school by presented the group projects to the class, which topics were all from ice modelling, ocean modelling, lake sediments and icebergs.

The school was based at Bonne Bay Marine Station in Gros Morne National Park, which provided a unique location for field excursions and sightseeing. During our stay we therefore visited several locations to study the local climate, glaciological and geological history. Especially the hike during the weekend to Tablelands, a mountain plateau on the other side of the bay, was a really informative and fun field trip.

In the two weeks the weather was unbelievably good, which provided great conditions for being outside exploring the area by hiking, kayaking and bonfire on the beach.

Several people involved in the ice2ice project were presented at the summer school, namely Kerim Nisancioglu (Professor UiB), Jonathan Rheinlænder (PhD student UiB), Andreas Plach (PhD student UiB), Nadine Steiger (MSc UiB), Søren Borg Nielsen (PhD student UCPH) and Iben Koldtoft (PhD student DMI and UCPH).

We strongly recommend this summer school to all our colleagues working within the fields of climate science.

Want to see more pictures from the 2 weeks? Search for the #acdcsummerschool on both Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Written on behalf of the ice2ice PhD students by Iben Koldtoft.

These days the ship G.O. Sars is carrying ice2ice scientist with the goal of retrieving sediment cores to help answer the overall question of ice2ice: How does the sea ice effect land ice and vice verse?

Yesterday (16th Aug) the Calypso deep corer was installed in the ship and this morning (17th of August) it was tested. In the afternoon, the ship left Reykjavik and in the next few days shell scrape/dredging in the local area (10, 50 and 90 km from Reykjavik) will be performed. The ship will then proceed toward South-East Greenland. There it will dock at Narsarsuaq, while on the way marine coring for more sediment cores to investigate especially the sea ice variability and ocean current changes of the past.

 

Below a video of G.O. Sars from last years cruise:

 

The cruise is driven UiB and the Bjerkness center, but making for truly interdisciplinary reserach, 3 Niels Bohr Institute scientist normally working with ice cores and one DMI scientist who normally does climate modelling are also on board to learn about the sediment archive first hand.

The cruise will end on 17th of September.

 

Anne-Katrine –PhD

Congratulations to Anne-Katrine Faber who succesfully defended her PhD thesis at Centre for Ice and Climate on June 02, 2016 and obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Anne-Katrine has in her PhD project worked on model-data comparison with Greenland ice core data and climate model results. As part of her project she has collaborated with climate modelers from USA and spent half a year as a visiting scientist at University of Colorado, Boulder. Furthermore during her PhD she participated in field work measuring isotopes in water vapour  in the fjords of Greenland on board the ship ”Activ”. The thesis was titled Isotopes in Greenland precipitation: Isotope-enabled AGCM modelling and a new Greenland.

Rasmus-PhD

Congratulations to Ramus Pedersen who successfully defended his PhD thesis at Centre for Ice and Climate on June 12, 2016 and obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Rasmus was co-supervised from DMI. Rasmus has invesitigated if past warm climate states could potentially provide information on future global warming and also explored the atmospheric sensitivity to the location of sea ice loss. He found that the changes in the Arctic sea ice cover are important for shaping both past and future warm climate states. Nonetheless, the last interglacial is not an ideal analogue for future climate changes, as the changed insolation has a large impact – especially on the Greenland ice sheet. The thesis was titled Modelling interglacial climate – investigating the mechanisms of a warming climate.

Rasmus Anker Pedersen

Rasmus has been hired as a postdoc starting 1.8.2016. The two year position is part of the ice flow modelling team at CIC. Rasmus is a familiar face within ice2ice as he did his PhD on «Modelling interglacial climate – investigating the mechanisms of a warming climate» at DMI one of the partner institutions of ice2ice. During his PhD he amongst other climate effects studied the effect of losing sea ice.

Joel Pedro

Joel has been also been hired as a postdoc at CIC and started 1st of June. Joel has already been closely connected with the ice2ice community and was part of organizing the MIS3 workshop in 2014. Joel will continue his work comparing the timing and response to climate change using multiple paleo records.

 

The first set of ice2ice scientists arrived on the Greenland Ice Sheet last week and are now busy working from the EastGRIP camp.

After transferring through Kangerlussuaq, where we spent a few days packing pallets for the Hercules and making sure all our personal equipment was in order, we flew with the Air National Guard to EastGRIP. The science camp is situated in the northeastern corner of the ice sheet, on one of the fastest flowing ice streams in Greenland, responsible for ~18% of the total drainage.

In camp we were greeted by a happy gang of scientist,  technical staff and a cook, all from different corners of the world. On the first day after arrival everyone was fully engaged in daily camp duties as well as setting up all the scientific equipment and experiments.

Highlights so far include erecting a mast to measure turbulent fluxes of oxygen isotopes, sampling surface snow and measuring accumulation, preparing the ski way for planes, building the foundations for the deep ice core drill and digging a new toilet (reaching as far down as the 2012 melt layer!).

During the next days we will traverse to the edge of the ice stream to drill a few short cores as well as start on the main EastGRIP core (expected to reach 100m this season) at the location of the camp. Everyone is looking forward to many days of exiting science and fun on the ice!

Kerim, Iben, Helen, and Niccolo

The 2016 EastGRIP season has started. On April 22^nd, the first field operation managers made their way to Kangerlussuaq to open the field office. The first field team arrives in Greenland on April 25^th and was put in at only -5C-very warm for the season. However the warm put in temperatures made for a perfect runway, and has allowed for a great start on the 2016 field work in Greenland, which will be visited by multiple ice2ice researchers during the 2016 season. The daily progress of the 2016 EastGRIP field season can found here: Field diaries.

The East Greenland Ice-core Project – EastGRIP – aims to retrieve an ice core by drilling through the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS). Ice streams are responsible for draining a significant fraction of the ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet, and we hope to gain new and fundamental information on ice stream dynamics from the project, thereby improving the understanding of how ice streams will contribute to future sea-level change. The drilled core will also provide a new record of past climatic conditions from the northeastern part of the Greenland Ice Sheet which will be analysed at numerous laboratories worldwide. The project has many international partners, amongst these UiB also part of ice2ice and is managed by the Centre for Ice and Climate, Denmark, which is also part of ice2ice with air support carried out by US ski-equipped Hercules aircraft managed through the US Office of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation.

The EGRIP camp was opened 27th of April at 12:00 by 7 people. The big main building, the Dome was found intact, garages were in good shape and access was easy. Temperatures were high and most of the vehicles started easily. Due to high temperatures and a significant amount of new snow, the plane was not able to take off and the crew helped opening camp for that reason.

Grooming of the skiway began at 17.00 and was continued into late evening. The 109th stayed overnight, while the snow on the skiway hardened. Next morning, the plane took off without problems at 6:30. Overnight, the temperature had dropped significantly.

The first days were as always busy with a lot of small tasks; grooming the skiway, setting up skiway markers, getting an overview, and making all necessities available (outhouse, cooking, heat). The main generator was on at 16:00 (local time), four hours after arrival. The camp has two snowblowers, 3 snowmobiles, a Caterpillar and two Pistenbullys to help with large amount of work needed to build an ice core camp intended to last more than 4 years.

The first couple of weeks have been heavy work!

The plan to dig trenches and use ballons to make structures under the ice for working has worked perfectly.

Now the big task is done: All balloons are now buried under several meter snow, and the snow surface is flat again with only a few ventilation shafts and hoses sticking out of the snow. A few bamboo flags mark the site of the days and nights drama.

Trenches are neccesary to perform ice core science. They provide a perfect cold environment with the mean temperature of the site of about -25C. In these caves under the ice, a drill will be set up in one of the caves and the science will take place in the other.

The next part of the season

The season will continue and by 3rd of June another 4 flights to camp are planned. They will bring new weatherports, beds, tools, shelves, generators and spareparts all have to be installed and is used to complete the EGRIP camp so it may house 35-45 people.However the maximum camp load this year will be just 22 people.

The work will continue by outfitting the science trench and drill trench with workshops, laboratories, control cabin and power. Further scientific sampling is done above ground, including snow property sampling, installation of a tower for water vapour measurements, surface movement measurements by GPS and many other.

The winch and tower used for deep drill will be installed and we even expect to have time for some distinguished gusets for 4 days and a school student visit in in July. At the end of the season the EGRIP camp will be closed down in a way that we can start up next year with a more extensive science program.

By: Christian Rodehacke 

 

On the 11^th and 12^th May modelers from Bergen and Copenhagen have met in Bergen to discuss various aspects of coming Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3) simulations with our climate models NorESM and EC-Earth, respectively. We have focused on MIS3 38,000 years ago and established the ground work for the participation of further groups in the future.

A big part of the discussion addresses the adequate selection of the global coast line and the ice sheet geometries for the Northern hemisphere. We are going to use the 14 kyrBP ice sheet geometry as a proxy for the 38 kyrBP situation, since both the global sea level and probably also the ice sheet geometry had been similar during these two periods. Furthermore no reliable estimate exists for times before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21 kyrBP) because the evidence had been overprinted by expanding ice sheet in the time leading into the LGM.

In particular two ice sheet reconstructions have been extensively evaluated: the global, so-called “ICE 6G”, product from Peltier and the estimate form Tarasov for North America. Since only Peltier provides estimate for areas beyond North America, it will be used for these regions. However we have to remove the likely to extensive ice cap in the Barents Sea to be consistent with various sediment cores in this region. This enables our ocean models to simulate a realistic ocean circulation on Asian continental shelf, which is deemed to be important for an adequate representation of the oceanographic conditions in the Arctic. After we get the Tarasov reconstruction data, it will be compared with Peltier’s work. It will lead to the decision if we may use Tarasov’s reconstruction in North America, since it is in accordance with glaciological principles. In general the global coast line is based on the “uplifted” bottom topography caused by the global sea level drop of 70 m.

Often we follow the spirit of the Paleo Model Intercomparison Project (PMIP) protocol, such as we apply the constructed preindustrial vegetation distribution for land points. Hence we do not eliminate any urban region or crop vegetation. Emerging land, due to the fallen sea level, is filled with the vegetation distribution that is typical for the region. A probably more zonal weighted examination may allow keeping the generally observed zonal vegetation alignment. Applied greenhouse gas concentrations are based on ice cores. Astronomical variables present the condition for 38kyr PB, while the solar constant is kept unchanged.

The meeting has been complemented with a video conference meeting with William Roberts, who has help to verify our thoughts. A draft document summarizing the discussion is available on request.

 

We are looking for a researcher to join our team.

Work tasks:

• The candidate shall focus on the dynamics of fast flowing ice streams on Greenland and in particular the impact of sub-glacial hydrology.

Qualifications and personal qualities:

• The applicant must hold a PhD or the equivalent in ice dynamics or similar fields relevant to the project topic before expiry of the application deadline.
• Experience within fields related to sub-glacial hydrology and numerical modelling of ice is an advantage.
• The candidate is expected to work independently and in a structured manner, and have the ability to cooperate with others.
• The ability to work in interdisciplinary research groups
• Proficiency in both written and oral English.

The successful candidate will be part of the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (http://www.bjerknes.uib.no) and the ice2ice project.

 

Deadline 2 June. More info and application link here 

Story by:  Evangeline Sessford, Amandine Tisserand og Sarah Berben

Finding, extracting and reading stories of the ocean´s past.

In the basement of Realfagsbygget at the University of Bergen, there are 80 m² of tubes containing mud, sand and very tiny fossils. All of those tubes are very precious, because they contain important information of our past climate.

The fossils come from tiny animals that lived in the ocean water and when they died, settled to the sea floor of our earth’s oceans. Over time the mud and plankton skeletons accumulated layer by layer, year after year. These separate layers on the ocean floor tell a story in a very similar way to pages of a book, with the beginning of the story at the bottom and the end at the top of the sea floor. In particular, these layers of mud, known as marine sediment, tell us about changes in temperature

, salinity and sea ice from long before we began making observations or using satellites for research.

The ocean mud holds an incredible active archive and story about the natural history of the oceans. It is up to us to open the book and read the pages to understand our Earth’s oceanic history and even more, what it can teach us. This way of studying the ocean´s past is one tool to learn more about the earth’s changing climate system, its dynamics and its environmental impacts.

Finding the story

In the summer of 2015, we set out to the Greenland Sea on board of the G.O. Sars to recover continuous records containing tens of thousands of years of mud. The overall purpose of this research campaign is to unravel the mysteries of the so-called

Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles.  These events occurred during the last glacial and are associated with rapid temperature increases of up to 15 °C over Greenland taking place within a human lifetime. At the last climate conference (COP21) in Paris, a general agreement was reached to keep the global warming within 1.5 °C within this century.

With this aim in mind we wonder what could potentially happen if a climate warming of 15 °C would make the scene again. If we gain a better understanding of these events and in particular of its triggers, it will be possible to improve our prediction of the future earth´s climate change. Therefore we aim to investigate tens of thousands of years of old mud and see how past changes in ocean and sea ice behavior affected climate.

Extracting the story

To recover long, continuous records of marine sediment, we lowered a long tube into the water column until it reached the ocean floor. There, the tube was pushed 20 meters downward into the sediment to capture the separate layers of mud inside the tube, in exactly the same way as they were lying within the ocean´s floor.

The long and thin cylinder of layered marine sediment, called a marine sediment core, shows us distinctive stripes of varied colors and widths. On board the ship, these cores were cut into sections and split in half lengthways. Additionally, we examined them using non-destructive analysis.

 

Reading the story

After a successful field season, one half of the core will be sampled and further examined by research scientists and students. These cores, and their many layers of mud, reveal a unique record of the changes throughout time at the core location. Their

stories are ready and waiting to be read.

Some of the information has already been extracted! Sarah is using ash from volcanoes that erupted in the past to link the timing between the sediment cores and understand the chronology of the oceanic changes. Evangeline has measured some salinity and circulation changes of the ocean water at the surface and at depth. And Amandine is running the Mg/ca samples to gain insight on the temperature of the water in the past!

Follow the Story

As the earth is experiencing global warming today, and many questions remain about the future, looking at the climate changes of the past helps us to understand the climate system.

For example, how high can CO₂ go without causing devastating changes in global climate through sea level rise, ice sheet melt, and changing precipitation patterns? Hence, climate research is incredibly relevant to our society and the health of our Earth.

Come with us on a climate adventure through the sneak previews on film and follow us on twitter with #ice2ice.

 

More on the Dansgaard-Oescher events and the ice2ice project in this film: