“Sea Level Rise and Ice Sheets”
Wednesday, March 5, 2008, 7:30 - 8:30
Pacific Science Center, Eames IMAX Theatre
Admission to each Eames IMAX lecture is $5.00. Admission is FREE to Faculty, Staff and Students of the University of Washington, Pacific Science Center Members, and Town Hall Members.
Sea level is currently increasing by 3.5 mm per year. Close to 50% of this increase comes from the glaciers and ice sheets - known as the cryospheric part of sea level rise. In the last century, glaciers have been the dominant part of the cryospheric sea level rise, but now the two large ice sheets Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice at an ever faster rate. What are the mechanism that lead to this ice loss and what are our sea level rise prediction based on the latest findings? The latest results from an expedition in Greenland will be shown, including the first video from water channels inside the Greenland ice sheet.
“Cryospheric Response to Climate Change”
Thursday, March 6, 2008, 7:30 - 8:30
UW, Kane Hall, Room 210 (Admission FREE).
Air temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet have increased by 4 deg. C since 1991. The ice sheet melt area increased by 30% for the western part between 1979-2006. The increasing trend in the total area of melting bare ice is unmistakable at 13% per year, significant at a probability of 0.99. Hence, the bare ice region, the wet snow region, and the equilibrium line altitude have moved further inland and resulting in increased melt water flux towards the coast. Increase in ice velocity in the ablation region and the concurrent increase in melt water suggests that water penetrates to great depth through moulins and cracks, lubricating the bottom of the ice sheet. New insight was gained of subsurface hydrologic channels and cavities using new instrumentation and a video system during the melt peak in August 2007. These new results will be discussed in view of the rapid increase in melt area and mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet due to increasing air temperatures.
Konrad Steffen is a Professor at the University of Colorado teaching climatology and remote sensing since 1990. His research involves the study of processes related to climate variability and change, cryospheric interaction in Polar Regions, and sea level rise based on in-situ measurements, satellite observations, and model approximations. He is the director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), the largest research unit on the Boulder Campus. Steffen has lead field expedition to the Greenland ice sheet and other Arctic regions for the past consecutive 33 years to measure the dynamic response of the ice masses under a warming climate; his work has been featured by several TV stations and popular science papers.
