Canary on the Ice Cap

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/arts/story.html?id=b9281b0a-5dc2-44cd-ac94-c5ec1da32601&k=62457

Canary on the Ice Cap
The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, October 14, 2007


In 1990, when climatologist Konrad Steffen established Swiss Camp, one of the first automatic weather stations on Greenland's ice sheet, global warming wasn't high on his agenda. Steffen wanted to study the interaction of ice and atmosphere at the "equilibrium line," the altitude where summer melt and winter snowfall are historically in perfect balance. "We probably have more information on nearby planets than we do on Greenland," he says. "Parts of Greenland have never been measured, because few satellites can see that latitude, and those that can haven't been up long enough. And it's difficult to deploy surface instruments in those conditions." Steffen's aim was to begin filling in gaps in scientists' understanding of the processes that drive -- and are affected by -- changes on the vast body of ice that holds roughly eight per cent of the world's freshwater supply.

But near the Earth's poles, equilibrium isn't what it used to be. A few years after Steffen built his research station, he noticed that temperatures on Greenland's ice cap were rising -- and then rising faster. Over a decade, the average winter temperature shot up 6 degrees C, an increase so improbable that at first he declined to publish it, fearing an error in his calculations.

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It can't be easy to herald a potential planet-wide catastrophe. But despite all the bleak data being mined from Steffen's network, he says he is enjoying his work more than ever. "For one thing," he says, "people are starting to listen, to pay attention to science. Even politicians are starting to understand that we have a higher level of CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 600,000 years, and that our future depends on whether we can get greenhouse-gas emissions under control.

"We are at a fork in the road," he says. "We could take action now and reduce our carbon footprint. That doesn't mean reducing our standard of living or going backward. We can move forward, but in more efficient ways. We can still make money by building and selling the cleanest technology possible. But if we continue to build coal plants and sell them to China and India, then we are thinking short-term; we are not thinking of our children." This year, Steffen will add two weather stations to his network, as well as more GPS and seismic instruments to record ice quakes. He will also attempt to climb down into a moulin, a vertical shaft that channels rushing meltwater down to the bedrock. If all goes well, he'll install laser instruments that may lead to a new understanding of the dynamics of ice-sheet plumbing.

Both Steffen and Zwally suspect moulins, which move meltwater and the heat it carries almost a mile through the ice, have a significant effect on the health of ice caps and, by extension, on climate change.