50 years scientific ocean drilling

In 1961 scientist tried to drill the mantle of the Earth with Project MoHole. Although it failed, it was the start of many decades of international collaboration in scientific ocean drilling.

For over 50 years the science community is gaining knowledge on System Earth by recovering sediments from Ocean floors all over the world.

From Wired

This week’s Seafloor Sunday is a short teaser video for an upcoming documentary about scientific drilling in the deep sea focused on the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) and its legacy programs — the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) from 1983-2003 and the original Deep-Sea Drilling Program (DSDP) from 1966-1983.

Drilling into and acquiring core samples of marine sediments and oceanic crust has had an enormous impact on our understanding of the Earth.

Marine sediments are the most complete record we have of climatic and oceanographic change from timescales of thousands of years to tens of millions of years.

One of the important aspects of IODP is the archival of the cores for the scientific community use.

That is, even if you don’t directly participate in the cruise you can visit one of the core repositories to view and sample the cores to help answer scientific questions you are interested in.

What a wonderful world : climate talks end with late deal

From BBC

UN climate talks have closed with an agreement that the chair said had "saved tomorrow, today".

The European Union will place its current emission-cutting pledges inside the legally-binding Kyoto Protocol, a key demand of developing countries.

Talks on a new legal deal covering all countries will begin next year and end by 2015, coming into effect by 2020.
Management of a fund for climate aid to poor countries has also been agreed, though how to raise the money has not.
Talks ran nearly 36 hours beyond their scheduled close, with many delegates saying the host government lacked urgency and strategy.

Nevertheless, there was applause in the main conference hall when South Africa's International Relations Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, brought down the long-awaited final gavel.
"We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come," she said.
"We have made history."
The conclusion was delayed by a dispute between the EU and India over the precise wording of the "roadmap" for a new global deal.
India did not want a specification that it must be legally binding.
Eventually, a Brazilian diplomat came up with the formulation that the deal must have "legal force", which proved acceptable.

The roadmap proposal originated with the EU, the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) and the Least Developed Countries bloc (LDCs).
They argued that only a new legal agreement eventually covering emissions from all countries - particularly fast-growing major emitters such as China - could keep the rise in global average temperatures since pre-industrial times below 2C (3.6F), the internationally-agreed threshold.
"If there is no legal instrument by which we can make countries responsible for their actions, then we are relegating countries to the fancies of beautiful words," said Karl Hood, Grenada's Foreign Minister, speaking for Aosis.
"While they develop, we die; and why shoul we accept this?"

Impassioned arguments

Delegates from the Basic group - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - criticised what they saw as a tight timetable and excessive legality.
"I stand firm on my position of equity," said an impassioned Jayanthi Natarajan, India's environment minister.
"This is not about India, it is about the entire world."
India believes in maintaining the current stark division where only countries labelled "developed" have to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
Western nations, she said, have not cut their own emissions as they had pledged; so why should poorer countries have to do it for them?
Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation, agreed.
Apparently trembling with rage, he berated the developed countries: "We are doing things you are not doing... we want to see your real actions".
However, Bangladesh and some other developing countries weighed in on the side of Aosis, saying a new legally-binding deal was needed.
Aosis and the LDCs agree that rich countries need to do more.
But they also accept analyses concluding that fast-developing countries such as China will need to cut their emissions several years in the future if governments are to meet their goal of keeping the rise in global average temperature since pre-industrial times below 2C.
Once the roadmap blockage had been cleared, everything else followed quickly.
There were some surreal moment of confusion, but few objections, except from members of the Latin American Alba group, who said the developed world was not living up to its promises.

Green fund

A management framework was adopted for the Green Climate Fund, which will eventually gather and disburse finance amounting to $100bn (£64bn) per year to help poor countries develop cleanly and adapt to climate impacts.
There has also been significant progress on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD).
Environment groups were divided in their reaction, with some finding it a significant step forward and others saying it had done nothing to change the course of climate change.
Many studies indicate that current pledges on reducing emissions are taking the Earth towards a temperature rise of double the 2C target.
Michael Jacobs, visiting professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London, said the agreement could bring real changes.
"The agreement here has not in itself taken us off the 4°C path we are on," he said.
"But by forcing countries for the first time to admit that their current policies are inadequate and must be strengthened by 2015, it has snatched 2C from the jaws of impossibility.
"At the same time it has re-established the principle that climate change should be tackled through international law, not national, voluntarism."

Links :

• BBC : Analysis: Winners and losers / Reaction to deal / Brief history of climate change / Animated guide / Climate change glossary
• TheGuardian : Global climate change treaty in sight after Durban breakthrough / Durban deal will not avert catastrophic climate change, say scientists / Durban talks: how Connie Hedegaard got countries to agree on climate deal / Which nations are really responsible for climate change - interactive map

Book review: Plastic Ocean

iTunes : Plastic Ocean, the book

From BlogCritics

If you've heard that there's a "garbage patch" twice the size of Texas floating around in the Pacific Ocean, it's because Capt. Charles Moore has been working very hard to make sure that you do.

Moore charts his journey from concerned mariner to active citizen scientist in Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans (Avery, 2011).

Moore grew up on the harbor and spent his early years sailing the Pacific with his father.

His love and respect for the open waters comes from his intimate relationship with it.

Above all, he sees the vast ocean as a refuge for pristine nature; a place free from the touch of man's technology, development, and waste.

Or, at least he used to.

In a 1997 voyage, Moore first started noticing trash bobbing in waters thousands of miles away from civilization.

In that moment, the wheels started turning on what would become his mission for at least the next 15 years.

When one sees the heartbreaking images of a half-decayed Laysan albatross with a gut full of water bottle caps, disposable lighters, and Bic pens, only the most cynical among us could continue to believe that our single-use culture is not culpable in the irreparable harm being done to the natural world.

And while Moore shares this view about large plastic debris, several key moments caused him to start to ask questions about all the microplastics that we can't readily see and so are less likely to elicit such a visceral reaction, but that may be doing even more harm.
With the rigors of publishing a peer-reviewed paper in mind, Moore and his team devised a research project that would compare the amount of small plastic bits bobbing around just under the surface of the waters with the amount of zooplankton, the very basis of our entire food chain.

He discovered that, by weight, there was six times more plastic than life in his samples.

The obvious problem with this is that animals, from the smallest on up to the Laysan albatross, eat more plastic than actual food.

The issue that Moore had to tease out, but that might pose an even greater risk to all lifeforms that depend on the sea (that is, all of us) is that plastics are not only toxic in and of themselves, they also act as sponges and soak up the most harmful and persistent toxic compounds that contaminate our environment.

These toxins enter the food chain at the bottom rung and continue to biomagnify as they work their way up, ultimately to man.

TED : Captain Charles Moore on the seas of plastic

This well-told memoir is part detective story and part adventure tale with dashes of history and science lessons thrown in.

Moore is a passionate individual, but this is paired with a very practical nature.

He doesn't take an extreme view by calling for an end to all plastics, and he acknowledges the cultural and technological advances that our plastic era has brought.

He does, however, think that an ocean with more plastic than sea life in it is a tragedy, and he does have very specific policy changes in mind that would remedy, or at least mitigate, that problem.

Part of his call is for the development of plastics that would biodegrade in the marine environment so that if they do find their way into the waters, they will break down instead of lingering and doing damage.

This is just part of his overarching goal for manufacturers to be held accountable for the full life of the things that they produce, including their disposal, and for our society to move to one of zero waste.

It's a challenging call, but not an impossible one.

Moore makes a strong and impassioned case that is hard to ignore and is inspiring enough to make you want to try.

Links :

• Algalita Marine Research Foundation

Tipping barrels into the Great Bear

Tipping Barrels from Sitka

‘Tipping Barrels’ is a unique combination of surfing and environmental journalism that follows surfers Arran and Reid Jackson on a trip into the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest, where they learn more about the region and the issues confronting it.

Links :

• PacificWild : wildlife conservation on Canada Pacific Coast

Antarctic's hidden world revealed

Map of Antarctica’s landmass without ice cover

(BEDMAP Consortium/British Antarctic Survey)

In the map at the top of this page, the highest elevations are marked in red/black.

The light blue colour shows the extent of the continental shelf.

The lowest elevations are dark blue.

You will note the deep troughs within the interior of the continent that are far below today's sea level.

From BBC

Ever wondered what Antarctica would look like without all that ice?

Scientists have produced the most detailed map yet of the White Continent's underbelly - its rock bed.

Called simply BEDMAP, this startling view of the landscape beneath the ice incorporates decades of survey data acquired by planes, satellites, ships and even people on dog-drawn sleds.

It is remarkable to think that less than 1% of this rock base projects above the continent's frozen veil.

The map is a fascinating perspective but it is more than just a pretty picture - it represents critical knowledge in the quest to understand how Antarctica might respond to a warming world.

Scientists are currently reporting significant changes at the margins of the continent, with increasing volumes of ice now being lost to the ocean, raising global sea levels.

The type of information contained in BEDMAP will help researchers forecast the pace of future events.

"This is information that underpins the models we now use to work out how the ice flows across the continent," explained Hamish Pritchard from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"The Antarctic ice sheet is constantly supplied by falling snow, and the ice flows down to the coast where great bergs calve into the ocean or it melts. It's a big, slow-speed hydrological cycle."

"To model that process requires knowledge of some complex ice physics but also of the bed topography over which the ice is flowing - and that's BEDMAP."

Dr Pritchard is presenting the new imagery on Monday to the 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth and planetary scientists.

This is actually the second generation of the digital BEDMAP.

The first version, which was produced in 2001, incorporated 1.9 million measurement points. For BEDMAP2, the sampling has been raised to more than 27 million points on a grid spacing of 5km.

"It's like you've brought the whole thing now into sharp focus," Dr Pritchard told BBC News.

"In many areas, you can now see the troughs, valleys and mountains as if you were looking at a part of the Earth we're much more used to seeing, exposed to the air."

The source data comes from a range of international partners.

Dr Pritchard and BAS colleagues Peter Fretwell and David Vaughan have merged it all into a single product.

The project has benefited greatly from the large number of airborne radar surveys that have been flown in recent years.

Unlike rock, ice is transparent to radar.

So by firing microwave pulses through the overlying sheet and recording the return echoes, scientists can plot both the depth of the rock bed and - by definition - the thickness of the ice covering.

Instrumented planes, guided by GPS, will now fly back and forth across the ice in campaigns that can last weeks at a time.

Perhaps the most publicised of these recent efforts was the multinational expedition in 2007/2008 to map the Gamburtsev mountains.

This range is the size of the European Alps with the tallest peaks reaching 3,000m above sea-level - and yet they are still hidden below more than a 1,000m of ice.

"It's fascinating to see the Gamburtsevs in the context of the other big mountains in Antarctica," said Dr Pritchard.

"They're similar in size to the likes of the Ellsworth and the Transantarctic mountains, but of course they're completely buried. It is just because the ice is so thick in the middle of the ice sheet that they're not exposed."

It is clear from BEDMAP2 that there are still two big areas of the continent that need improved coverage.

One of these lies between the Gamburtsevs and the coast; the other runs south of the Shackleton mountain range towards the South Pole.

Look closely at the map on this page and you can see that the yellow colouring in these areas appears quite smudged.

It is very likely that proposals will soon be put to national funding agencies to go and close these data gaps with airborne surveys.