Newsletter
News
Teri Fulton and her fourth-grade students at Whittier Elementary School in Kansas City, KS began partnering with CReSIS Education Outreach Coordinator Cheri Hamilton for the 2009 school year. Here, she discusses the complexities of teaching climate change science in the classroom, the annual teachers’ workshop, and her favorite “light bulb”...
Gary Wesche, a middle school science teacher, is the latest PolarTREC teacher to accompany a CReSIS team to the field. Wesche, who teachers at St. Regis Francis Catholic School in Kansas City, Mo., left Nov. 19 for an eight-week stay on the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS), where he will keep in touch with is 130 students by blogging from the ice...
The opening up of the Arctic Ocean brings with it a flood of concerns and debates over social, economic and territorial arrangements in Arctic regions. While climate change is the reason for this alarming loss of ice, it is merely the tip of the iceberg of complex issues facing this region in transition. On Sept. 11, Dr. David Braaten, CReSIS...
In August 2009, Dr. Kristin Barkus joined the CReSIS staff as the new Education Coordinator. With a background in the life sciences (she received her PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Kansas), Barkus said her passion for science has easily transferred over to CReSIS-related science. “I’ve had a lifelong interest in the...
Find a half-kilometer-long cable. Walk 15 feet. Dig a hole in the ground. Secure a large pole compacted in a bucket into the opening. Repeat 24 more times. Find three more cables, and begin again. Then, using the propane-driven automatic fence post pounder you’ve brought, drill a 30 meter hole in the ground. Pack with explosives. Detonate. Repeat...
Over 160 scientists convened in Nuuk, Greenland from August 25-27 for the Nuuk Climate Days conference. Dr. Prasad Gogineni served on the scientific committee for the conference and gave a presentation titled “Radar Sounding of Jakobshavn, Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim Glacier.” The conference aimed to provide a comprehensive and current assessment...
The Meridian Unpiloted Aerial Vehicle earned its proverbial wings this autumn, after passing a string of flight tests in Kansas and Utah. Next stop: McMurdo Station, Antarctica, where it will be equipped with a CReSIS radar and antennas, which its wings are custom-designed to handle, and undergo a third series of flight tests. By the end of...
Cheri Hamilton and Dana Atwood-Blaine made the rounds of science education conferences this fall, presenting formal talks as well as hands-on Ice, Ice Baby activities, CReSIS-generated lesson plans for K-8 classrooms. From Oct. 7-11, Hamilton and Atwood-Blaine were in Portland, Ore., for the North American Association for Environmental Education (...
John Paden, former CReSIS graduate student, published an article in the January 2010 edition of The Journal of Glaciology. The article, entitled “Ice-sheet bed 3-D tomography,” outlined the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging at Summit Camp, Greenland during a 2005 trip. Paden and his colleagues used the ground-based radar to measure...
Radar Scatterometers take snapshots of the oceans’ winds many times a day from high-flying satellites. They help to measure strong storms, like hurricanes, model global climate, study sea ice, and even navigate international sailing contests. This little-known technology evolved from an even more esoteric history. Before CReSIS scientists flew...
Cartoons and climate change kicked off CSO’s first ever lecture series, entitled “Communicating Science.” Four speakers addressed students and faculty this semester on topics ranging from handling graduate student life to creating interactive science websites. Two speakers will round out the series this summer. Kees van der Veen Professor of...
Dan Wildcat, a Yuchi member of Muscogee Nation, began his partnership with CReSIS in June 2006. This marked the first time the American Indian and Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group convened, at a meeting entitled "Ice Symposium: Impacts of a Changing Environment for American Indians and Alaska Natives." Attendees of this three-day meeting...
Tim Nussbaum, a fifth-grade teacher at Lowman Hill Elementary School in Topeka, has worked with Cheri Hamilton for two years and has seen and appreciated the growth of the CReSIS education program during that time. How many students does Cheri see regularly at your school? 180 students from seven different classrooms What were your initial...
On February 13, 2010, Cheri Hamilton joined over 25 area science educators presenting at Kansas City's annual ScienceWise Teacher Resources Day. Held at the University of Missouri Kansas City campus, the event was designed to expose area teachers to new and innovative ways of teaching science to young learners. Hamilton, the K-12 Education...
Thirteen high school seniors admitted as top recruits to the University of Kansas’ Honors Program for the 2010-2011 school year toured CReSIS facilities on March 1 as a part of a Scholar’s Day event. The students participated in a question and answer session with CReSIS glaciologist Leigh Stearns, viewed radar technology in CReSIS labs, and...
The CReSIS website received a huge overhaul this past winter, but not without the help of its new strongman – the Wiggins server. CReSIS and NSF wanted to improve the site’s usability for both visitors and internal users. To do so, CReSIS tech support installed new hardware to support the changes. The previous Stone Cracker server ran on four...
CReSIS hosted 17 undergraduate students this summer for an REU program that provided an opportunity to conduct research on topics of global significance. These students were based at either the University of Kansas or Indiana University and worked closely with faculty advisors and graduate student mentors. Elizabeth City State University, a CReSIS...
In 2009, exposed errors of glacial melting rates published in IPCC documents and illegally acquired e-mails written by climate scientists at the University of East Anglia severely crippled efforts to improve climate change coverage in the media. Worldwide, such events drastically affected people's concern for the environment and belief in climate...
Josh Meisel and his CReSIS research went mainstream this summer after he provided data for National Geographic's June 2010 issue and online interactive feature on climate change at the poles entitled "Greenland's Vanishing Ice." CReSIS researchers were contacted in May 2009 about the potential collaboration with National Geographic Magazine. The...
When CReSIS researchers are sent to the ends of the Earth, the journeys are seldom as exotic as they sound. Depending on the nature of the mission, twelve or more hours a day may be spent in an airplane carrying CReSIS-built radars. Some students and researchers get the luxury of remaining on land, where they spend all day digging holes and...
Reid Crowe’s jaw wasn’t the only thing to drop upon seeing the thousands of miles of ice. The CReSIS graduate student said setting foot on Greenland for the first time this spring “was kind of like stepping onto the moon.” Flying over it, however, tested his stomach and stamina. Crowe recounts one flight during this year’s airborne radar survey...
CReSIS computing has enacted several improvements to the network servers to increase storage capacity and data processing over the past year. Starting in the fall of 2009, networking staff upgraded to a DDN S2A9900 data storage system. This addition now supplements a previous Hitachi AMS100 rack. With this upgrade, storage doubled to 326 useable...
Brandon Gillette joined the CReSIS Education in June2010. He completed his undergraduate degree in 2004 and his M.Ed in 2006, both at the University of Kansas. He then taught three years of junior high school and two years of high school in Olathe, KS. Brandon first worked with CReSIS in 2007 as part of the PolarTREC program, partnering educators...
Photo 1: Brandon Gillette presents on teaching Remote Sensing in high school classrooms. CReSIS geology professor Leigh Stearns found herself in front of a somewhat unique audience on October 28 at the regional NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) meeting in Kansas City, Mo. Accustomed to standing in front of her academic peers with years...
Remote sensing isn’t exactly at the top of most children’s minds. That all changed when CReSIS representatives sat alongside about 600 scientific groups and organizations and a quarter million visitors at the USA Science and Engineering Expo in Washington, D.C. on October 23 and 24. “I’ve never seen so many people ever at a conference. It was...
Photo 1: NEEM researchers celebrate reaching bedrock. For polar scientists in Greenland, Tuesday July 27, 2010 was a day of celebration. After years of Arctic work, researchers at NEEM, an ice core drilling site in Northern Central Greenland, reached bedrock at a depth of 2537.36 m. Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen held the final chunk of the core, a...
Stacey Freeman joined the CReSIS Education team in October of 2010. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she received a B.A. in English and a minor in Business Administration. She went on to obtain her M. Ed. in Higher and Post Secondary Education at Arizona State University. Her masters thesis was...
Lonnie Thompson has extracted ice on the verge of meltdown worldwide. He's collected samples from the Dasuopu Glacier in Tibet, witnessed shocking rates of ice melt atop Mount Kilimanjaro, and ventured high into the Peruvian Andes to the ice cap of Quelccava. Thompson performs research that few scientists, if any, before him have dared to attempt...
Photo 1: Six women researchers at the South Pole. From left to right, Pam Young, Jean Pearson, Terry Tickhill Terrell, Lois Jones, Eileen McSaveney, and Kay Lindsay. Photo credit: U.S. Navy. On the rim of an Antarctic valley in 1975, the wind chill blasted at a negative 20 degrees. Gisela Dreschoff was running a sled full of equipment to measure...
In the Summer 2010 Icebreaker newsletter, we featured profiles on 17 CReSIS-related REU students that worked this past summer at the University of Kansas and Indiana University. A total of 27 students participated in the CReSIS summer REU program, and here we profile the remaining 10 REU students that spent the past summer working at Elizabeth...
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 The Polar Current: Climate Change News
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