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Members of the 1956 Navy traverse to establish Byrd Camp pose with their tractors before commencing the 400-mile trek to Marie Byrd Land. Photo credit: Commander Jim Waldron and NSF. The 2009-2010 Twin Otter team poses near their aircraft at Byrd Camp. Jan. 11, 1957 Crevasses look quite small – just a foot or two wide. They do not all run in the...
Several CReSIS-affiliated researchers contributed to a report on the Greenland Ice Sheet, entitled “The Greenland Ice Sheet in a Changing Climate,” that was presented during the final weekend of the UNFCC’s COP15 conference in Copenhagen. Dr. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Centre Leader at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Ice and Climate, was listed...
The whole concept sounds likes the start of a trite joke: How many scientists does it take to screw in an antenna? Quite a few, it turns out, if the antennas are clinging to the bottom of a gigantic jet in subfreezing temperatures zooming 1,500 feet above the ground. During the months of October and November, CReSIS participated in the largest...
Eight KU aerospace engineering professors and students rang in the New Year on cloud nine, after celebrating the night in something of an unorthodox fashion, sans a standard toast or Times Square countdown. With minutes to spare before the clock struck midnight, they celebrated the success of their unpiloted aerial vehicle's (UAV's) first flight...
Cameron Lewis knows what West Virginian mining towns are all about. He has family there and has spent his fair share of holidays in rural pockets of the Mountain State. At first glance, his 2009-2010 holiday season didn't have much different of a feel, Lewis said. Over Thanksgiving he found himself in "a dusty town" with a couple of bars. The...
If Emily Arnold never had to see a spar again, she wouldn’t complain. She spent a month and a half toiling over the 13-foot structure, trying to fit together the two main weight-bearing pieces for a giant airplane. “It’s almost like kindergarten blocks because you cut out shapes and glue them together,” she explained. These composites might be as...
The PSU team poses among the hilly terrain of their remote field camp. From left to right: Luke Zoet, Don Voigt, Leo Peters, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Knut Christianson, Mike Javred, Rebecca Boon, and Jim Koehler. Photo courtesy of Sridhar Anandakrishnan. Knut Christianson commutes nearly an hour to work some days. He gets out of bed, eats breakfast...
Terrance Hughes of the University of Maine has retired from teaching as of January 2010. Hughes celebrates a forty-year career in glacial studies. His work on ice streams and modeling helped emphasize key areas of change in the Antarctic and Greenland continents. Hughes’ fascination with ice began when he joined the Institute of Polar Studies at...
Photo credit: The Earth Negotiations Bulletin “Hopenhagen” were the words that greeted John Harrington, Jr., when he arrived at the COP15. The large green letters plastered everywhere contrasted with the warnings he had received before his small Kansas college town for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Don’t anticipate rigorous...
During the past Spring Semester of 2009, calculus and curry have comprised University of Kansas graduate student Kevin Player’s diet. Player has spent the spring semester studying with students and faculty at The Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, an international partner institute of CReSIS located in Kanpur, India. Player is the first KU...
CReSIS welcomes Dr. Leigh Stearns to the University of Kansas faculty as an assistant professor in geology. Stearns joins CReSIS after earning her PhD in earth sciences from the University of Maine and an M.S. in geological sciences from The Ohio State University. Her interests focus on ice sheet mass balance and ice sheets’ role in modulating...
As the Antarctic summer wanes, a team of CReSIS scientists have migrated north to Greenland to continue researching fast-moving glaciers. The team, comprised of Dr. Prasad Gogineni, Dr. Fernando Rodriquez-Morales, KU graduate students Cameron Lewis, William Blake, Josh Meisell, and Indiana State University Polar Grid staff member Keith Lehigh are...
This past winter, Dr. David Braaten spent his holiday season husking off the icy wrapping of one very large gift. Dr. Braaten and KU undergraduate Chris McMinn traveled to Antarctica to study the Gamburtsev Mountains, a mountain range that extends more than 1,200 km and rises approximately 3,400 km from the bedrock near the South Pole. The...
Should scientists or politicians spearhead societies’ adjustments to changing climate? Mark Parkinson, Lieutenant Governor of Kansas, stressed the former in a talk entitled “National Policy and Climate Change” on April 2nd. Addressing a crowd of 200 at the KU campus, Parkinson summarized current policy deficiencies. He also highlighted areas of...
Watch the Dr. Linda Hayden interview by Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). Part 1 Part 2
CReSIS hosted its first annual open house on February 12 at Nichols Hall. Students and researchers displayed their work and explained what actually goes on at CReSIS and why their research on climate change is important. Approximately 70 people attended. Open to the general public, visitors included local journalists, KU faculty, members from the...
Dr. Richard Alley, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University and CReSIS member, has won the 2009 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. The award consists of gold medals and a $200,000 cash prize and is one of the foremost awards for environmental science. Dr. Richard Alley, 2009 recipient of the Tyler Prize, conducts research...
Climate Pathfinders Project Coordinator Marci Leuschen, who joined the CReSIS team in January, has jumpstarted the Climate Pathfinders program by creating a new project at Robinson Middle School in Topeka. She meets with 10 to 15 students every other Tuesday and covers many topics including climate change, greenhouse gases, the carbon footprint,...
What role should scientists play in prescribing climate change solutions? How can the global community share responsibility and take action toward human influence on the climate? Richard Somerville, coordinating lead author for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, addressed these concerns in a lecture entitled “Global Warming: What Should We Know...
A fusion of art and science will hit the Spencer Museum of Art this spring. It features two new exhibits which center on the issue of climate change. The first is called Climate Change at the Poles, and it will demonstrate how art, science and history have influenced the public’s perception of climate change using scientific data, photographs and...
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice, but some say you can just harness both to study subglacial dynamics. This past winter, CReSIS deployed researchers to West Antarctica for a joint seismic and radar survey of the Thwaites Glacier. Thwaites draws ice from nearly one-third of the Antarctic continent and flows into the Amundsen Sea...
M. Night Shyamalan’s new action movie Avatar deals with elemental manipulation: conjuring of waters, creating fire balls, creating earthquakes – the usual hero work. The protagonist awakes from years of entrapment in an iceberg to discover that he is the protagonist in a troubled fantasy world. Shamalayan’s fantastical world might be a far cry...
The International Geosciences and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) convened July 12-17 in Cape Town, South Africa. Six CReSIS students and Dr. Linda Hayden of Elizabeth City State University attended the conference and collaborated in outreach efforts that provided hands-on opportunities to more than 400 high school students from low-income areas...
I had a difficult time imagining a trek into the frigid Himalayas. I had just emerged from 90-degree heat, humidity, and a cloud of car exhaust in New Delhi. I hardly wanted to talk about glacial movements – I wanted bottled water. However disconnected from my interview I felt, the small plastic bottle I clutched in my hand was the source of the...
The airplane’s propellers swirled, creating an impressive noise and forceful winds from the wings of the plane. It had just touched ground near the NEEM (North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling) camp in Greenland, in the center of what looked like an ocean of white, with only snow visible in all directions. It was May 30, 2009, and Cheri Hamilton, K-...
During the summer of 2009, I participated in three separate field campaigns all focused on Helheim Glacier in East Greenland. Several glaciers in Greenland have doubled Greenland’s sea level rise contribution in the last ten years. Despite global team efforts, the glaciology community does not entirely understand the impact of glacier behavior on...
Connie Hedegaard, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy, said that delivering an internationally encompassing political agreement at the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference will be “one of the defining challenges of our century.” This challenge commenced on Dec. 7 in Copenhagen, when leaders from many of the192 UN member states begin...
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 The Polar Current: Climate Change News
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