Spring Redux

(Patrik enjoying the fruits of other people's labors)

I don’t want to jump the gun on categorizing 2008, but now that we’re almost in the 5th month, seems safe. Redux, second chances, revisit, rehash, renovate, but not recoil, redoubt, respite.

I’m TA’ing Sed/strat again this spring, which was the first class I ever TA’ed and it is the first class I’ve now TA’ed twice. So, this experience and anticipated summer (TA’ing summer field: the second class I ever TA’d) has me revisiting my identically structured but much different 1st year in grad school.

And the end result? WAY better as a 4th year. Despite the angst over my future, it is nice to have a chance to go back and do something again, but from an entirely different perspective. And to get a chance to do things better. So far so good; the quarter is flying by, students seem mostly happy and I’m enjoying the experience a lot more than I did my first year. And after giving my 4th year talk last week, I realized I've passed one more “milestone” to the end. In theory, the next official talk I give to the department will be the defense!

(Instructing squad standing around....)(sed/stratters hard at work on a fluvial section)

But, while TA’ing and the race to the June 1st NSF deadline has kept me busy, this spring has been generally amazing. The weekends feel like late May in Minnesota (really my favorite time of year; have I ever mentioned how much I love spring?) and everyone and everything is out of their winter shells. Our CSA has started delivering strawberries and lemons in addition to the pounds ‘o greens. I spend Thursday mornings out on the Bay, rowing with Linda and taking a sailing class. We saw whales last week! So, here’s to wondering what else the year of the redux has to throw my way.

(Calla cleaning up in a game of suzy sticks)

Ice is Nice...

Ok, as promised, a (long-winded) post about the arctic and its rapidly dwindling sea ice.

My advisor recently attended a workshop that brought climate modelers and observationalists who study “warm climates” together to talk about that state of the science; his job was to talk about my data related to temperature reconstructions for an extremely warm period of time 55 million years ago. This particular event is used as an analog for modern day global warming, because the time scale of the warming was so rapid ( ~100-200 thousand years in duration). However, geologic metaphors being what they are, this particular event started at a much warmer baseline than at present. In that world, there was no ice at either pole, and this presents a challenge for climate modelers, because models are built upon the climatic relationships we see and understand today.

Anyway, the modelers at work on this problem have historically had trouble getting the models to match the observed data in certain aspects, most notably getting the arctic to warm enough, and the equator to NOT warm so much. For the most part, it is understood that as ice disappears, the role of the ice as a reflector of solar radiation decreases, while the role of the ocean as an absorber of solar radiation increases. As more ice melts, this feedback continues, with decreased sea ice leading to increased rates of warming. This is oversimplified and lacks other feedbacks, but that’s the basic idea. But what happens once you lose the ice?

Back to Paul’s scary anecdote. So, he said, one thing that DOES seem to be coming clear is that arctic warming happens in a step-wise manner. That is to say, something funny happens when we lose all the sea ice. Like most things in life, warming doesn’t happen at a uniform rate; it appears that once the ice goes, a whole lot MORE warming occurs and fast. The more detailed aspects of this are still debated (ie, which feedbacks are most responsible? Is it just sea ice? What role do clouds play? What about the thermal structure and transport of the atmosphere?), but that seems to be the general consensus. And that is a big deal! We really don’t have a good sense for how an ice-free world works. The last time this happened was ~ 35 million years ago.

Ok, so what’s the big deal with that? Melting of the sea ice doesn’t directly raise sea level; it’s hanging out like a big ice cube, and has displaced as much water in solid form as it does in liquid form. And yes, there is some sea level rise predicted strictly from thermal expansion of water as the oceans warm. However, if the rate of warming picks up specifically in the Arctic, the already precarious Greenland Ice sheet will start looking a lot more precarious. And when that puppy slides into the ocean, that’s a lovely 7 meters of sea level rise. And it the sea ice extent decreases sooner than expect, than the Greenland Ice Sheet will likely go earlier than expected as well. Right now, estimates suggest we’ll be ice-free in the arctic sometime between 2060-2080 (again, there are many estimates for this, including earlier dates). That sounds so doomsday, doesn’t it? I’m starting to learn why people who have relatives who are geologists often describe them as crazy…

If you keep track of the global warming/climate change headlines in the news, you’ve probably already heard some aspects of this before. But, we also don’t have all the feedbacks associated with the stability of the Greenland ice sheet nailed down. So, adding together all the things we still don’t understand about sea-ice feedbacks, with all the things we don’t understand about continental ice sheet feedbacks SHOULD make us all nervous that we haven’t made any stronger policy decisions about greenhouse gas emissions, both nationally and internationally. But, it seems to have a strange effect on some people, and they suggest that because we don’t know FOR SURE what will happen, we should just wait. Hmm. You wait. I’m buying some land way north, and away from the beach.

Adventures in dog-sitting and bicycle commuting

Ok, two anecdotes about recent activities. Ok, one is an anecdote and the other is a sad commentary on bicycle commuting in this town.

I dog-sat for my advisor's pooch this weekend while he was at a "warm climates workshop." Remind me another time to tell his anecdote (ok, not an anecdote, but a frightening fact) about arctic warming. He has an affectionate, sweet and enthusiastic (if somewhat neurotic) German Shepard who goes by various names, but we'll go with LD (little dog - think "Little John"). In the past, LD doesn't let you sleep in much, but I thought I had it all figured out. After he goes out first thing, pull the covers over my head when he comes back in. On first pass, he couldn't stick his nose in my face and lick me. So, instead, he walked around and jumped on the bed and proceeded to bat at the back of my head (still under the covers) until I couldn't take it anymore. I think he thought I was dead. So I didn't sleep in Saturday morning. The best part of this was while explaining this story to Sarah, Dai came back to the dinner table mid-story, looked confused and said, "Do we need to have a conversation about the kinds of people you should date?"

In other news, while sitting at the stoplight today at Bay and Mission, the cyclist in front of me turned around, gave me a nod, and then asked me if I'd seen the accident. "What accident?" I said. Apparently, a cyclist was killed early today at that intersection by a quarry truck. Same place as a fatal accident about a year ago, and the scene of many a non-fatal accident. What I find weird is that Santa Cruz is such a "bike friendly" town. The climate is great for it, bike lanes everywhere, campus and local public transportation do a great job of moving bikes, so you can at least ride downhill home (even if you don't want to climb up the marine terraces TO school). But everyone I know can name at least one occasion where they've nearly been hit and know of at least two people who HAVE been hit. I can think of three folks in our department alone who have been hit by cars, as well as my housemate. So, this prompted a conversation about how to make drivers more aware of cyclists, and our own personal lists of suspicious and neurotic behaviors that have developed as a result of mistrust of drivers. Do we make the whole process of being able to drive, harder (ie, driving is a privilege, not a right)? Do we make all drivers spend at least one day on the road in a bicycle so they know what it is like on the flip side? Do we all install giant compressed air horns on our bikes to let them know what we think when we are nearly flattened?