Newly discovered Icelandic current could change climate picture

Terra Daily: If you'd like to cool off fast in hot summer weather, take a dip in a newly discovered ocean current called the North Icelandic Jet (NIJ). You'd need to be far, far below the sea's surface near Iceland, however, to reach it. Scientists have confirmed the presence of the NIJ, a deep-ocean circulation system off Iceland. It could significantly influence the ocean's response to climate change.



The NIJ contributes to a key component of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), critically important for regulating Earth's climate. As part of the planet's reciprocal relationship between ocean circulation and climate, the AMOC transports warm surface water to high latitudes where the water warms the air, then cools, sinks and returns toward the equator as a deep flow.



Crucial to this warm-to-cold oceanographic choreography is the Denmark Strait Overflow Water (DSOW), the largest of the deep, overflow plumes that feed the lower limb of the AMOC and return the dense water south through gaps in the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.



For years it has been thought that the primary source of the Denmark Overflow was a current adjacent to Greenland known as the East Greenland Current. However, this view was recently called into question by two oceanographers from Iceland who discovered a deep current flowing southward along the continental slope of Iceland. They named the current the North Icelandic Jet and hypothesized that it formed a significant part of the overflow water....



Northern part of Denmark Strait showing the location of the newly discovered deep current in relation to the known existing pathway of dense water. (Graphic by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

NASA research leads to first complete map of Antarctic ice flow

NASA: NASA-funded researchers have created the first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica. The map, which shows glaciers flowing thousands of miles from the continent's deep interior to its coast, will be critical for tracking future sea-level increases from climate change. The team created the map using integrated radar observations from a consortium of international satellites.



"This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. "We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before."



Rignot and UC Irvine scientists Jeremie Mouginot and Bernd Scheuchl used billions of data points captured by European, Japanese and Canadian satellites to weed out cloud cover, solar glare and land features masking the glaciers. With the aid of NASA technology, the team painstakingly pieced together the shape and velocity of glacial formations, including the previously uncharted East Antarctica, which comprises 77 percent of the continent.



Like viewers of a completed jigsaw puzzle, the scientists were surprised when they stood back and took in the full picture. They discovered a new ridge splitting the 5.4 million-square-mile (14 million-square-kilometer) landmass from east to west.



The team also found unnamed formations moving up to 800 feet (244 meters) annually across immense plains sloping toward the Antarctic Ocean and in a different manner than past models of ice migration.



"The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on," said Thomas Wagner, NASA's cryospheric program scientist in Washington. "That's critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise. It means that if we lose ice at the coasts from the warming ocean, we open the tap to massive amounts of ice in the interior."...



First complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica, derived from radar interferometric data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's ALOS PALSAR, the European Space Agency's Envisat ASAR and ERS-1/2, and the Canadian Space Agency's RADARSAT-2 spacecraft. The color-coded satellite data are overlaid on a mosaic of Antarctica created with data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. Pixel spacing is 984 feet (300 meters). The thick black lines delineate major ice divides. Subglacial lakes in Antarctica's interior are also outlined in black. Thick black lines along the coast indicate ice sheet grounding lines.

Fudging in greenhouse gas stats?

EMPA, which is part of ETH (Switzerland): Fluorinated hydrocarbons are potent greenhouse gases, emission of which must be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol. If you rely on the official reports of the participating countries, the output of trifluoromethane (HFC-23) in Western Europe is indeed significantly decreasing. However, pollutant measurements carried out by Empa now reveal that several countries under-report their emissions. For instance, Italy emits 10 to 20 times more HFC-23 than it officially reports.



International agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) basically have one snag: it is almost impossible to independently verify whether participating countries abide by the agreement. Thus the evaluation of whether or not the countries have achieved their reduction targets is based on the official reports by the countries that are signatories to the UNFCCC (‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’). If they report reduced emissions they're sitting pretty; if not, they are pilloried.



This could change soon. Pollutant analyses by Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, – at the Jungfraujoch research station at 3580 metres above sea level, among others – using a special gas chromatograph mass spectrometer called ‘MEDUSA’ not only enables the emission levels of more than 50 halogenated GHG to be quickly and precisely evaluated; they also make it possible to identify the emission sources regionally, thanks to atmospheric and meteorological computer models. The sobering result: Western Europe emits around twice as much HFC-23 as officially reported. A corresponding study was recently published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’.



“Our results show that these types of measurements really are suitable for checking compliance with international agreements on air pollution control”, says Empa researcher Stefan Reimann from the ‘Air Pollution/Environmental Technology’ laboratory. It is true that the Kyoto Protocol did not specify any independent control mechanisms; this could, however, be of central importance in subsequent agreements with binding emission targets...



The Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps, where the atmospheric measurements in this study were taken, shot by Peter Alder, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Nigeria launches two satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters

Welcome to space, Nigeria! From the International Business Times: The "NigeriaSat-2" and "NigeriaSat-X" spacecraft were lofted into orbit aboard a Russian Dnepr rocket from a launch pad in the town of Yasny, southern Russia. Nigeria worked with UK engineers on the project and satellites, which are being monitored from two control stations in Guildford, UK, and Abuja in Nigeria.



Dr Seidu Mohammed, the Director-General of NASRDA, announced that the satellites would be launched in early July. Prof. Ita Ewa, the Minister of Science and Technology, said, "The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) has received confirmation from the launcher in Russia that the two satellites are now set for launch on the already scheduled date, having made all preparations both human and logistics for a successful launch."



Engineers say the satellites will provide Nigeria with the ability to enhance food security through monthly crop monitoring, advance the country's technological capability. They add that "imaging satellites" could have a variety of applications, including the monitoring of disaster-prone areas.



Both satellites were built at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford, under contract with the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA)....



The Benue River in Nigeria shot by NASA, an image I hope to soon replace with Nigeria's own space imagery