The Pengey Penguin News Blog
The Pengey Penguin News Blog
The Sea is rising! The sea is rising! Oh, my! Who can I tell that the sea is rising?
by Pengey Penguin - Ace Reporter
Something that Emperor Penguins have known for millions of years is that, long, long ago it was warm in Antarctica. That’s why we Emperor penguins decided to live there because there were no predators that would eat us, and it was quiet, and it had pretty mountains, the seaside was lovely, with tons of our favorite fish, and the temperature was mild. It seemed like a really nice place to raise the chicks. We decided to call it home.
Over time the temperature changed and we Emperors, along with a handful of Adelie penguins had to adapt to colder temperatures and lower sea.
It seemed that whenever it got really cold for a long time (like say 500 years) the ice builds up would be great and the seas would get lower all around the globe. We penguins know because we have to forage for food in the ocean.
So every time there’s a climate change (that is a shift to warmer temperatures) we penguins have to swim further from shore. Sometimes , when we get back to the ice floe, we find that it’s broken off and become an iceberg. Sometimes, those icebergs take the baby penguins with them and they are never to be seen again.
The following is an article from the Antarctic Sun, my favorite news paper. The article explains in more scientific ways what I have just reported on. I hope you have time to read it. I hope that mankind wakes up and tries to reverse the trend of global warming before we have a new and deadly ice age. They can do it of they cooperate the way that we Emperor penguins do.
Your Pal,
Pengey Penguin - Ace Reporter
Rich Layer
Courtesy: Antarctic Sun
From Staff Reports
Antarctica once enjoyed summer-time temperatures that averaged 10 degrees Celsius — a climate more suited for a warm fleece than a thick parka — about 15.7 million years ago.
That’s the conclusion scientists drew from the discovery of a thick layer of fossils from marine algae and the pollen of woody plants in a sediment core drilled into the seafloor of Mc Murdo Sound in 2007.
Researchers with the Antarctic Geological DRILLing Program (ANDRILL) published their research this month in the issue of Geology, the journal of the Geological Society of America.
Sophie Warny , an assistant professor of geology and geophysics at Louisiana State University , found the first indication of the warm period while studying samples from the project last year. One sample, she said in a press release, stood out as a complete anomaly.
“First I thought it was a mistake, that it was a sample from another location, not Antarctica, because of the unusual abundance in microscopic fossil cysts of marine algae called dinoflagellates. But it turned out not to be a mistake, it was just an amazingly rich layer,” Warny said.
ANDRILL took two sediment cores near the U.S. Antarctic Program’s Mc Murdo Station over two successive field seasons beginning in 2006. The $30 million ANDRILL program was one of the premiere projects of the International Polar Year , a two-year scientific campaign that officially ended in March 2009. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded about two-third of the program, with international partners New Zealand, Italy and Germany funding the remainder.
The microscopic fossils were found in unusual abundance in a two-meter-thick layer from the 2007 core of seafloor sediments that measured more than 1,100 meters long.
“We all analyzed the new samples and saw a 2,000-fold increase in two species of fossil dinoflagellate cysts, a five-fold increase in freshwater algae and up to an 80-fold increase in terrestrial pollen,” Warny said. “Together, these shifts in the microfossil assemblages represent a relatively short period of time during which Antarctica became abruptly much warmer.”
This apparent bloom of life in Antarctica occurred during a generally warm time referred to as the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum, according to the scientists. This was a time when global temperatures were warmer than at present. It could serve as an analogue to how the ice sheets of today may respond to warming temperatures in the coming century.
“This event will lead to a better understanding of global connections and climate forcing,” said David Harwood , professor of geosciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and research director for ANDRILL’s Science Management Office. “In other words, it will provide a better understanding of how external factors imposed fluctuations in Earth’s climate system.”
ANDRILL scientists say these findings corroborate and expand evidence for lakes and vegetation farther inland in the nearby McMurdo Dry Valleys . In that separate study, also funded by the NSF, scientists discovered the last traces of tundra in the form of fossilized plants and insects.
That research team — headed by David Marchant , an earth scientist at Boston University , and Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis , geoscientists at North Dakota State University — concluded from fossilized evidence that the climate cooled abruptly about 14 million years ago. Their findings appeared in the Aug. 4, 2008 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Earlier this year, ANDRILL scientists published two papers in the journal Nature, including one that suggested even a slight rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, one of the gases that drives global warming, affects the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). The ice sheet contains enough ice to raise sea level by about six meters.
The evidence from the 2006 core, nearly 1,300 meters long, traveled back in time to the Pliocene era, roughly 2 million to 5 million years ago. During that era, Antarctica was also warmer than today, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were higher. Data from the core indicate the ice sheet advanced and retreated numerous times in response to climate changes.
“Geological archives, such as the ANDRILL core, highlight the risk that a significant body of permanent Antarctic ice could be lost within the next century as Earth’s climate continues to warm,” said Tim Naish , director of Victoria University of Wellington's Antarctic Research Centre and co-chief scientist during the first ANDRILL field season.
“Based on ANDRILL data combined with computer models of ice sheet behavior, collapse of the entire WAIS is likely to occur on the order of 1,000 years, but recent studies show that melting has already begun,” said Naish when Nature published the papers in March 2009.
A Long Time Ago in Antarctica
Sunday, January 17, 2010