With an urgent need to further study climate warming in Antarctica that could be the leading signal for global change, Hamilton College and the National Science Foundation will bring together leading scientific researchers April 3-5 to discuss what scientific questions need to be addressed.
Eugene Domack, professor of geology at Hamilton College and conference coordinator, says, ""The biggest uncertainty in how the earth will respond lies in the polar regions including Antarctica. It is here that large bodies of glacial ice could experience rapid disintegration similar to what has already been observed in the last 10 years in the Antarctic Peninsula. Such melting events would be irreversible and when coupled with ice sheet instability cause significant flooding around the world."
Among the leading scientists to participate at the Hamilton conference, says Domack, is Jonathan Overpeck, director of the University of Arizona Institute for the Study of Planet Earth and professor of geosciences. Overpeck did his undergraduate work at Hamilton and will deliver the keynote address, "A Paleoperspective on Global Warming - the Polar View Could be the Most Important View."
Topics scheduled for the conference include decay of the ice shelves; decrease in sea ice cover; increase in mean annual summer and winter temperatures; shift in penguin populations and changes in vascular plant density and distribution.
Overpeck, in his talk, will present research showing that the increasing temperatures of the last 100 years record an event unseen in temperature records of the last 1000 years.
"Much of the unprecedented 20th century temperature rise was likely driven by the large human-caused increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases over the same period," Overpeck says.
"As greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise we must be able to predict how much additional warming of the earths temperature we are likely to get. Such predictions are made by the use of computer simulations. Although the range of possible warming by the end of the century is now estimated to be roughly between 2 and 5 degrees, my work suggests the warming will be at the high end, and about four times the amount of warming we have experienced since A.D. 1900," he explains.
The conference is sponsored by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs, Hamilton College Environmental Studies Program and Colgate University.
