Thin Ice

Factors besides CO2 - Myles Allen and Wally Broecker

Myles and Wally explain how other factors in the climate system, such as dust particles, water vapour and clouds, can modify the effect on climate of rising levels of greenhouse gases - either decreasing or increasing the temperature rise. A consequence of this is that as dirty emissions from coal-fired power stations are cleaned up, the true greenhouse warming from our CO₂ emissions is being unmasked.

Posted on 14th Jan

Views on business-as-usual - Matt Huber Myles Allen Tim Naish

Matt, Myles, and Tim paint a picture of our future, in the next 100 years or so, if we make no effort to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions - the 'business as usual' scenario.

Posted on 21st Dec

Life in the Arctic - Sami view

The Sami people of Finnmark have traditionally lived close to the land. They have noticed systematic changes in the climate over their lifetimes. Tom Frode, a Norwegian dog-sledder, interprets in English some of their observations.

Posted on 21st Dec

THIN ICE - The inside story of climate science

Posted on 13th Dec

Measuring atmospheric gases, Baring Head, New Zealand

Katja Riedel and Martin Manning talk about how the levels of CO₂ and oxygen in the atmosphere are routinely measured at the Baring Head clean air monitoring station in New Zealand. CO₂ is rising and O₂ falling.

Posted on 15th Jul

Climate change as seen by UN negotiators and scientists

UN negotiators struggle to seek a global agreement for reducing global CO₂ emissions to stabilise the atmospheric CO₂ level and keep the global average temperature rise below 2°C. Climate scientists explain why this is important.

Posted on 14th Jul

How CO2 warms our climate - Myles Allen

Myles Allen explains how the absorption of infrared radiation by the Earth and its atmosphere warms the Earth, and hence how rising CO2 levels increase average global temperature.

Posted on 13th Jul

How CO2 traps sun's warmth

Hugh Mortimer and Neil Bowles explain how the absorption of heat by greenhouse gases such as CO2 and water can be measured with a spectrometer.

Posted on 12th Jul

How CO2 warms the climate - Ray Pierrehumbert

Ray Pierrehumbert explains in terms of the physics of what happens high up in the atmosphere, how rising levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide result in warming of the Earth's surface.

Posted on 11th Jul

Taking the temperature - Myles Allen and Phil Jones

It is measured daily around the world, but as Myles notes it's the long term temperature trends that are important.  Phil discusses the historical record  from weather stations world-wide, and proxy records going back thousands of years

Posted on 10th Jul

Shrinking tropical glaciers - Lonnie Thompson

Lonnie describes his life's mission to retrieve the climate record in tropical glaciers from the world's highest mountains before they melt.

Posted on 9th Jul

The Polar Plateau Part 1 - Getting there

Dan Dixon, PhD student,  describes his first flight in to join Paul Mayewski's team at the start of their 800 km over-snow ice-coring traverse from the head of the Byrd Glacier to the South Pole.

Posted on 8th Jul

The Polar Plateau Part 2 - Travelling across the ice

Paul and Dan talk about the challenges of a 3 month over-snow traverse  for both vehicles and people at elevations at times exceeding 3000 m and temperatures below -30ºC.

Posted on 7th Jul

Digging a snow pit in Antarctica - Nancy Bertler

Nancy Bertler and team dig a 4-m-deep snow pit for sampling layers of snow that represent the last 40 years or so. This is how they link modern instrumental observations with the record of past climate in the ice.

Posted on 6th Jul

The Polar Plateau Part 3 - Coring for climate history

Paul and Dan explain the drilling process for recovering ice cores. At each station they core down ~200 m, recording climate back ~1000 years. Laboratory results indicate climate here is already changing.

Posted on 6th Jul

Analysing an ice core - Nancy Bertler

Nancy introduces us to an ice core facility and shows how ice cores are sampled centimetre by centimetre for chemical and isotopic analyses for past temperature, wind, sea ice extent, snow source and other variables.

Posted on 5th Jul

Voyage to the Southern Ocean - Part 1 Heading out to sea

Lionel and Mike reflect on both the excitement and challenges in going to sea. They also talk about the main goals of their work, along with James Rae.

Posted on 5th Jul

Voyage to the Southern Ocean - Part 2 On station

Lionel and Liz explain the  CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) instrument with bottles attached for collecting water at various depths. Niki shows us the temperature profile after the CTD is hauled up.

Posted on 4th Jul

Voyage to the Southern Ocean - Part 3 Oceans and climate

James and Lionel explain in a simple way what drives ocean circulation. Craig and Mike make some key points on ocean heat capacity and how it influences the pace of climate change.

Posted on 3rd Jul

Voyage to the Southern Ocean - Part 4 Thermohaline Circulation

Wally and Lionel talk about the density-driven Thermohaline Circulation, and Craig introduces us to Antarctic sea ice, which helps drive it. Anders links the THC to changes in climate.

Posted on 2nd Jul

Voyage to the Southern Ocean - Part 5 Taking the pulse

Scott and Craig describe the recovery and redeployment of a mooring left in the ocean to record temperature, salinity and currents at various depths through time. Lionel and Mike reflect on the results.

Posted on 1st Jul

Voyage to the Southern Ocean - Part 6 Oceans and CO2

Lionel and James explain how CO2 is taken up by the oceans. Lisa Northcote filters surface water to measure CO2 uptake by biota. Scott shows a coring operation to measure the rate at which this accumulates on the sea floor.

Posted on 30th Jun

Voyage to the Southern Ocean - Part 7 Forests of the ocean

Ros talks about her UK work showing the importance of abundant microscopic marine plants in the surface waters of the ocean taking up atmospheric CO2 and giving off oxygen like plants on land.

Posted on 29th Jun

Voyage to the Southern Ocean - Part 8 Out of our comfort zone

Lionel talks about the natural climate cycles of the past he's seen in deep ocean cores back to 33 million years. He and James explain their discomfort at CO2 levels rising far above the pre-industrial 280 ppm.

Posted on 27th Jun

Ice Age cycles, temperature and CO2

Deep cores into ice sheets have revealed an amazing record of Earth's glacial cycles every 100,000 years.  Tim explains how the melt is triggered by changes in Earth's orbit but amplified by rising CO₂ levels.

Posted on 26th Jun

From beneath the sea floor Part 1 - The ANDRILL operation

Alex explains how they drilled almost 1000 m through floating ice and ocean and another 1000+ metres into the sea floor to sample its sediments.  Co-chief scientists Tim and David give their reactions to the wealth of new data from the core on Antarctic climate millions of years ago

Posted on 25th Jun

From beneath the sea floor Part 2 - Viewing freshly drilled core

We see the newly drilled core carried into the lab, and analysed for a range of chemical and physical properties. We also share the excitement of the scientists as they view this window into Antarctica's warmer past for the first time.

Posted on 24th Jun

From beneath the sea floor Part 3 - A warmer climate in the past

Tim explains what they have discovered - periods between 2 and 5 million years ago when Earth's climate was only slightly warmer but the region was ice-free.

Posted on 23rd Jun

The fossil record of warmer climates in the past - Martin Brasier

Martin Brasier shows the types of fossils that characterised Earth in warmer climates of the past

Posted on 22nd Jun

What past climates say about CO2 and warming - Matt Huber

Matt Huber explains how the link between CO₂ and past climates is a key factor to assessing future global warming.

Posted on 21st Jun

Trapping and storing CO2 -Martin Blunt and Daniel Koseli

Martin in London and Daniel in Germany explain technologies for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning power stations by trapping, liquifying and storing it deep underground.

Posted on 20th Jun

Inside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Martin Manning talks about his role as head of the Support Team for the IPCC Working Group I (Science of Climate Change), and some of the conclusions in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report released in 2007.

Posted on 19th Jun

Implications for future sea level rise - Stefan Rahmstorf

Stefan explains why we should be concerned about climate change and especially sea level rise.

Posted on 18th Jun

Implications for the local residents - Katie Dugger and Brian Karl

The Adelie penguin colony at Cape Bird, Antarctica, is doing well. However, as Brian and Katie explain, if the sea ice goes the way of ice around the Antarctic Peninsula, the colony will not survive.

Posted on 17th Jun

Implications for future climate - Malte Meinshausen

Malte Meinshausen explains the problems of predicting global warming from rising CO2 emissions. His modelling suggests that we have a budget of about a trillion tonnes of CO2 for a good chance of keeping global temperatures below 2°C. To remain within it though, we must reduce CO2 emissions dramatically in the next few years and eventually to zero.

Posted on 15th Jun

Reflections on a warming planet

Myles reflects on the consequences of rising emissions of carbon dioxide for our climate.

Posted on 14th Jun

Being a scientist - personal thoughts

Dave Harwood defines science, Nancy Bertler and Ros Rickaby talk about what turned them on to it,  Wally Broecker reflects on what's  important about it for him, and Liz Sikes explains why she enjoys it.

Posted on 13th Jun

Changing attitudes over the last 100 years - Sir Lloyd Geering

Sir Lloyd Geering is New Zealand's foremost religious thinker. He talks about changing attitudes in recent times. They should make it easier for us to deal with climate change, but there are still huge barriers.

Posted on 11th Jun