Carbon dioxide is often the bad guy—warming the world and acidifying the ocean. But it’s not the only bad guy; there are other pollutants humans release into the air that damage our planet. And halting the release of those chemicals might be the key in beginning to stop the Arctic melt and to limit sea level rise.

As glaciers and ice sheets melt and warming oceans expand, sea levels rise by about 3 millimeters annually (just more than one-tenth of an inch). If temperatures continue to increase, sea levels are projected to rise between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) this century.

Carbon dioxide can last in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, so it will take centuries to feel the positive effects of any actions we take now to limit CO₂—too late to protect many coastal communities on the front lines of sea level rise. However, other greenhouse emissions such as methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons, and black carbon last for a far shorter time, anywhere from a week to a decade.

Previous research has shown that a sharp reduction in emissions of these shorter-lived pollutants beginning in 2015 could offset warming temperatures by up to 50 percent by 2050. Researchers at Scripps Institution for Oceanography, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Climate Central decided to study how the same reductions in these pollutants might affect the rate of sea level rise. The team found that such cuts could dramatically slow rising sea levels—to an estimated 22 to 42 percent by 2100.

The research is published in Nature Climate Change.

“It is still not too late, by stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and reducing emissions of shorter-lived pollutants, to lower the rate of warming and reduce sea level rise,” says co-author Veerabhadran Ramanathan of Scripps. “The large role of the shorter-lived pollutants is encouraging since technologies are available to drastically cut their emissions.”

Methane emissions can come from waste, agricultural practices and burning natural gas. Tropospheric ozone is often called the bad ozone and results from the interaction of sunlight with chemicals emitted by burning fossil fuels. Hydrofluorocarbons are emitted from refrigeration and air conditioning. And black carbon is basically soot—caused by diesel fuels and burning biomass like wood, a basic fuel source in many developing nations.

“It must be remembered that carbon dioxide is still the most important factor in sea level rise over the long term,” says NCAR’s Warren Washington, another co-author. “But we can make a real difference in the next several decades by reducing other emissions.”

Image: NASA

A team of scientists, led by Stanford’s Kevin Arrigo, broke through some of the Arctic ice last July as part of the NASA ICESCAPE mission and found the complete opposite—abundant life!

“If someone had asked me before the expedition whether we would see under-ice blooms, I would have told them it was impossible,” says Arrigo. “This discovery was a complete surprise.”

The researchers discovered an abundance of phytoplankton—microscopic life that forms the base of the marine food chain. Phytoplankton require sunlight for photosynthesis, just like plants. And sunlight has a tough time penetrating thick sea ice.

But that thick sea ice is changing. Not only are warmer temperatures thinning the ice, but as the ice melts in summer, it forms pools of water that act like transient skylights and magnifying lenses. These pools focus sunlight through the ice and into the ocean, where currents steer nutrient-rich deep waters up toward the surface. Phytoplankton under the ice evolved to take advantage of this narrow window of light and nutrients.

The phytoplankton displayed extreme activity, doubling in number more than once a day. Blooms in open waters grow at a much slower rate, doubling in two to three days. These growth rates are among the highest ever measured for polar waters. Researchers estimate that phytoplankton production under the ice in parts of the Arctic could be up to 10 times higher than in the nearby open ocean.

The phytoplankton bloom discovered by Arrigo and his colleagues in the Chukchi Sea (just north of Alaska) extends tens of meters deep in spots and about 100 kilometers (62 miles) across.

“At this point we don’t know whether these rich phytoplankton blooms have been happening in the Arctic for a long time and we just haven’t observed them before,” Arrigo says. “These blooms could become more widespread in the future, however, if the Arctic sea ice cover continues to thin.”

The discovery of these previously unknown under-ice blooms could have serious implications for the broader Arctic ecosystem, including migratory species such as whales and birds. Phytoplankton are eaten by small ocean animals, which are eaten by larger fish and ocean animals.

“It could make it harder and harder for migratory species to time their life cycles to be in the Arctic when the bloom is at its peak,” Arrigo says. “If their food supply is coming earlier, they might be missing the boat.”

The research is published this week in Science.

Image: NASA

The Arctic sea ice always fluctuates with the seasons, with the maximum extent usually occurring between February 18 and March 31, before the “melting season” begins with rising spring temperatures.

The NSIDC research team believes this year’s annual maximum ice extent occurred on March 7. The maximum ice extent was 463,000 square miles below the 1979-2000 average, an area slightly larger than the states of Texas and California combined. The 2011 measurements were tied with those from 2006 as the lowest maximum sea ice extents measured since satellite record keeping began in 1979.

Because of the spiraling downward trend of Arctic sea ice extent in the last decade, some of the NSIDC scientists are predicting the Arctic Ocean may be ice free in the summers within the next several decades.

Virtually all climate scientists believe shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures in the region caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.

The seven lowest maximum Arctic sea ice extents measured by satellites all have occurred in the last seven years, said CU-Boulder Research Scientist Walt Meier of the NSIDC, who participated in the latest study. “I’m not surprised by the new data because we’ve seen a downward trend in winter sea ice extent for some time now.”

Scientists believe Arctic sea ice functions like an air conditioner for the global climate system by naturally cooling air and water masses, playing a key role in ocean circulation and reflecting solar radiation back into space, said Meier. In the Arctic summer months, sunlight is absorbed by the growing amounts of open water, raising surface temperatures and causing more ice to melt.

The NSIDC will make a formal announcement of their findings next month.

To learn more about the declining Arctic, please watch our recent Science in Action video about NOAA’s annual Arctic report card.

Image courtesy of University of Colorado

Hazen, on the other hand, believes that most of the oil is gone due to degradation and dilution. He is the lead author of a paper in Science about the amazing microbes that ate much of the oil. In his team’s continuous sampling of 120 sites in the Gulf from May through October 2010, he hasn’t seen much oil– only seven sites that have oil above EPA standards. He admits he may have missed some areas.

While they started the conference by saying they agreed about much, they seemed to disagree about everything brought up: the southeast plume that came out of the well; the oil on the surface, shore, sea floor and water column; the amount of oil that naturally seeps into the Gulf; what did or didn’t happen with the way the oil dispersed after the riser was removed on June 3rd.

Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, spoke after the conference and said that indeed, they were both right, “It’s not a contradiction to say that most of the oil is gone but some still lingers out there.”

(Her conference was actually an announcement of the next step of restoration in the Gulf– you can read more about that here.)

But remember, the press conference was supposed to be on “Deepwater Drilling: Worth the Risk?” Rao did address this issue. He thinks it’s worth it if there were better support onshore for these deepwater wells– with real time data available to experts and regulators, who would be perhaps monitoring several wells at the same time.

Lubchenco was not so certain it was worth the risk, “We must further evaluate the trade-off.”

Two smart reporters, trying to steer the original press conference back on course, asked Hazen if the oil-eating (and Gulf-saving) microbes were present near other sites of deepwater drilling. Some of the bacteria are found in the Arctic, and possibly the Atlantic, as well, Hazen said.

What do you think? Worth the risk? Oil there or gone? Share your thoughts.

(To learn more, you can check out the recent report on the monitoring of the Gulf or Samantha Joye’s blog. Science News also posted an interview with Joye over the weekend.)

Volcanic rocks collected from Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic show signatures of ancient chemicals dating back to just a few tens of millions of years after Earth formed.  The study was published this week in the journal Nature.

It’s not just in a couple rocks, either. According to National Geographic,

Even better, the newly analyzed rocks—which reached the surface some 62 million years ago—suggest a whole reservoir of the primordial rock could still lie somewhere beneath the Arctic, the study says.

How did the rocks reach the surface? New Scientist says:

The rocks were thrown up by volcanoes in the Arctic wastes of Baffin Island and Greenland only 62 million years ago, but it seems they came from a store of rock in the mantle that formed 4.5 billion years ago – just after Earth formed.

A supporting article in Nature describes the importance of this evidence:

[Earth’s] primordial building blocks of iron-rich metal, oxides, silicate minerals, and volatile elements and compounds have been transformed over geological time into the modern-day structure of core, mantle, crust, ocean and atmosphere.

“This was a key phase in the evolution of the Earth,” says co-author Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. “It set the stage for everything that came after.”

Because the Earth “recycles its building blocks so thoroughly” (National Geographic) through “billions of years of melting and geological churning” (ScienceDaily) by “forces that shook and scrambled our planet” (80beats, Discover), these primordial rocks generally do not exist. In fact, as National Geographic states, “Why the reservoir survived remains a mystery.”

But the fact that it did survive excites geologists. From New Scientist:

If the dates are right… these rocks were undisturbed for almost all of Earth’s history, and so hold chemical clues to our planet’s origin. It is widely thought that Earth was assembled from material similar to that found in meteorites called chondrites. But Baffin’s ancient rocks are different: they contain less of certain heavy elements than chondrites do.

What happened to these elements could be the next clue in this ancient mystery…

Want more information about the Earth’s formation? Stay tuned for the Academy’s next planetarium show, Life: A Cosmic Story. Opening November 6th, the film will take audiences through Earth’s history and describe the geological evidence for the origin of life.

Creative Commons image by Angsar Walker

This is the first oceanographic research voyage sponsored by NASA.  The ICESCAPE (Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment) mission plans to take an up-close look at how changing conditions in the Arctic are affecting the ocean’s chemistry and ecosystems that play a critical role in global climate change.

NASA is hoping that this mission enhances the satellite data that already is collected of the area. More than 40 scientists, including six from Stanford University, will spend five weeks at sea sampling the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the ocean and sea ice.

According to today’s Stanford Report:

They will gather data on the state of the ice, the ocean and the microscopic plants and animals that dwell therein. The tiny organisms regulate the flow of carbon into and out of the sea, and the scientists are seeking to assess how the melting ice is affecting the organisms and ecosystem.

“The ocean ecosystem in the Arctic has changed dramatically in recent years, and it’s changing much faster and much more than any other ocean in the world,” said ICESCAPE chief scientist Kevin Arrigo, PhD, of Stanford. “Declining sea ice in the Arctic is certainly one reason for the change, but that’s not the whole story. We need to find out, for example, where the nutrients are coming from that feed this growth if we are going to be able to predict what the future holds for this region.”

(The Stanford team will be blogging about their adventures and research. You can follow them here.)

According to a new study reported online on March 11th in Current Biology, reindeers don’t have the same internal clock that other animals do.

The circadian clock or rhythm is the roughly 24-hour cycle that drives most living things, affecting our sleeping, waking, body temperature and hormones. The circadian clock is responsible for jet lag and that feeling you had when the alarm went off this morning.

Circadian clocks are not only found in mammals, but also plants, fungi, bacteria and insects. (Last fall, Science in Action produced a story on how monarch butterflies use circadian clocks inside their antennae to find their way to Mexico each year. You can view it here.)

Daylight does adjust these rhythms, but it’s the internal mechanism that does the driving. Except in reindeer.

“In reindeer, it is this clock element that seems to be missing,” said Andrew Loudon of the University of Manchester and one of the authors of the study. Light seems to be doing all of the work.

Norwegian and British researchers studied reindeer living in Norway, over 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. During parts of the year in the Arctic, the sun does not set; at other times, it’s just the opposite. It appears that reindeer have simply adapted to this light cycle.

Studying reindeers’ levels of the hormone melatonin, scientists found no internal rhythm, the levels simply responded to light and dark. “Our findings imply that evolution has come up with a means of switching off the cellular clockwork,” Loudon said.

The researchers say that the findings initially came as a surprise, but they now suspect that similar patterns will be uncovered in other Arctic animals.

Creative Commons image by Marius Fiskum