The Features of the week have started publishing again here at Arctic Portal. Every other Friday we post a new feature.
Todays feature is about the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. The powerful institution is seeking a renewable energy specialist.
ACEP has been developing various research projects. They include diesel efficiency, energy economics, energy storage, geothermal, biomass, methane capture, alternative fuels, in-river hydro, tidal energy, and wind power.
University of Colorado Boulder Professor Gifford Miller is shown here collecting dead plant samples from beneath a Baffin Island ice cap. (Photo: Gilford Miller, via University of Colorado)The Little Ice Age is a cold period that scientist have debated when begun, and how it started. New research sheds new light on this important time in question.
A new study published in the Geophysical Research Letters, states that the Little Ice Age was caused by the cooling effect of several volcanic eruptions and sustained by changes in the Arctic ice cover.
The research team conducted its work in Iceland and Canada, both in and near glaciers, and in ancient plants.
The eruptions happened earlier then many have predicted the ice age began, just before 1300. Nasa for example says that it happened around 1550.
This resulted in the Earth getting colder for centuries. The global dip was around 1°C, but parts of Europe cooled even more. The Thames River in London even froze.
Disputes have arisen over what caused the cooling, but the new study concludes it was the volcanic eruptions. The four eruptions between 1250 and 1300 blasted huge clouds of sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere which cooled the Earth, because the sun´s beamc was reflected back into space.
Researchers in Hvítárvatn Iceland (Photo from Áslaug Geirsdóttir via Fréttablaðið)"This is the first time we can put an almost specific dates to the Little Ice Age," Icelandic researcher Áslaug Geirsdóttir said. She was one of the partners in the project.
"Key elements were the cores taken from the bottom of Hvítárvatn lake," she said. The lake is near Langjökull in Iceland.
The scientists studied several sites in north-eastern Canada and in Iceland where small icecaps have expanded and contracted over the centuries. When the ice spreads, plants underneath are killed and "entombed" in the ice. Carbon-dating can determine how long ago this happened, according to the BBC.
These plants provide a record of the icecaps' sizes at various times - and therefore, indirectly, of the local temperature.
An additional site at Hvítarvatn in Iceland yielded records of how much sediment was carried by a glacier in different decades, indicating changes in its thickness.
When the researchers plugged in the sequence of eruptions into a computer model of climate, they found that the short but intense burst of cooling was enough to initiate growth of summer ice sheets around the Arctic Ocean, as well as glaciers.
The extra ice in turn reflected more solar radiation back into space, and weakened the Atlantic Ocean circulation commonly known as the Gulf Stream.
The eruptions are known to cool the earth for a short period of time, not 8000 years, but the scientists have discovered how this happened.
An LNG tanker (Photo: GettyImages)Many large vessels have to be strengthened to be able to sail in ice. Large companies are testing their fleets in order to be able to sail through the northern sea route.
Gazprom is one of them which is working with Sovcomflot to carry out test for LNG tankers in ice.
Gazprom director Aleksei Miller and Sovcomflot´s General Director Sergei Frank met last week and concluded in a press release:
"The relevance of LNG shipping along the Northern Sea Route to the Asian-Pacific region in growing quickly. With regard to gas exports to the region, the development of LNG production is an absolute priority in comparison with pipeline deliveries. Consequently, the deliveries of Russian LNG through the Northern Sea Route allows us to significantly reduce transportation costs, thus making the LNG highly competitive."
Gazprom is considering to sail from the Shtokman area to Japan with gas. Statoil is thinking the same.
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the president of Iceland (Photo: Hjalti Þór Hreinsson - Arctic Portal)Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the President of Iceland, is in Antarctica with Al Gore and a host of scientists. The exploration also includes director James Cameron, and billionaires Richard Branson and Ted Turner.
The goal of the exploration is to explore the melting ice cap in Antarctica and discuss how the nations of the world can unite in realistic action against Climate change.
The Climate Reality Project, Gore´s company, is planning the trip with National Geographic.
Amongst other in the exploration is James Hansen from NASA, Yao Tandong from China, Christiana Figueres form UNFCCC and scientist from Harvard and leading universities in Europe.
The exploration is actually sailing in the National Geographic vessel.
The exploration started yesterday and will end on February 6th.
Arctic Portal News
