The Role of Antarctica in Understanding the
Earth’s Atmosphere and Climate
Richard Brandt
University of Washington
and
Paul Smith’s College
National Science Foundation
Office of Polar Programs
Institut Polaire Français
Italian National Research
Program in Antarctica
James Elkens
NOAA-CMDL
2001
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10139.html
What are the atmospheric gasses that cause the greenhouse effect?
Not the major gasses:
N2 78%
O2 21%
Ar 1%
On earth (unlike venus and mars) it is the minor gasses that are
responsible for the greenhouse:
H2O
CO2
O3
CH4
N2O
Determining Earth’s past climate
1. Human record (only~2000 years)
2. Ice cores in Antarctica and Greenland.
(up to 475,000 years ago)
3. Tree ring analysis, extent of pollen deposition
(up to millions of years)
4. Ocean sediments and geochemistry
(over a half billion years)
The Dome C δD record resembles Vostok and Dome F records over their common parts
EPICA Community paper, Nature, 2004
Jones, P.D. and Moberg, A., 2003: Hemispheric and large-scale surface air temperature
variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2001. Journal of Climate, 16, 206-223.
T.P. Barnett, D.W. Pierce,
R. Schnur, Science 292,
270 (2001)
Why is predicting our future climate so difficult?
1. Feedbacks: two positive examples
CO2  insulation  SST  evaporation H2O  insulation
 SST
CO2  insulation  SST   sea ice extent
albedo  absorbed sunlight  SST
Why is predicting our future climate so difficult?
2. Feedbacks: two negative examples
CO2  insulation  SST  evaporation H2O  clouds
 SST
CO2  insulation  SST  phytoplankton DMS  Cloud condensation nucleii  clouds  SST
Why is predicting our future climate so difficult?
1. Detailing climate feedbacks properly to get the correct climate
amplification (example is ice-albedo feedback)
2. Improving our understanding of albedo, temperature, water vapor,
cloud cover, atmospheric dynamics of the less populated parts of
earth, especially the polar regions. (Few or no weather and climate
records)
3. Climate models are computationally intensive and there are
complexities due to such a highly nonlinear system (for example
atmospheric turbulence which is chaotic). We are limited by our
computing power for regional scale modeling.