Two-mile long ice core reveals ocean currents transmitted climate change
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DRI awarded prime seaport-e contract
DRI was awarded a prime Seaport Enhanced( Seaport-e) Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contract sponsored by the Naval Systems Command( NAVSEA) in August 2015. Under this new contract, DRI’ s Naval Earth Sciences and Engineering Program( NESEP) faculty and staff are providing expertise in several key areas of inquiry including science and engineering research and development; modeling, simulation and analysis; and ranges instrumentation support.
Founded in 2009 by Dave Decker, Ph. D., NESEP provides a leadership and organizational focal point for research and development activities being undertaken by DRI faculty for the U. S. Navy. In the six years since it was created, NESEP has attracted $ 9 million in contract research and development sponsor investment into Nevada and to DRI.
SeaPort-e is the Navy’ s electronic platform for acquiring competing support services in 22 functional areas including Science and Engineering Research and Development, Financial Management and Program Management.
RESEARCH
Published in Nature in April 2015, new research findings from an icecore representing more than 68,000 years of climate history illustrated how sudden climate changes that began in the North Atlantic around Greenland circulated southward, appearing in the Antarctic approximately 200 years later. A team of hydrogeologists based at the DRI and led by Joe McConnell, Ph. D., used their unique ice-core analytical system to measure impurities associated with sea salts and desert dust in more than two kilometers( 1.6 miles) of the WAIS Divide ice core in support of this research.
Many of the methane measurements used in this study were performed in DRI’ s ice-core laboratory in Reno, Nevada by visiting scientists from Oregon State University. The past temperatures were determined by measuring the isotopes of the melted ice at the University of Washington.
“ Our findings show how ocean currents can transmit climate changes that start in the Arctic across the globe all the way to the Antarctic,” explained professor Kendrick Taylor, Ph. D., a hydrologist at the Desert Research Institute( DRI) and Chief Scientist for the WAIS Divide project, who in addition to leading the project spent five seasons in Antarctica collecting the core and helped determine the age of the ice.“ Knowing how ocean currents influenced past climates will help us predict how the current human-caused variations in climate could propagate across our planet.”