DOCUMENTARY ABOUT EXTREME ICE SURVEY WINS AWARD, ACCLAIM AT SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Chasing Ice, a documentary about photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) project, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, January 21. The 75-minute film received standing ovations after each of ten screenings, and director Jeff Orlowski took home the Excellence in Cinematography Award for Documentary Films.

Orlowski spent months following photographer James Balog as he struggled with balky equipment, terrible weather, sideways terrain, and personal injury to acquire time-lapse photography of moving glaciers. The time-lapse footage shows dramatic evidence of glacier retreat in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, and Montana.

James Balog founded EIS in 2007 to capture still and time-lapse images of glaciers, merging art and science to show changing ecosystems. The project deploys solar-powered cameras at 18 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, the Himalayas, Alaska, and the Rocky Mountains. Each camera records an image every half hour during daylight hours, resulting in approximately 8,000 frames per camera per year.

Critics lauded the visual richness of both Orlowski’s work and the Extreme Ice Survey footage contained in the film as “amazing” and “viscerally compelling.” Orlowski gives context to the imagery by interviewing scientists, including INSTAAR Fellow and CU Professor of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering W. Tad Pfeffer, whose data on climate and the environment reinforces the visual effect of the EIS footage.

James Balog hangs off cliff by Columbia Glacier, Alaska to install time-lapse camera. Photograph by Tad Pfeffer/Extreme Ice Survey © 2007 Extreme Ice Survey

National Geographic Channel has purchased the television rights to the documentary; plans for film festival showings are ongoing. Locally, Chasing Ice will be the capstone film at the Boulder Film Festival (http://www.biff1.com/) February 19.

Chasing Ice

Extreme Ice Survey

Sundance Film Guide

Denver Post

NEW CLIMATE STUDY MAY ANSWER LONG-STANDING QUESTIONS ABOUT LITTLE ICE AGE

A new study led by INSTAAR Fellow Gifford Miller appears to answer contentious questions about the onset and cause of Earth’s Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century.

According to the study, the Little Ice Age began abruptly between A.D. 1275 and 1300, triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism and sustained by a self-perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback system in the North Atlantic Ocean. The primary evidence comes from radiocarbon dates from dead vegetation emerging from rapidly melting icecaps on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, combined with ice and sediment core data from the poles and Iceland and from sea ice climate model simulations.

Gifford Miller collects dead plant samples from beneath receding ice on Baffin Island. A new study led by Miller indicates the Little Ice Age began roughly A.D. 1275 and was triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism that cooled the atmosphere. Photo: Gifford Miller, August 2011.

While scientific estimates regarding the onset of the Little Ice Age range from the 13th century to the 16th century, there is little consensus. Most scientists think the Little Ice Age was caused either by decreased summer solar radiation, erupting volcanoes that cooled the planet by ejecting shiny aerosol particles that reflected sunlight back into space, or a combination of both, said Miller. There is evidence the Little Ice Age affected places as far away as South America and China, although it was particularly evident in northern Europe. Advancing glaciers in mountain valleys destroyed towns, and paintings from the period depict people ice skating on the Thames River in London and canals in the Netherlands, which were ice-free in winter before and after the Little Ice Age.

The new study suggests that the onset of the Little Ice Age was caused by an unusual, 50-year-long episode of four massive tropical volcanic eruptions. Climate models used in the new study showed that the persistence of cold summers following the eruptions is best explained by a sea ice-ocean feedback system originating in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Radiocarbon dates obtained from samples of dead plant material collected from beneath receding ice margins of ice caps on Baffin Island show a large cluster of “kill dates” between A.D. 1275 and 1300, indicating the plants had been frozen and engulfed by ice during a relatively sudden event. Both low-lying and higher altitude plants all died at roughly the same time, indicating the onset of the Little Ice Age on Baffin Island -- the fifth largest island in the world -- was abrupt. The team saw a second spike in plant kill dates at about A.D. 1450, indicating the quick onset of a second major cooling event.

“This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age,” said Miller. “We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time. If the climate system is hit again and again by cold conditions over a relatively short period -- in this case, from volcanic eruptions -- there appears to be a cumulative cooling effect.”

A paper on the study is being published Jan. 31 in Geophysical Research Letters. The paper was authored by scientists and students from CU-Boulder, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the University of Iceland, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Icelandic Science Foundation.

The paper in Geophysical Research Letters is being actively discussed in Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog on the New York Times web site.

One of the primary questions pertaining to the Little Ice Age is how unusual the warming of Earth is today, he said. A previous study led by Miller in 2008 on Baffin Island indicated temperatures today are the warmest in at least 2,000 years.

CU Boulder News

NYT Dot Earth blog post

Christian Science Monitor

G. Miller: INSTAAR Profile

MARK WILLIAMS ELECTED FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION

Mark W. Williams has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Fellowship is conferred on less than 0.1% of the 60,000 AGU members from 148 countries in any given year and recognizes scientists who have attained acknowledged eminence in the Earth and space sciences. The primary criteria for evaluation are major breakthroughs or discoveries and paradigm shifts.

New Fellows are chosen by a Committee of Fellows. Williams will be honored at the AGU Fall meeting in San Francisco in December 2012.

Mark Williams at Niwot Ridge, where he conducts a substantial portion of his research. Photo by Ryan Vachon, summer 2011.

Williams has made game-changing contributions to ecology and hydrology in mountain environments. His highly interdisciplinary research addresses biogeochemistry, hydrochemistry, life in extreme environments, terrestrial-aquatic linkages, surface-groundwater interactions, nutrient cycling, acid mine drainage, natural isotopes, physical-chemical interactions of the snowpack, snow hydrology, atmospheric deposition, remote sensing of glaciers, and avalanche dynamics. He has conducted extensive research in the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada of California, Andes of South America, European Alps, Tien Shan of China, and the Himalayas.

Williams, a Professor of Geography and on the core faculty of Environmental Studies and Hydrology Certification Program, leads several high-profile research programs. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research program (http://culter.colorado.edu/NWT/) and co-PI of the Boulder Creek Observatory (http://czo.colorado.edu/). He also directs the new Colorado Water and Energy Research Center (http://outreach.colorado.edu/programs/details/id/392). With Richard Armstrong (CIRES & NSIDC), he leads a USAID-sponsored study to assess snow and glacier contributions to the High Asia hydrologic system that supplies water to a third of the world’s population. He has conducted a number of EPA-funded projects to assess the hydrology of acid mine drainage from sites in the Rocky Mountains and divert polluted water from the water supply.

Williams joins Bob Anderson, John Andrews, Mark Meier, Gifford Miller, Diane McKnight, and James Syvitski as INSTAAR’s AGU Fellows. 

M. Williams: INSTAAR Profile

Niwot Ridge LTER

Boulder Creek CZO

Colorado Water and Energy Research Center