Warming and ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsula – Dr Nerilie Abram Presentation now online

The presentation by Dr Nerilie Abram (ANU), entitled: “Warming and ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsula” presented by the Sprigg Geobiology Centre is now online.

Abstract
The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than any other region of the southern hemisphere over the past 50 years. But the short observational records of Antarctic climate don’t allow for an understanding of how unusual this recent climate warming may be. In this seminar I will present reconstructions of temperature and melt history from a highly resolved ice core record from James Ross Island on the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula. The isotope-derived temperature reconstruction gives a statistical framework to assess the rapid recent warming of the Antarctic Peninsula, and in conjunction with a spatial network of proxy records provides insights into the underlying climatic drivers. Visible melt layers in the James Ross Island ice core also yield a unique insight into the response of ice melt to changing temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula over the last 1000 years, with implications for future ice shelf and ice sheet stability in the region.

Biography
After her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney, Nerilie studied for her PhD at the Australian National University where she used corals from Sumatra to learn about climate variability in the tropical Indian Ocean. She then worked for seven years as an ice core researcher at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, which included fieldwork on James Ross Island on the Antarctic Peninsula and for the NEEM deep ice core in Greenland. In 2011 Nerilie returned to ANU as a QEII research fellow awarded by the Australian Research Council. Nerilie’s research focus now spans from the tropics to Antarctica with the goal of improving understanding of the climate processes that affect Australia’s rainfall patterns. Nerilie has recently returned from a two month field season in east Antarctica where she was involved in a multinational project lead by the Australian Antarctic Division to retrieve a new 2000-year ice core climate record from Aurora Basin.

Nerilie Abram working on the ice core. Image: Paul Roger

 

 

Warming and ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsula – Dr Nerilie Abram

The Sprigg Geobiology Centre welcomes you to attend a seminar by Dr Nerilie Abram (ANU), entitled: “Warming and ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsula“

Nerilie Abram working on the ice core. Image: Paul Roger

Abstract:
The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than any other region of the southern hemisphere over the past 50 years. But the short observational records of Antarctic climate don’t allow for an understanding of how unusual this recent climate warming may be? In this seminar I will present reconstructions of temperature and melt history from a highly resolved ice core record from James Ross Island on the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula. The isotope-derived temperature reconstruction gives a statistical framework to assess the rapid recent warming of the Antarctic Peninsula, and in conjunction with a spatial network of proxy records provides insights into the underlying climatic drivers. Visible melt layers in the James Ross Island ice core also yield a unique insight into the response of ice melt to changing temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula over the last 1000 years, with implications for future ice shelf and ice sheet stability in the region.

Biography:
After her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney, Nerilie studied for her PhD at the Australian National University where she used corals from Sumatra to learn about climate variability in the tropical Indian Ocean. She then worked for seven years as an ice core researcher at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, which included fieldwork on James Ross Island on the Antarctic Peninsula and for the NEEM deep ice core in Greenland. In 2011 Nerilie returned to ANU as a QEII research fellow awarded by the Australian Research Council. Nerilie’s research focus now spans from the tropics to Antarctica with the goal of improving understanding of the climate processes that affect Australia’s rainfall patterns. Nerilie has recently returned from a two month field season in east Antarctica where she was involved in a multinational project lead by the Australian Antarctic Division to retrieve a new 2000-year ice core climate record from Aurora Basin.

When: Friday, May 30, 12:10pm
Where: Mawson Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide

If you would like to meet with Nerilie during her visit, please contact her hosts: Jonathan Tyler jonathan.tyler[at]adelaide.edu.au or John Tibby john.tibby[at]adelaide.edu.au.

 

 

Director of the Environment Institute, Professor Bob Hill to kick off the Sprigg Geobiology Centre Seminar Series

Director of the Environment Institute, Professor Bob Hill will give a seminar entitled ‘The Decline of the Great Southern Rainforests: Cenozoic climate change and vegetation responses‘

Prof. Bob Hill

Professor Hill’s botanical research research has made significant contributions to the areas of palaeobotany, plant systematics, plant ecophysiology and applying research from these areas to interpreting changed that have occurred to Australian flora through evolutionary time.

During his career, he has won many awards including the Clarke and Burbidge Medals for his research into the impact of long-term climate change on the evolution of Australian Vegetation. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Journal of Botany.

His lifetime interest in the evolution of the vegetation of Australia and Antarctica has seen Prof. Hill widley published on this subject. He is best known for his research on the fossil history of the southern beech, Nothofagus, and the southern conifers.

Join us for the first in the series of Sprigg Geobiology Centre Seminars for 2014.

When: Friday, March 14, 12:10pm
Where: Mawson Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide

 

Animal Armageddon scientist descends on Adelaide. Welcome to Peter Ward.

Peter Ward. Source: Nautilus Magazine

You may come to the conclusion that the research of Peter Ward is somewhat fatalistic. He did after all, coin the term Medea Hypothesis, which proposes that multicellular life as we know it is suicidal. However, the very poison of complex life may also be able to save it.

Showcased in his TED talk, Peter tells a story of the mass extinctions of Earth’s past in contrast to the plot of Hollywood blockbusters Deep Impact and Armageddon.

He proposes that many of the mass extinctions or “Animal Armageddons” of Earth’s history have been caused not by the impact of extraterrestrial bodies, but by bacteria.

Rapid global warming causes oceans to become depleted in oxygen, which allows buildup of a gas poisonous to complex life, hydrogen sulfide (H₂S). Bacteria on the other hand thrives on H₂S, and so its domination of the planet is abetted.

As it turns out, the hydrogen sulfide poison present at the boundary of these mass extinctions may actually have a medical application to sustain human life. Not all mammals were wiped out during the mass extinctions of the past, or you wouldn’t be here reading this. Those that survived underwent an adaptation to cope with small amounts H₂S due to the series of exposures to high atmospheric hydrogen sulfide they experienced.

Hydrogen Sulfide may be used to facilitate lowering of core body temperature following trauma, to allow time for transport to hospital. Understanding Earth’s history provides an opportunity to revolutionise medicine.

Peter Ward’s work to uncover the secrets of Earth’s mass extinctions has been profiled in internet think tank BigThink.com, and inspired the Discovery Channel documentary Animal Armageddon.

Peter Ward diving at Osprey Reef, off the Great Barrier Reef. Source: Nautilus Magazine

This is research immersed in philosophy, that extends to the depths of the oceans. Work conducted with such passion and creativity is often sparked from a childhood experience. And so it is with Peter Ward.

In his surprisingly emotive piece in about a creature for a magazine of the same name, the Nautilus, Ward tells the story of a career researching a creature that has prevailed for 500 million years. It began with his entrancement with the Nautilus shell after first seeing one in a shell shop in Hawaii as a young boy. It ended, albeit temporarily, with the tragic death of a friend on a diving expedition in New Caledonia.

Ward visited Adelaide late last year to give a presentation concerning specific new data coming from research into the K/Pg mass extinction at field sites in Antarctica, the late Devonian mass extinction based on work just finished in the Canning Basin of Australia, and the Permian mass extinction from new work in both South Africa and Western Canada. He is now working at School of Earth and Environmental Sciences the University of Adelaide.

In a video interview for Nautilus magazine in answer to the question “What is your proudest achievement as a scientist?” Peter Ward muses “that I have been able to instill in students that it [science] is FUN.”

Our guess is that students are in for a real treat. The Environment Institute welcomes Peter Ward!

The Carbon Key seminar recording on carbon levels and evolution now available

Recently, Environment Institute member Professor Martin Kennedy presented a seminar as part of the University of Adelaide’s Research Tuesdays Seminar Series entitled The Carbon Key.

The Carbon Key outlined the relationship between carbon levels and the evolution and stability of complex life, and how understanding this relationship is allowing more accurate predictions of future change.

The video from the seminar can now be streamed on the University of Adelaide’s live stream website.

View the video here.

The Sprigg Geobiology Centre Launch

The Environment Institute is pleased to announce the launch of a new research centre at the University of Adelaide, the Sprigg Geobiology Centre.

The Sprigg Geobiology Centre is a new initiative of the University of Adelaide, developing expertise within geobiology. It aims to understand how organisms both alter and evolve in response to the environment, and how they control geologic processes that influence resource distribution and environmental stability.

The Centre, which will be part of the University’s Environment Institute, is named in honour of pioneering scientist Reg Sprigg AO (1919-1994).

Reg Sprigg

Reg discovered the first geologic evidence for ancient animals in 560-million-year-old fossils found in the Ediacaran Hills of South Australia’s Flinders Ranges. These early fossils provide our primary insight in to how and why the first complex life on Earth evolved and prospered. Reg was a pioneer of the integration of geology and biology in both fundamental and applied science, and played an important role in the establishment of South Australia’s oil and gas industry. He led the first motorised expeditions through the Simpson Desert, revolutionised deep-sea exploration off Australia’s coasts and founded the major energy companies in the State.

The new Sprigg Geobiology Centre draws on Reg’s legacy by also integrating across the scientific disciplines of geology and biology to address both fundamental scientific questions, such as the history of life on this planet, as well as applied scientific challenges including resource sustainability and climate change.

Professor Martin Kennedy, Inaugural Director of the Sprigg Geobiology Centre, says “The Sprigg Geobiology Centre recognises the latest revolution in geoscience research identifying the inseparable nature of life from the Earth system and the important coevolution of an integrated-Earth-life system. The centre will provide a means of bringing together the broad array of scientists necessary to understand this inherently interdisciplinary endeavor.”

Professor Martin Kennedy, Inaugural Director Sprigg Geobiology Centre

The Centre will be launched tomorrow night (Thursday 8th November) at the SA Museum.

Visit the Sprigg Geobiology Centre website

Read the Media Release

Read the news article on ABC news