Dear Colleagues, and other interested friends,
IIASA Council Chair Peter Lemke has recently returned from a research cruise during the Antarctic winter, and he will offer a public lecture at the IIASA Conference Center on Monday evening that will discuss both the preliminary observations from the cruise and the scientific context of changes in polar regions. We are pleased to announce that it will also be Webcast live. Please distribute this information to both scientists and friends with an interest in the polar regions, as the lecture will be geared toward a non-specialist audience.
The IIASA blog NEXUShas just posted an interview with Professor Lemke that offers an introduction to the topic and his work (http://blog.iiasa.ac.at/2013/11/07/interview-the-arctic-is-closer-than-you-think/).
For those parts of the world where 18.30 CET is an inconvenient time for watching a Webcast, we are pleased to inform you that the lecture will be posted on the IIASA Website (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/) within a few days.
Let us know if you have questions.
Warm regards,
Maggie
Webcast of IIASA Public Lecture: Polar Regions under Climate Change
Polar expert Peter Lemke will discuss the details of the complex interaction between atmosphere, sea ice and ocean, and the impacts on the polar ecosystem and the human society as part of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences joint public lecture series.
Watch the webcast from 18.30 (CET) on Monday November 11, 2013.
About the Lecture
High latitudes have received attention recently because of significant changes in the atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean, and on land, especially in the Arctic. The surface air temperature in the Arctic has increased about twice as fast as the global air temperature. The Arctic sea ice extent in summer has decreased by 35% since 1979, and the sea ice thickness during late summer has declined in the Central Arctic by about 40% since 1958. A warming has also been observed at depth in the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Ocean. But surprisingly there is no negative trend observed in the Antarctic sea ice. Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass, and the sea level is rising. Most of these observed trends are in agreement with warming scenarios performed with coupled climate models, which indicate an amplified response in high latitudes to increased greenhouse gas concentrations. But details of the complex interaction between atmosphere, sea ice and ocean, and the impacts on the ecosystem and the human society are still only marginally understood, a disturbing fact in view of the global experiment we are performing with the Earth. Results will be shown from the latest Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and from a winter expedition the speaker has lead into the ice-covered Weddell Sea (Antarctica).
About the Speaker
Peter Lemke is a council member of IIASA, professor of physics of ocean and atmosphere at the University of Bremen and head of the Climate Sciences Research Division at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research, received his PhD in meteorology from the University of Hamburg in 1980. He has more than 30 years of experience of working in climate, sea ice and atmospheric research.
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