Category: Earth

The big news starting on Saturday grew out of reports that scientists measured an average concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide of 400 parts per million for the first time, which equals one very busy UGA geography professor:

"Most experts that really study CO2 amounts estimate that we haven't seen that amount of CO2 in our atmosphere in about 3 million years," said J. Marshall Shepherd, climate change expert and professor at the University of Georgia. In other words, modern humans have never seen carbon dioxide in these proportions before.

Scientists say it's apparent that human activity -- namely burning coal, oil and natural gas -- has been driving a rapid rise of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

...

The amount of carbon dioxide varies daily somewhat and has cycled historically in accordance with changes in the Earth's orbit, a phenomenon known as Milankovitch cycles. But the exponential rise in carbon dioxide levels since the Industrial Revolution is far out of the ordinary, experts say.

The number 400 parts per million is symbolic of what many scientists believe to be the inevitable growth of this gas in our atmosphere, Shepherd said. Getting to this number was to be expected.

"It also is kind of a warning sign or red flag that hey, we really need to tackle this problem," he said. "It's happening right before our eyes."

What if this meant you had to do something drastic to cut down on the amount of CO2 you personally generate? What if. What could you start doing different this afternoon that would begin to make a difference?

Great news from the department of marine sciences:

UGA physical oceanographer Renato Castelao and colleague Ruoying He of North Carolina State University will launch two autonomous underwater vehicles called gliders in fall 2013. UGA's Salty Dawg and NCSU's Salacia, named for the Roman goddess of salt water, will remotely collect data on the exchange of water between the coastal ocean off Georgia and the Gulf Stream.

"The oceans are chronically under-sampled, and it is difficult and expensive to deploy traditional instruments in the water to measure them," said Castelao, an assistant professor of marine sciences in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and the project's principal investigator. "Gliders provide a cost-effective way to increase the number of observations we collect by the sheer number and detailed analysis of samples they can collect over time."

Efficient and cost-saving intruments to explore the oceans. Our demand for data creates new pressures for our research scientists. Castelao and colleagues at other institutions are working together to create and implement new solutions. Congratulations and we look forward to the launch of Salty Dawg and Salacia later this year.

Image: UGA photo of Renato Castelao and the glider Salty Dawg

NASA and a Franklin alumnus have made a very magnanimous gesture toward the College and UGA:

The University of Georgia and its Franklin College of Arts and Sciences received the honor after the Kepler mission, NASA's first mission capable of finding earth-size planets, confirmed in 2012 the existence of three new planets in the system known as Kepler-37. This year, NASA authorized the nickname designation of this planetary system as UGA-1785.

The announcement was made in a letter from NASA Ames Research Center Director S. Pete Worden to Franklin College Dean Alan T. Dorsey in March 2013. Roger C. Hunter, a Franklin College alumnus, presented the letter to Dorsey during a recent visit to campus.

It has been a very big week for NASA and Kepler Mission and we are proud to be a small part of it. This is a great story, and one we will tell often in the years to come. Our thanks to Roger Hunter for this terrific honor. Let us continue to boldly go.

Image: NASA illustration of 'UGA-1785'

But in April we schedule events designed to highlight the importance of sustainable living:

From April 22-27, the UGA Office of Sustainability, Students for Environmental Action and other campus and community organizations will host events highlighting opportunities ranging from alternative transportation and local food to water resource preservation and career insights from industry leaders.

UGA Earth Week is held in conjunction with Athens-Clarke County Green Fest, a community-wide event that provides citizens with the opportunity to increase their awareness of and interest in improving the environment of their homes, yards, businesses and communities.

Creating the Office of Sustainability was a good step for a community with the size and impact of ours; we can and should do much more to encourage living within our means. Check the complete schedule at the link(s) and use these events to learn more about what you can do. Because every week is Earth Week.

On Saturday March 16, Jennifer Birch, assistant professor in the department of anthropology, and students from the Student Association for Archaeological Sciences hosted a public archaeology day for the Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society. The dig took place at the Raccoon Ridge site, north of Madison, GA. This location was the site of two prehistoric village occupations, one dating to the Late Woodland period ca. AD 900-1150 AD and the other to the Late Mississippian period ca. AD 1350-1500. The volunteer excavators uncovered pottery and stone tools from three excavation units.

The UGA field school in archaeology will be returning to the site this summer to continue excavations targeted at uncovering the remains of structures, trash pits, and other features associated with the Late Woodland occupation of the site in order to help us better understand this often-overlooked chapter in the prehistoric of Georgia.

Image: from the March 16 dig, courtesy of Dr. Birch.
 

We have only begun to reckon with the growing inventory of atmospheric carbon dioxide and its effects on the planet. Up until now, most of that has taken the shape of wondering how to reduce the production of CO2, and the warming that follows. But Franklin researchers in the Bioenergy Systems Research Institute have published new work that may help turn CO2 into useful industrial products. Even fuel: 

researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to transform the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products. Their discovery may soon lead to the creation of biofuels made directly from the carbon dioxide in the air that is responsible for trapping the sun's rays and raising global temperatures.

"Basically, what we have done is create a microorganism that does with carbon dioxide exactly what plants do-absorb it and generate something useful," said Michael Adams, member of UGA's Bioenergy Systems Research Institute, Georgia Power professor of biotechnology and Distinguished Research Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

This could be an interesting turning point, to say the least. Especially the re-thinking of our stance on photosynthesis:

During the process of photosynthesis, plants use sunlight to transform water and carbon dioxide into sugars that the plants use for energy, much like humans burn calories from food.

The Origins Lecture Series continues next week with the Origin of Life by series founder and chair of the division of biological sciences, Mark Farmer:

The origin of life remains one of the great unsolved mysteries in all of science.  Late in life Charles Darwin speculated that life may have begun in “a warm little pond” but today we think it more likely that the earliest life forms emerged in the dark depths of the early Earth’s oceans.  Even the simplest of cells is marvelously complex and for this reason there are those who feel that such complexity could not have arisen from natural processes.  In this lecture we will explore the transition from complex biochemistry to simple cells and offer explanations as to how the first free-living life forms emerged to eventually give rise to the riot of complex organisms we find today.

 7 p.m., Wednesday the 20th. These have all been a hit so far and this one promises to be no different. Get to the chapel early.

Easy access to precise weather information, the beauty and accuracy of real-time satellite imagery in particular, almost seems commonplace at this point. But that doesn't mean the system providing that data is secure in today's world of tight budgets. In National Georgraphic news, professor J. Marshall Shepherd speaks to the strains on an aging system and explains the problems with replacing it:

a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlights the fact that this monitoring network—which weather forecasters and climate researchers rely on—is in trouble.

That's because these U.S.-owned satellites are aging, and there are serious concerns about whether their replacements will be ready by the time they start to break down, said J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society and a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens. (Read about the history of satellites.)

The replacement program, known as the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), has suffered under ballooning budgets, mismanagement, and political wrangling. That's partly what prompted the GAO to put weather data on its list of government operations at high risk.

An outstanding honor will be presented to Henry "Fritz" Schaefer from the American Institute of Chemists:

Schaefer, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, will receive the Chemical Pioneer Award at the AIC's annual meeting in April. The award recognizes researchers whose work has had a major influence on advances in chemistry.

Past recipients include Nobel laureates Linus Pauling and Glenn T. Seaborg, among others. Schaefer is the second UGA researcher to win the distinction. Norman L. Allinger, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of chemistry, received the award in 1994.

"His work has had a deep impact on a variety of fields in chemistry," said Steven Wheeler, assistant professor of chemistry at Texas A&M, in a nomination letter. Schaefer "was the first scientist to show that state-of-the-art computational quantum chemistry can provide results that may challenge experimental conclusions," added Wheeler, "including those reported by some of the most distinguished scientists in the world."

Professor and director of the UGA Atmospheric Sciences Program in the department of geography Marshall Shepherd will testify before a U.S. Senate Committee this morning. Per the AMS blog:

The Senate Committee on Environment and Infrastructure, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer, has already lined up a session on the “Latest Climate Science” for this morning, at 10 a.m. EST. The blue-ribbon panel of invited experts providing testimony includes AMS President J. Marshall Shepherd and you can follow the live webcast of the hearing at the committee’s website.

The hearing originally looked like a relatively routine overview of science following the release of the newly drafted National Climate Assessment, but now it is charged by the President’s new resolve to begin dealing with climate change, with or without Congressional input.

Shepherd is President of the American Meteorological Society. 

Update: and here's an image from the briefing: