XCore Plans Ticket Sales

I imagine we will see more of this in the press. But I am sure my readers likely care. This bird looks good to go and with the burst of private investment we are getting modern materials science applied to whole problem. We are now seriously overdue for a crash program to reengineer the shuttle program or a crash program to support an expanded version of one of these alternative birds.

We are a couple of steps away from been able to replicate the magnetic field exclusion lift system that UFO’s use, but still nowhere close to providing the energy. In the meantime, it would be a real break if we devised a smart strategy to use aerodynamic lift to get a hot engine on an easier trip above the atmosphere. We really do not need to be engineering through the first twenty miles or so if it can be avoided.

That gives me another idea. That post yesterday on the Pomare object cum nosecone.

It may be a fib but it got it all right. We need to follow up with a supply of money. That object can short circuit decades of painful research wit hard evidence. Anyone wish to back a real adventure? Contact me.

XCOR Aerospace to Announce Ticket Sales for Suborbital Space Flights

In a display of the power of competition, American entrepreneurs have broken the government monopoly on space travel, and succeeded in lowering the cost of space access before a single paying participant has taken a flight.

So, even if the overall economy may look down, the market for space tourism is looking up.

On Tuesday, December 2, XCOR Aerospace, builder of the 2-seat Lynx rocket-powered suborbital launch vehicle, is introducing its General Sales Agent for ticket sales and will announce a price that is substantially lower than prices quoted by leading competitors.

XCOR will introduce its new partner, a well-known and established travel entrepreneur with extensive experience in high-end adventure travel, who will outline the total Lynx flight experience, from initial screening, to training, and finally, the flight itself.

The first commercial Lynx suborbital space flight participant will also attend the conference, a European adventurer who aims to be the first person from his country to make a suborbital flight.

Three time shuttle pilot and commander, Col. Rick Searfoss (USAF-Ret) will describe the Lynx flight experience from the point of view of a test pilot and astronaut.

XCOR CEO Jeff Greason and COO Andrew Nelson will also attend. They will discuss design features that allow the Lynx to minimize its environmental impact: non-toxic propellants, clean-burning efficient engines, and a fully reusable system.

Chris Gilman, Founder and Chief Designer of Orbital Outfitters, a NASA spacesuit contractor, will join the press conference wearing the special spacesuit to be worn by all who fly aboard the Lynx. Gilman is also a renowned special effects expert who won an Academy Award for the "Cool Suit" climate control system used by actors in heavy costume.

Cosmic Ray Discovery

It is always a delight when some truly new data arrives that expands our knowledge of the universe. Of course, every old theory is dusted of and thrown at us for consideration. In the meantime, it is obvious that the data gathering system is hardly making data resolution very easy.

My own first instinct is to recall that these are electrons, high speed or not and if actually coming from a point source, are generating very powerful magnetic fields.

Even more possible, magnetic field halos associated with the solar system could be simply funneling the electron flux to our poles.

The problem is that we are a long way from having the solar system’s magnetic field mapped at all, and surely this must have an effect on incoming charged cosmic rays.

So I think that that nearby object is a likely mirage and I would like someone to tell why I am wrong. Recall that up to now point sources did not exist when it came to cosmic rays.

I rather think all interpretation is speculation until we get a network of sensors well away from the Earth's Magnetic field.

Anyway, this is compliments of the NASA newsletter.

Discovered: Cosmic Rays from a Mysterious, Nearby Object
11.19.2008

Nov. 19, 2008: An international team of researchers has discovered a puzzling surplus of high-energy electrons bombarding Earth from space. The source of these cosmic rays is unknown, but it must be close to the solar system and it could be made of dark matter. Their results are being reported in the Nov. 20th issue of the journal Nature.

"This is a big discovery," says co-author John Wefel of Louisiana State University. "It's the first time we've seen a discrete source of accelerated cosmic rays standing out from the general galactic background."

Galactic cosmic rays--"GCRs" for short-- are subatomic particles accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions and other violent events. They swarm through the Milky Way, forming a haze of high energy particles that enter the solar system from all directions. Cosmic rays consist mostly of protons and heavier atomic nuclei with a dash of electrons and photons spicing the mix.

To study the most powerful and interesting cosmic rays, Wefel and colleagues have spent the last eight years flying a series of balloons through the stratosphere over Antarctica. Each time the payload was a NASA-funded cosmic ray detector named ATIC, short for Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter. The team expected ATIC to tally the usual mix of particles, mainly protons and ions, but the calorimeter found something extra: an abundance of high-energy electrons.

Wefel likens it to driving down a freeway among family sedans, mini-vans and trucks—when suddenly a bunch of Lamborghinis bursts through the normal traffic. "You don't expect to see so many race cars on the road—or so many high-energy electrons in the mix of cosmic rays. During five weeks of ballooning in 2000 and 2003, ATIC counted 70 excess electrons in the energy range 300-800 GeV. ("Excess" means over and above the usual number expected from the galactic background.) Seventy electrons may not sound like a great number, but like seventy Lamborghinis on the freeway, it's a significant surplus.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/cosmicrays/counts_strip.jpg

Above: ATIC high-energy electron counts. The triangular curve fitted to the data comes from a model of dark-matter annihilation featuring a Kaluza-Klein particle of mass near 620 GeV. Details may be found in the Nov. 20, 2008, edition of Nature: "An excess of cosmic ray electrons at energies of 300-800 Gev," by J. Chang et al.

"The source of these exotic electrons must be relatively close to the solar system—no more than a kiloparsec away," says co-author Jim Adams of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

Why must the source be nearby? Adams explains: "High-energy electrons lose energy rapidly as they fly through the galaxy. They give up energy in two main ways: (1) when they collide with lower-energy photons, a process called inverse Compton scattering, and (2) when they radiate away some of their energy by spiraling through the galaxy's magnetic field." By the time an electron has traveled a whole kiloparsec, it isn't really 'high energy' any more.

High-energy electrons are therefore local. Some members of the research team believe the source could be less than a few hundred parsecs away. For comparison, the spiral Milky Way galaxy is about thirty thousand parsecs wide. (One parsec approximately equals three light years.)

"Unfortunately," says Wefel, "we can't pinpoint the source in the sky. Although ATIC does measure the direction of incoming particles, it's difficult to translate those arrival angles into celestial coordinates." For one thing, the detector was in the basket of a balloon bobbing around the South Pole in a turbulent vortex of high-altitude winds; that makes pointing tricky. Moreover, the incoming electrons have had their directions scrambled to some degree by galactic magnetic fields. "The best ATIC could hope to do is measure a general anisotropy—one side of the sky versus the other."

This uncertainty gives free rein to the imagination. The least exotic possibilities include, e.g., a nearby pulsar, a 'microquasar' or a stellar-mass black hole—all are capable of accelerating electrons to these energies. It is possible that such a source lurks undetected not far away. NASA's recently-launched Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is only just beginning to survey the sky with sufficient sensitivity to reveal some of these objects.

An even more tantalizing possibility is dark matter.

There is a class of physical theories called "Kaluza-Klein theories" which seek to reconcile gravity with other fundamental forces by positing extra dimensions. In addition to the familiar 3D of human experience, there could be as many as eight more dimensions woven into the space around us. A popular yet unproven explanation for dark matter is that dark matter particles inhabit the extra dimensions. We feel their presence via the force of gravity, but do not sense them in any other way.

How does this produce excess cosmic rays? Kaluza-Klein particles have the curious property (one of many) that they are their own anti-particle. When two collide, they annihilate one another, producing a spray of high-energy photons and electrons. The electrons are not lost in hidden dimensions, however, they materialize in the 3-dimensions of the real world where ATIC can detect them as "cosmic rays."

"Our data could be explained by a cloud or clump of dark matter in the neighborhood of the solar system," says Wefel. "In particular, there is a hypothesized Kaluza-Klein particle with a mass near 620 GeV which, when annihilated, should produce electrons of just the energy spectrum we observe."

Testing this possibility is nontrivial because dark matter is so, well, dark, But it may be possible to find the cloud by looking for other annihilation products, such as gamma-rays. Again, the Fermi Space Telescope may have the best chance of pinpointing the source.

"Whatever it is," says Adams, "it's going to be amazing."

For more information about this research, see "An excess of cosmic ray electrons at energies of 300-800 Gev," by J. Chang et al. in the Nov. 20, 2008, issue of Nature.

Sunspot Cycle 24 Kicks In

This just in from the NASA feed and it is important. We have been waiting for the next solar sunspot cycle to stick its head up for a long time and it just did. The long delay will still give sunspot fans plenty to play with for a while yet , but at least we are no longer speculating on why they are not to be found.

The problem we have with sunspot theory is that the era of the Little Ice Age is coincident with an apparent lack of sunspots. And the problem with that is that the observation of sunspots was then in its infancy and we are not sure just how accurate they in fact were. Out of that and a few hints from the Dalton minimum we have woven a skein of theory.

The fact remains that the forty year cycle does coincide with an observed forty year hurricane cycle and a forty year shift of heat into the Northern Hemisphere which has just been turned off a few months past and not with the eleven year cycles of the sunspots. The apparent driver that is big enough to shift heat back and forth is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and it also just shut down.

The heat masses are large enough to qualify for the observed impact in the Arctic.

The short term evidence is now pointing to a full return of colder winters in the Northern Hemisphere. That means that I need to buy proper winter foot ware for the first time in twenty five years in Vancouver.

What this is doing, particularly if it all stands up over the next couple of years, is establishing a forty year cycle that peaks with the conditions experienced in 2007 and then switches back to cool for forty years or so.

Simply put we have a natural cycle that we can isolate from our long term data that appears to a simple atmospheric response not unlike El Nino and unlinked to sunspots and cosmic rays and CO2 speculation.

Its range is about one degree and does not explain the unusual events such as the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Maximum.

As I have posted earlier, the Little Ice Age fits the profile of a Alaskan Volcano that spewed huge amounts of gas and ash into the Arctic during an era that did not give us access to the right locales. I would guess that we had a string of volcanoes letting loose over a twenty year span which is completely believable for that locale. We are actually in a quiet era and it is still going bang every couple of years.

So what about the Medieval Maximum or for that matter the Roman Maximum? Both lasted for hundreds of years. My surmise is that this cool period is actually going to sit at or above the average for the past forty years. I still think that the long term trend is toward those higher temperatures and will only be interrupted by those volcanoes in Alaska.

The Sun Shows Signs of Life

10.07.2008

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/07nov_signsoflife.htm?list1109684

Nov. 7, 2008: After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life.

"I think solar minimum is behind us," says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

His statement is prompted by an October flurry of sunspots. "Last month we counted five sunspot groups," he says. That may not sound like much, but in a year with record-low numbers of sunspots and long stretches of utter spotlessness, five is significant. "This represents a real increase in solar activity."

Above: New-cycle sunspot group 1007 emerges on Halloween and marches across the face of the sun over a four-day period in early November 2008. Credit: the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

Even more significant is the fact that four of the five sunspot groups belonged to Solar Cycle 24, the long-awaited next installment of the sun's 11-year solar cycle. "October was the first time we've seen sunspots from new Solar Cycle 24 outnumbering spots from old Solar Cycle 23. It's a good sign that the new cycle is taking off."

Old Solar Cycle 23 peaked in 2000 and has since decayed to low levels. Meanwhile, new Solar Cycle 24 has struggled to get started. 2008 is a year of overlap with both cycles weakly active at the same time. From January to September, the sun produced a total of 22 sunspot groups; 82% of them belonged to old Cycle 23. October added five more; but this time 80% belonged to Cycle 24. The tables have turned.

At first glance, old- and new-cycle sunspots look the same, but they are not. To tell the difference, solar physicists check two things: a sunspot's heliographic latitude and its magnetic polarity. (1) New-cycle sunspots always appear at high latitude, while old-cycle spots cluster around the sun's equator. (2) The magnetic polarity of new-cycle spots is reversed compared to old-cycle spots. Four of October's five sunspot groups satisfied these two criteria for membership in Solar Cycle 24.

The biggest of the new-cycle spots emerged at the end of the month on Halloween. Numbered 1007, or "double-oh seven" for short, the sunspot had two dark cores each wider than Earth connected by active magnetic filaments thousands of kilometers long. Amateur astronomer Alan Friedman took this picture from his backyard observatory in Buffalo, New York:

On Nov. 3rd and again on Nov. 4th, double-oh seven unleashed a series of B-class solar flares. Although B-flares are considered minor, the explosions made themselves felt on Earth. X-rays bathed the dayside of our planet and sent waves of ionization rippling through the atmosphere over Europe. Hams monitoring VLF radio beacons noticed strange "fades" and "surges" caused by the sudden ionospheric disturbances.

Hathaway tamps down the excitement: "We're still years away from solar maximum and, in the meantime, the sun is going to have some more quiet stretches." Even with its flurry of sunspots, the October sun was mostly blank, with zero sunspots on 20 of the month's 31 days.

But it's a start. Stay tuned for solar activity.

Arctic Storms 1950 to 2006 increase

This is a very instructive finding inasmuch as it clearly delineates a mechanism for inflows of energy into the Arctic and establishes proxies that justify monitoring. We discover that ice flow speed is a critical measure and a direct reflection of climatic energy inputs. This should be fairly easy to monitor.

I do not get a sense that the storm track data provides quite the quality of resolution needed to fully support the assertions over the entire time span suggested. That is no matter because the direction is clear and more recent data is much better.

Rather importantly, we have a clear and variable mechanism for transferring heat into the Arctic that can be studied by itself. It needs to be respected.

This does not link Arctic warming to some global warming theory even though the concept expressed is that an expansion of tropical warm water forces the storm tracks north. Perhaps this is linked to a long cycle hurricane activity buildup. Both seem to be around forty years in length.

Certainly there seems to be a forty year cycle with hurricanes, but this is the first time it could be linked to an Arctic warming.

Rather more interesting, we can propose a switching mechanism at work. Heat is generated in the warm water zone around the equator, forming large tropical storm systems that travel west ward. They either impact directly on the Gulf coast or part of the Atlantic seaboard, or alternately track the Gulf Stream north.

If the weather system impacts land, most of the contained energy is lost very quickly over land and is contained within the temperate belt. How any of that energy might migrate into the Arctic is not overly apparent.

However, energy tracking with the Gulf Stream will enter the Arctic. Therefore anything that increases storm flow into the Arctic will obviously raise the temperature in the Arctic. This is what seems to have happened. It is possible to argue that surplus heat of the coast of Africa forces more storms into the Arctic.

In the event, we have visible and measurable mechanism that explains why a certain amount of excess heat has been finding its way north. It is not linear and appears to be still at full strength. It is also just subtle enough to be associated with the very subtle variation in solar output, or even that of the CO2 hypothesis.

It is suggesting that a slight global heat increase energizes this storm route to shift heat directly into the Arctic, to some degree bypassing the temperate climes. Or some other mechanism might just switch it on for no particularly good reason. Here is where we would like to have better data from the past two centuries.



Warming Leads To A Stormier Arctic

Submitted by Darpana Kutty on Thu, 10/09/2008 - 06:40.

A new NASA study has put forward the finding that in the past 50 years, the Arctic has become stormier because of the warming climate that has actually fastened the speed of drifting sea ice.

It was actually being predicted by the climate scientists from a long period of time, who adhered the model results that there would be an increase in the frequency and intensity of Arctic storms due to the warming climate, since it led to the continuous warming of the sea waters.

But now, 56 years of data of the paths taken by the storms and annual data on general storm activity, was analyzed by a team of climate scientist, who then concluded that the Arctic storm activity from 1950 to 2006 had been following an increasing trend.

Other than this, the tram also studied the data on ice drift in the Arctic collected during the same 56-year period and discovered that the speed of sea ice movement along the Arctic Ocean's Transpolar Drift Stream from Siberia to the Atlantic Ocean has also caught speed.

The researchers have formed a link between the increase in Arctic storminess and the sea ice drift speeds, since it has been learnt that wind at the ocean surface is driving force behind the movement of sea ice. These findings have been published in the October 3 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Further the results of the study can strengthen the fact that changes in Arctic Ocean play a crucial role in global ocean circulation and climate change.

Sirpa Hakkinen of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and a team member said, “Gradually warming waters have driven storm tracks — the ocean paths in the Atlantic and Pacific along which most cyclones travel — northward. We speculate that sea ice serves as the 'middleman' in a scenario where increased storm activity yields increased stirring winds that will speed up the Arctic's transition into a body of turbulently mixing warm and cool layers with greater potential for deep convection that will alter climate further.”

Solar Surface

This item from NASA tells us that the surface of the sun is more interesting than thought. We already have the sunspot phenomena to spin theories about. We now are able to discern variation of the surface skin. This is important because the radiation from the sun originates from this layer or at least interacts with it. Thus we have another variable that was not anticipated.

How this might affect total solar output variation is as yet a mystery, but at least we have this.

In the meantime, this year has had the highest number of sunspot free days in fifty years. I am aware that some expect that this presages a wave of global cooling and perhaps the onset of a little ice age. What they do not mention is that we had a number of similar years back in the nineteenth century. It is way too early to draw such conclusions I believe.

What I find promising though is that we are actually winkling out measurable independent variables with our tools and this means that hypothesis can be made and tentatively tested to see if our ideas work.

This quiet period is also allowing for undisturbed measurement which means a much higher resolution than ordinarily possible.

Slowly but surely, we are describing the solar system.

How round is the Sun?

Oct. 2, 2008: Scientists using NASA's RHESSI spacecraft have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision, and they find that it is not a perfect sphere. During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin "cantaloupe skin" that significantly increases its apparent oblateness. Their results appear the Oct. 2nd edition of Science Express.

"The sun is the biggest and smoothest natural object in the solar system, perfect at the 0.001% level because of its extremely strong gravity," says study co-author Hugh Hudson of UC Berkeley. "Measuring its exact shape is no easy task."

The team did it by analyzing data from the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, RHESSI for short, an x-ray/gamma-ray space telescope launched in 2002 on a mission to study solar flares. Although RHESSI was never intended to measure the roundness of the sun, it has turned out ideal for the purpose.

RHESSI observes the solar disk through a narrow slit and spins at 15 rpm. The spacecraft's rapid rotation and high data sampling rate (necessary to catch fast solar flares) make it possible for investigators to trace the shape of the sun with systematic errors much less than any previous study. Their technique is particularly sensitive to small differences in polar vs. equatorial diameter or "oblateness."

"We have found that the surface of the sun has rough structure: bright ridges arranged in a network pattern, as on the surface of a cantaloupe but much more subtle," describes Hudson. During active phases of the solar cycle, these ridges emerge around the sun's equator, brightening and fattening the "stellar waist." At the time of RHESSI's measurements in 2004, ridges increased the sun's apparent equatorial radius by an angle of 10.77 +- 0.44 milli-arcseconds, or about the same as the width of a human hair viewed one mile away.

"That may sound like a very small angle, but it is in fact significant," says Alexei Pevtsov, RHESSI Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters. Tiny departures from perfect roundness can, for example, affect the sun's gravitational pull on Mercury and skew tests of Einstein's theory of relativity that depend on careful measurements of the inner planet's orbit. Small bulges are also telltale signs of hidden motions inside the sun. For instance, if the sun had a rapidly rotating core left over from early stages of star formation, and if that core were tilted with respect to its outer layers, the result would be surface bulging. "RHESSI's precision measurements place severe constraints on any such models."

The "cantaloupe ridges" are magnetic in nature. They outline giant, bubbling convection cells on the surface of the sun called "supergranules." Supergranules are like bubbles in a pot of boiling water amplified to the scale of a star; on the sun they measure some 30,000 km across (twice as wide as Earth) and are made of seething hot magnetized plasma. Magnetic fields at the center of these bubbles are swept out to the edge where they form ridges of magnetism. The ridges are most prominent during years around Solar Max when the sun's inner dynamo "revs up" to produce the strongest magnetic fields. Solar physicists have known about supergranules and the magnetic network they produce for many years, but only now has RHESSI revealed their unexpected connection to the sun's oblateness.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/oblatesun/notasphere.gif

In this diagram, the sun's oblateness has been magnified 10,000 times for easy visibility. The blue curve traces the sun's shape averaged over a three month period. The black asterisked curve traces a shorter 10-day average. The wiggles in the 10-day curve are real, caused by strong magnetic ridges in the vicinity of sunspots.

"When we subtract the effect of the magnetic network, we get a 'true' measure of the sun's shape resulting from gravitational forces and motions alone," says Hudson. "The corrected oblateness of the non-magnetic sun is 8.01 +- 0.14 milli-arcseconds, near the value expected from simple rotation."

"These results have far ranging implications for solar physics and theories of gravity," comments solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "They indicate that the core of the sun cannot be rotating much more rapidly than the surface, and that the sun's oblateness is too small to change the orbit of Mercury outside the bounds of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity."

Further analysis of RHESSI oblateness data could also help researchers detect a long-sought type of seismic wave echoing through the interior of the sun: gravitational oscillations or "g-modes." The ability to monitor g-modes would open a new frontier in solar physics—the study of the sun's internal core.

"All of this," marvels Hathaway, "comes from clever use of data from a satellite designed for something entirely different. Congratulations to the RHESSI team!"

The paper reporting these results, "A large excess in apparent solar oblateness due to surface magnetism," was authored by Martin Fivian, Hugh Hudson, Robert Lin and Jabran Zahid, and appears in the Oct. 2nd issue of Science Express.

Algae Ethanol Protocol

My posting on the use of thermophilic algae to directly produce ethanol brought this comment from Prof. Hans-Jurgen Franke about work recently done by Pengchen Fu in Hawai’i.

I have no doubt that we will be seeing many initiatives aimed at maximizing the use of various forms of algae to produce the forms of transportation fuel that we certainly need. I will try to keep up with them as much as possible. Without question, the comparative advantage of algae over any form of field crop appears obvious. Using them to convert agricultural waste and any other organic waste seems to be simply good husbandry.

What I find most encouraging is that I am seeing this happening so fast. We can expect, since we cannot see every project out there, that we will have dozens of pilot operations in play over the next two years. Thus a best practice protocol can be settled on within five years at most assuring a smooth replacement of hydrocarbons in the fuel chain.

In many ways, this will be a historic global transformation of the energy equation. Oil markets have provided the necessary price signal that the age of oil has ended and that we must look elsewhere for transportation fuel. This algae revolution will leave trillions of barrels of expensive oil in the ground were they truly belong.

The rollout of very cheap nanosolar as well as the advent of working Vanadium battery storage secures static power at the same time. Amazingly, this can all become main stream over the next five years. The manufacturing aspects are completely doable and in many cases straight of the shelf.


New comment on Thermophilic Algae converts Agri-waste to Ethanol.

Saturday, September 27, 2008 6:38 PM

Prof.Hans-Jürgen Franke has left a new comment on your post "Thermophilic Algae converts Agri-waste to Ethanol":

ETHANOL-PRODUCTION WITH BLUE-GREEN-ALGAE

PROPOSAL FOR AN ALTERNATIVE FUEL AFTER THE OIL-CRASH

University of Hawai'i Professor Pengchen "Patrick" Fu developed an innovative technology, to produce high amounts of ethanol with modified cyanobacterias, as a new feedstock for ethanol, without entering in conflict with the food and feed-production .

Fu has developed strains of cyanobacteria — one of the components of pond scum — that feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and produce ethanol as a waste product.

He has done it both in his laboratory under fluorescent light and with sunlight on the roof of his building. Sunlight works better, he said.

It has a lot of appeal and potential. Turning waste into something useful is a good thing. And the blue-green-algae needs only sun and wast- recycled from the sugar-cane-industry, to grow and to produce directly more and more ethanol. With this solution, the sugarcane-based ethanol-industry in Brazil and other tropical regions will get a second way, to produce more biocombustibles for the world market.

The technique may need adjusting to increase how much ethanol it yields, but it may be a new technology-challenge in the near future.

The process was patented by Fu and UH in January, but there's still plenty of work to do to bring it to a commercial level. The team of Fu founded just the start-up LA WAHIE BIOTECH INC. with headquarter in Hawaii and branch-office in Brazil.

PLAN FOR AN EXPERIMENTAL ETHANOL PLANT

Fu figures his team is two to three years from being able to build a full-scaleethanol plant, and they are looking for investors or industry-partners (joint venture).He is fine-tuning his research to find different strains of blue-green algae that will produce even more ethanol, and that are more tolerant of high levels of ethanol. The system permits, to "harvest" continuously ethanol – using a membrane-system- and to pump than the blue-green-algae-solution in the Photo-Bio-Reactor again.

Fu started out in chemical engineering, and then began the study of biology. He has studied in China, Australia, Japan and the United States, and came to UH in 2002 after a stint as scientist for a private company in California.

He is working also with NASA on the potential of cyanobacteria in future lunar and Mars colonization, and is also proceeding to take his ethanol technology into the marketplace. A business plan using his system, under the name La Wahie Biotech, won third place — and a $5,000 award — in the Business Plan Competition at UH's Shidler College of Business. Daniel Dean and Donavan Kealoha, both UH law and business students, are Fu's partners. So they are in the process of turning the business plan into an operating business.The production of ethanol for fuel is one of the nation's and the world's major initiatives, partly because its production takes as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it dumps into the atmosphere. That's different from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which take stored carbon out of the ground and release it into the atmosphere, for a net increase in greenhouse gas.

Most current and planned ethanol production methods depend on farming, and in the case of corn and sugar, take food crops and divert them into energy.

Fu said crop-based ethanol production is slow and resource-costly. He decided to work with cyanobacteria, some of which convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into their own food and release oxygen as a waste product.

Other scientists also are researching using cyanobacteria to make ethanol, using different strains, but Fu's technique is unique, he said. He inserted genetic material into one type of freshwater cyanobacterium, causing it to produce ethanol as its waste product. It works, and is an amazingly efficient system.

The technology is fairly simple. It involves a photobioreactor, which is afancy term for a clear glass or plastic container full of something alive, in which light promotes a biological reaction. Carbon dioxide gas is bubbled through the green mixture of water and cyanobacteria. The liquid is then passed through a specialized membrane that removes the ethanol, allowing the water, nutrients and cyanobacteria to return to thephotobioreactor.Solar energy drives the conversion of the carbon dioxide into ethanol. The partner of Prof. Fu in Brazil in the branch-office of La Wahie Biotech Inc. in Aracaju - Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke - is developing a low-cost photo-bio-reactor-system. Prof. Franke want´s soon creat a pilot-project with Prof. Fu in Brazil.

The benefit over other techniques of producing ethanol is that this is simple and quick—taking days rather than the months required to grow crops that can be converted to ethanol.La Wahie Biotech Inc. believes it can be done for significantly less than the cost of gasoline and also less than the cost of ethanol produced through conventional methods.Also, this system is not a net producer of carbon dioxide: Carbon dioxide released into the environment when ethanol is burned has been withdrawn from the environment during ethanol production. To get the carbon dioxide it needs, the system could even pull the gas out of the emissions of power plants or other carbon dioxide producers. That would prevent carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, where it has been implicated as a major cause of global warming.

Honolulo – Hawaii/USA and Aracaju – Sergipe/Brasil - 15/09/2008

Prof. Pengcheng Fu – E-Mail: pengchen2008@gmail.com

Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke – E-Mail: lawahiebiotech.brasil@gmail.com
Telefon: 00-55-79-3243-2209

NASA reports 20% drop in Solar Pressure

I find a twenty percent drop in the pressure of the solar wind unexpected and one immediately wonders if this is related to anything or means anything at all. Certainly the little that we know about sunspots seems to support a solar cooling cycle. And as far as we can tell, the effect on earth is a lagging indicator. So the enthusiast are predicting several years of cold weather.

That means that we stand by for several more cold mean winters that bring us back below the twenty year average. At least it is nice to approach each winter with a heightened sense of curiosity.

In any event this is unique over a fifty year span and the real magnitude is large. That alone is significant.

We now have a unique new variable may mean absolutely nothing but can be blamed for other later unique events. Oh well.


Sept. 23, 2008: In a briefing today at NASA headquarters, solar physicists announced that the solar wind is losing power.

"The average pressure of the solar wind has dropped more than 20% since the mid-1990s," says Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is the weakest it's been since we began monitoring solar wind almost 50 years ago."

McComas is principal investigator for the SWOOPS solar wind sensor onboard the Ulysses spacecraft, which measured the decrease. Ulysses, launched in 1990, circles the sun in a unique orbit that carries it over both the sun's poles and equator, giving Ulysses a global view of solar wind activity:

Curiously, the speed of the million mph solar wind hasn't decreased much—only 3%. The change in pressure comes mainly from reductions in temperature and density. The solar wind is 13% cooler and 20% less dense.

"What we're seeing is a long term trend, a steady decrease in pressure that began sometime in the mid-1990s," explains Arik Posner, NASA's Ulysses Program Scientist in Washington DC.
How unusual is this event?

"It's hard to say. We've only been monitoring solar wind since the early years of the Space Age—from the early 60s to the present," says Posner. "Over that period of time, it's unique. How the event stands out over centuries or millennia, however, is anybody's guess. We don't have data going back that far."

Flagging solar wind has repercussions across the entire solar system—beginning with the heliosphere.

The heliosphere is a bubble of magnetism springing from the sun and inflated to colossal proportions by the solar wind. Every planet from Mercury to Pluto and beyond is inside it. The heliosphere is our solar system's first line of defense against galactic cosmic rays. High-energy particles from black holes and supernovas try to enter the solar system, but most are deflected by the heliosphere's magnetic fields.

"The solar wind isn't inflating the heliosphere as much as it used to," says McComas. "That means less shielding against cosmic rays."

In addition to weakened solar wind, "Ulysses also finds that the sun's underlying magnetic field has weakened by more than 30% since the mid-1990s," says Posner. "This reduces natural shielding even more."

Unpublished Ulysses cosmic ray data show that, indeed, high energy (GeV) electrons, a minor but telltale component of cosmic rays around Earth, have jumped in number by about 20%.

These extra particles pose no threat to people on Earth's surface. Our thick atmosphere and planetary magnetic field provide additional layers of protection that keep us safe.

But any extra cosmic rays can have consequences. If the trend continues, astronauts on the Moon or en route to Mars would get a higher dose of space radiation. Robotic space probes and satellites in high Earth orbit face an increased risk of instrument malfunctions and reboots due to cosmic ray strikes. Also, there are controversial studies linking cosmic ray fluxes to cloudiness and climate change on Earth. That link may be tested in the years ahead.

Some of most dramatic effects of the phenomenon may be felt by NASA's two Voyager spacecraft. After traveling outward for 30+ years, the two probes are now at the edge of the heliosphere. With the heliosphere shrinking, the Voyagers may soon find themselves on the outside looking in, thrust into interstellar space long before anyone expected. No spacecraft has ever been outside the heliosphere before and no one knows what the Voyagers may find there.

NASA is about to launch a new spacecraft named IBEX (short for Interstellar Boundary Explorer) that can monitor the dimensions of the heliosphere without actually traveling to the edge of the solar system. IBEX may actually be able to "see" the heliosphere shrinking and anticipate the Voyager's exit. Moreover, IBEX will reveal how our solar system's cosmic ray shield reacts to changes in solar wind.

"The potential for discovery," says McComas, "is breathtaking."

2012 Arctic Sea Ice Minima

I have attached a copy of friday's NASA report on the current status of the annual sea ice melt in the Arctic.

This year we do not have the wind system driving the pack ice out of the western Arctic as occured last season. We can assume that this is because we had a much more conventional winter and that there was no surplus heat to dispose of.

In any event, there is scant perennial ice left in the Arctic today. I expect that the extent and volume of perennial sea ice is likely to reach a stable minima over the next five years. What I mean by his is that a natural cycle of creation and destruction will dominate in which a finite amount of ice created close to the arctic islands will travel perhaps three years accumulating more ice each season until pushed into Arctic Gyre and been broken up.

It is apparent that the ice caught in the Gyre is losing more mass than it is gaining during the winter and will eventually reach a mass minima.

Much as I would love to see a month of clear sailing in the Arctic, it is certainty not necessary.

Today the areal extent is still large for lack of wind packing, but it is also very obvious that the coverage is likely around fifty percent and it will melt for another six weeks.

As I have emphasized in the past, we are going to have a net loss of ice mass again this year. There has been no reversal of this very clear trend. The problem for observers has been that the apparent areal extent of the annual winter ice has totally obscured our ability to measure the actual sea ice mass.

That is why we woke up one morning in 2000 and discovered that sixty percent had disappeared over the past forty years, which had been the last time we checked. I think that we are a little better at it now.

And as I have pointed out last year, we are in the final collapse phase of this primary melt. The winds last year gave it all a good kick, but it was already primed. This is a normal year, so once again the losses are still obscured.

We are still very much on track for a minima been established by 2012 as the collapse is continuing and shows no sign of been even slowed down.

Daily image update

Sea ice data updated daily, with one-day lag: extent (left), time series (right). Orange line in extent image and gray line in timeseries show normal extent for the day shown from 1979 to 2000. Click for high-resolution versions. To learn more about the data used, see About the data.

—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

Arctic sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the polar regions cool and moderating global climate. According to scientific measurements, Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically over at least the past thirty years, with the most extreme decline seen in the summer melt season.

Read timely scientific analysis year-round below. We provide an update during the first week of each month, or more frequently as conditions warrant.

Please credit the National Snow and Ice Data Center for image or content use unless otherwise noted beneath each image.

Have a question about sea ice? Visit our updated questions and answers page.

August 1, 2008

Race between waning sunlight and thin ice

Sign up for the Arctic Sea Ice News RSS feed for automatic notification of analysis updates.

The Arctic sea ice is now at the peak of the melt season. Although ice extent is below average, it seems less likely that extent will approach last year’s record low.

The pace of summer decline is slower than last year’s record-shattering rate, and peak sunlight has passed with the summer solstice. However, at least six weeks of melt are left in the season and much of the remaining ice is thin and vulnerable to rapid loss. A race has developed between the waning sunlight and the weakened ice.

Note: Analysis updates, unless otherwise noted, now show a single-day extent value for Figure 1, as opposed to the standard monthly average. While monthly average extent images are more accurate in understanding long-term changes, the daily images are helpful in monitoring sea ice conditions in near-real time.

Figure 1. Daily Arctic sea ice extent for July 31, 2008 was 7.71 million square kilometers (3.98 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979-2000 average extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data.

—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

High-resolution image

Overview of conditions

Arctic sea ice extent on July 31 stood at 7.71 million square kilometers (3.98 million square miles). While extent was below the 1979 to 2000 average of 8.88 million square kilometers (3.43 million square miles), it was 0.89 million square kilometers (0.35 million square miles) above the value for July 31, 2007. As is normal for this time of year, melt is occurring throughout the Arctic, even at the North Pole.

Figure 2. Daily sea ice extent; the blue line indicates 2008; the gray line indicates extent from 1979 to 2000; the dotted green line shows extent for 2007. Sea Ice Index data.
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

High-resolution Image

Conditions in context

Sea ice extent continues to decline, but we have not yet seen last July’s period of accelerated decline. Part of the explanation is that temperatures were cooler in the last two weeks of July, especially north of Alaska.

Because we are past the summer solstice, the amount of potential solar energy reaching the surface is waning. The rate of decline should soon start to slow, reducing the likelihood of breaking last year's record sea ice minimum.

Figure 3. Using average long-term decline rates is one way to project sea ice extent at the end of the 2008 season. The bottom dashed line shows decline rate one standard deviation faster than normal, the middle dashed line shows decline at average rates, and the top dashed line shows decline rate one standard deviation slower.

—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

High-resolution image

Slower decline than 2007

To estimate the range of possibilities, we have used average long-term daily decline rates to project ice extent during the rest of the season (dashed blue lines). The bottom dashed line shows decline rate one standard deviation faster than normal, the middle dashed line shows decline at average rates, and the top dashed line shows decline rate one standard deviation slower.

If the Arctic experiences a normal decline rate, the minimum extent will be between the second-lowest extent, which occurred in 2005, and the third-lowest extent, which occurred in 2002. Even at a rate one standard deviation faster than normal, the extent will not fall below last year’s minimum—so it appears unlikely that we will set a new record low.

Figure 4. Passive-microwave satellite data shows ice concentration on July 31, 2008. Widespread areas of low concentration ice exist, shown in yellows. NASA AMSR-E data.

—Credit:From National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy University of Bremen

High-resolution image

But a more vulnerable ice cover

Nevertheless, it is perhaps too soon to make a definitive pronouncement concerning this year’s probable extent at the summer minimum. The Arctic sea ice is in a condition we have not seen since satellites began taking measurements. As discussed in our April analysis, thin first-year ice dominated the Arctic early in the melt season. Thin ice is much more vulnerable to melting completely during the summer; it seems likely that we will see a faster-than-normal rate of decline through the rest of the summer.

Building on our July 17 analysis, the fragility of the current ice conditions is evident in the sea ice concentration fields produced at the University of Bremen using NASA Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer (AMSR) data. Widespread areas of reduced ice concentration exist, particularly in the Beaufort Sea. Even north of 85 degrees latitude, pockets of much-reduced ice cover appear. The passive microwave data used in Figure 4 tends to underestimate ice concentration during summer because melt water on the surface of the ice can be mistaken for open water. Nevertheless, such low concentrations indicate strong melt and a broken, thin ice cover that is potentially vulnerable to rapid melt.

Figure 5.Visible-band satellite imagery confirms the low-concentration ice cover seen in Figure 4. This view places NASA MODIS Aqua data in a perspective generated in Google Earth, simulating a view from far above Earth.

—Credit: From National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy NASA

High-resolution image

Duane Storey posts on fifty percent loss of sea ice voulme since 2004

Nice little story by Duane Storey on the Arctic Sea Ice. The new information that he refers to is that the actual volume of sea ice has halved since 2004. This is far more that I hade thought. My earlier postings on the mathematical effect of a constant annual supply of heat into the Arctic as experienced for the past thirty years or so informed us of the final collapse phenomena. It nothing changes, all the sea ice will thus clear in the next three to four years. It can only now be postponed by a bitter cold winter comparable to the winters of the late fifties. We actually need a string of very cold winters.

Do not hold your breathe. We are having a real winter this year but I am unconvinced as to its comparable coldness. Last year was anomalous and just plain weird. This winter is very normal in terms of the last decade. The high level of winter storms is actually releasing heat in the northeast corridor taking the edge of the Arctic air mass. I also have not heard any howls from the common super cold weather we catch out west from time to time. Of course, I simply may not have heard it and as yet I do not have data. The point is that the weather looks normal if you think 2005 was normal, but not necessarily normal as per 1995. I really want to hear that the pine beetle is in retreat.

January 10th, 2008 | By Duane Storey

Big Trouble In Little Arctic

I get a lot of notifications in my inbox daily about scientific rumblings going on in the world, but this one caught my eye this evening. Some recent NASA data in the arctic region seems to point to a huge acceleration in the melting rate of the ice — should the melting continue at its current rate, NASA scientists project that it’s only a matter of years before the arctic might be completely ice free in the summers.

An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”

So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?

“The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming,” said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. “Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”

…

The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.

Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall volume of ice is half of 2004’s total.

In addition to changes in the arctic ice, there are also many changes going on with permafrost regions in the arctic, in particular with Greenland and Alaska:

Alaska’s frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007, according to measurements from the University of Alaska. While that may not sound like much, “it’s very significant,” said University of Alaska professor Vladimir Romanovsky.

Surface temperatures in the Arctic Ocean this summer were the highest in 77 years of record-keeping, with some places 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to research to be released Wednesday by University of Washington’s Michael Steele.

Greenland, in particular, is a significant bellwether. Most of its surface is covered by ice. If it completely melted something key scientists think would likely take centuries, not decades it could add more than 22 feet to the world’s sea level.

However, for nearly the past 30 years, the data pattern of its ice sheet melt has zigzagged. A bad year, like 2005, would be followed by a couple of lesser years.

According to that pattern, 2007 shouldn’t have been a major melt year, but it was, said Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, which gathered the latest data.

“I’m quite concerned,” he said. “Now I look at 2008. Will it be even warmer than the past year?”

If you’ve followed any reports on global warming in the past few years, the main consensus with most of them is that we are really at a point of no return, something that this latest batch of data also seems to suggest.

Clear seas in the Arctic by 2015

NASA published this report a month ago on the Arctic sea ice conditions over the past two years.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html

A couple of very suggestive observations are made and need to be noted. Of course, the fact that ice coverage has been reduced is obvious to everyone and the known 60% reduction in total ice volume between the two data collection dates of 1957 and 2000 has also been commented on extensively by myself. In fact, this has led to my own analysis and prediction of a likely date for total sea ice disappearance as early as 2015.

I am only able to say for sure that it should not be much sooner. The NASA report calls even that into question.

The last two years saw a significant shift in the arctic wind regime that has had the effect of speeding the clearing of the sea ice off most of the Arctic and inducing the release of substantial long term ice into the lower latitudes. The article reads as if this has never happened before or has never been observed before.

This presumably implies that a lot more atmospheric heat is now finding its way into the Arctic helping the process of melting along. This is new, then the next question is whether it will be stable. It certainly supports a global transition in the weather regime and explains the warmer winters that we have experienced in the temperate climes.

In any event, hugely larger open water areas allowed a lot more solar energy to be absorbed by the Arctic Ocean this summer, perhaps because this switch was turned on. The question is whether this is a new wind regime that helps bring northern temperate zones back to their pre little ice age highs.

It actually makes a lot of sense that this is exactly what will happen. The high temperatures experienced in Scandinavia over five hundred years ago could well be the result of a natural wind regime adding a couple of degrees of extra warmth in combination with a clearing out of sea ice from Arctic waters.

In other words, we have already reached the optimum temperatures previously established in the past and it is simply taking time for all the effects to be fully expressed.

The past two years have seen the Arctic start the clearing process in a fairly convincing manner. Even though I was even predicting the rapid decline long before the process was underway, I did not fully recognize the actual onset.

A permanent wind system that delivers heat into the Arctic is a natural and predictable outcome of an atmospheric warming cycle regardless of it's causes. How else might we get rid of surplus heat in the Northern Hemisphere?

A wind system sustained by an ice freed Arctic in the summer should be a powerful engine in spreading the new regime around the Arctic Basin.

The next interesting question will be if this trend is sustained as we go into the next season. I thought that last season's behavior was very much a part of the normal ebb and flow of the warming process itself.

I can now suggest that if this climate trend is shifting to a new Arctic regime, that the winds and related heat transfer will actually be as strong or stronger than this season and will continue to strengthen over the next several seasons until all the summer sea ice is gone and the system can stabilize.

In other words, clear sailing in the Arctic by 2015 is possibly more likely than ever.

Cold Water on Global Warming

After alluding to the role of Antarctica yesterday, I think it is appropriate to add this article from 2001.

The climate of the northern hemisphere has experienced several major swings in climatic conditions over the past 10,000 years. The bronze age in particular appears to have been hotter that it is now as was the period before 1500 and the little ice age. The current hot spell seems to be doing no more than restoring those conditions. I also point out that these warm spells were very stable, while the sudden onset of a cold climate was abrupt. I posit that the only way it is possible to have such a shift is if the surface waters of the ocean itself was abruptly chilled by perhaps a degree.

And then the question is how? We have been blithely blaming the sun. I suspect that may well be rubbish. On the other hand we have a mechanism large enough in the southern hemisphere capable of doing this. And particularly doing this to the closed off Atlantic.

What would it take? There we do not know. Perhaps a build up of sea ice, or perhaps a decline in sea ice? That is the one thing capable of a long cycle of variation with periodic discharges into the Pacific and South Atlantic.

A discharge of cold water into the Atlantic would certainly impact on the whole of the Atlantic very quickly. It is also totally believable and I hope, unlikely to happen for a few centuries. At least enough time to get the permafrost out of the soil in Greenland and to reestablish the dairy industry there.

Here is the article:


http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20010917seaice.html

September 18, 2001 - (date of web publication)

El Niño, La Niña Rearrange South Pole Sea Ice

Scientists have been mystified by observations that when sea ice on one side of the South Pole recedes, it advances farther out on the other side. New findings from NASA's Office of Polar Programs suggests for the first time that this is the result of El Niños and La Niñas driving changes in the subtropical jet stream, which then alter the path of storms that move sea ice around the South Pole.

	Image 1

The results have important implications for understanding global climate change better because sea ice contributes to the Earth's energy balance. The presence of sea ice, which is generated around each pole when the water gets cold enough to freeze, reflects solar energy back out to space, cooling the planet. When there is less sea ice, the ocean absorbs the sun's heat and that amplifies climate warming.

By looking at the relationship between temperature changes in the ocean, atmospheric winds, storms, and sea ice, the new study pinpoints causes for retreating and advancing ice in the Atlantic and Pacific ocean basins on either side of the South Pole, called the "Antarctic dipole."

	Image 2

"El Niños and La Niñas appear to be the originating agents for helping generate the sea ice dipole observed in the ocean basins around the Antarctic," said David Rind, lead author of the study and a senior climate researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The study appears in the September 17 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research.

During El Niño years, when the waters of the Eastern Pacific heat up, warm air rises. As the air rises it starts to move toward the South Pole, but the earth's rotation turns the winds eastward. The Earth's rotation is just strong enough to cause this rising air to strengthen the subtropical jet stream, a band of atmospheric wind near the equator that also blows eastward.

When the subtropical jet stream gets stronger over the Pacific basin, it diverts storms away from the Pacific side of the South Pole. Since there are fewer storms near the Pacific-Antarctic region during El Niño years, there are less winds to blow sea ice farther out into the ocean, and ice stays close to shore.

At the same time, the air in the tropical Atlantic basin sinks instead of rising. That sinking air weakens the subtropical jet stream over the Atlantic, guiding storms towards the South Pole. The storms, which intensify as they meet the cooler Antarctic air, then blow sea ice away from the pole farther into the Atlantic.

During La Niña years, when the Eastern and central Pacific waters cool, there is an opposite effect, where sea ice subsides on the Atlantic side, and advances on the Pacific side.

The study is important because the amount of sea ice that extends out into the ocean plays a key role in amplifying or decreasing the warming effects of the sun on our climate. Also, the study explains causes of the Antarctic sea ice dipole for the first time, and provides researchers with a greater understanding of the effects of El Niño and La Niña on sea ice.

Scientists may use these findings in global climate models to gauge past, present and future climate changes.

"Understanding how changes in the temperature in the different ocean basins will affect sea ice is an important part of the puzzle in understanding climate sensitivity," Rind said.