Will Greenland get greener?

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, exploration, geography, science, greenland, global warming, climate change

The main title of The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland's Buried Past and our Perilous Future, by Jon Gertner, embodies a double entendre. Even today, to be in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet puts you at a "pole of inaccessibility", really at the end of the Earth; and what happens to that ice could indeed portend the end of the world (though not the Earth).

World versus Earth: The Earth is the physical planet, "third rock from the Sun", from its core to the edge of the atmosphere a few thousand miles above the surface, including the biosphere, of course. The world is the collection of human civilizations and systems that form the environment for human life and living. The Earth is incredibly robust. The biosphere is very robust. The world is fragile. Even the much-vaunted "western world" that provides comfort, sustenance, and amazing conveniences to about one-third of the total human population, is remarkably fragile.

About a tenth of the world population, nearly 700 million, lives at or below an elevation of 10m above sea level. For every meter of sea level rise, about a tenth of these (more at first, fewer later) will have to move uphill. But the three laws of real estate value, "location, location, location", meaning "higher ground for better view (except for that seaside vacation home!), close to conveniences (stores, etc.), and close to work" will drive costs up, and up and up.

The Ice at the End starts with the history of the exploration of Greenland. While it is called the largest island, I think of it as the smallest continent. It is nearly 1/3 the size of Australia, and is about 3 times the size of the New Guinea island. Being mostly covered with an ice cap about two miles thick makes its exploration extremely arduous at best, any time prior to the use of aircraft and tracked heavy vehicles; now it is merely "very arduous". One of my favorite turn-of-the century scientists, Alfred Wegener, died there at age 50, in 1930.

Once the early explorers, combining European and Inuit materials and methods, showed it is possible to cross the ice sheet, scientists made up a growing proportion of "visitors", a proportion that exploded once the American military began pouring money into Arctic exploration right after World War II. Now the ice volume can be measured daily by satellite, on-ice expeditions can continue to determine snowfall accumulation and compaction rates, and ice cores have been drilled to bedrock in a few locations. Now the true significance of Greenland and its ice are becoming clear.

To cut to the chase: Even if we ignore Antarctica, progressive melting of Greenland's ice alone can cause catastrophic damage to the infrastructure of every nation that has a coastline (nearly all of them). I gathered a number of calculated amounts for the amount of water in that ice. If it were all put into the ocean at once, without heating up beyond melting temperature, the seas would rise by 27 feet, or 8.2 meters. Then, as it warmed to the 40°F (4°C) average temperature of the ocean, sea level would rise about another couple of inches (5-6 cm).

Compare that to current rates. Since the 1960's, sea level has risen between 3 and 3.3 mm/yr. About a third of that is from Greenland, about half from ocean thermal expansion, and the rest from Antarctica, mainly the Thwaites glacier and a few lesser ones. See this montage:

The four images of Greenland plus Iceland were made in December of 1984, 1994, 2004, and 2014, from left to right. It may be hard to see the decrease in ice cover from decade to decade. The total difference in ice volume over these thirty years is 0.75%. Here is a closeup of the northeast quadrant, where the difference is more evident:

On first sight, one may say, "It's just a difference in snow cover," but with a careful look, one may see that the ice front has also receded, and we need to note that the entire ice sheet has gotten thinner by more than a half percent (30 ft or 9.5 m) in that time. Over that same interval the sea has risen nearly 100mm, or 4". And a third of that was Greenland's ice melting, over and above the snow that fell.

Though I am a political/social conservative, I have long known of the greenhouse effect, and what it can do to this planet. Will rising temperatures and rising seas drive human life off the Earth? That isn't likely. However, those phenomena will drive humans inland everywhere, and will likely eliminate a few oceanic nations such as the Maldives, Palau and Tuvalu. Of continental nations, Bangladesh would be one of the hardest hit: a quarter of its land area is below an elevation of 8m.

I have always been in favor of research into renewable energy, primarily solar. At present levels of efficiency, it would take less than 200,000 square miles (500,000 sq km) of solar panels to meet all energy needs for the world. That's about the area of Spain, but it would be spread everywhere, mainly within 40° of the equator. This needs to be coupled with better batteries to take care of cloudy days. At present prices, the investment would be huge, something like 200 times the world yearly GDP. However, research also results in lower prices, which can only help.

Someone who denies the importance of climate change would call this book a polemic. I do not. It is even-handed and factual, without the shrillness that pervades so much public discourse on the subject. I learned some great history and gained a better perspective on the importance of Greenland in the total ice/water/ocean budget of the planet. I recommend the book, no matter what your political stance.

Opposite Hemispheres

kw: geography, photographs, earth

It has been said that Earth is a water planet. If your first view of the planet was from the perspective on the left, that would be quite justified. This screen capture from Google Earth is centered above 17°S, 150°W, to the southwest of Tahiti. The other image is centered above the antipode, 17°N, 30°E, in central Sudan. Here, "Earth" is more fitting. A view a little more to the East would show an even higher proportion of land to water surface.

These virtual views are from a simulated altitude of about 10,000 miles, or 16,000 km, roughly halfway to geosynchronous orbit. From much farther away, you'd be able to see most of North America in the "water" view, and most of South America and Antarctica in the "land" view.

Interestingly, the name for our planetary home in every language I know of is related to or derived from the word for dirt ("earth" is the much older word in English, though), even in languages of Polynesia and other island societies. The ground you stand on is your principal frame of reference! If we ever decipher dolphin languages, I suspect they will call their environment by a word derived from "water".

Worth doing again

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, geography, new jersey, seasons, watermen

A good idea bears repeating. When, fifty-plus years ago, Edwin Way Teale drove about 150,000 miles to chronicle the American seasons in his books North with the Spring, Journey into Summer, Autumn Across America, and Wandering Through Winter, I wonder if he knew he was already repeating history. I have a much-read set of these, which I think of informally as America's Seasons. Another four-book series The Fall of the Year, Winter, The Spring of the Year and Summer was published just about a century ago, authored by Dallas Lore Sharp, a New Jersey-born naturalist who is buried on New Jersey's "west coast", in Haleyville. Now I have in my hands Bayshore Summer: Finding Eden in a Most Unlikely Place by Pete Dunne, the second in a four-volume set that is still in process (and I'll have to scare up a copy of Prairie Spring).

Pete Dunne and his wife Linda chose to live in Mauricetown, about a mile from Haleyville, and nine or ten miles by road from Thompson's Beach, a defunct community that is the closest access to Delaware Bay. Not far away, kids may "take" a crab or two like this one using baited jigs, while on the bay, more serious watermen take them by the bushel, though all complain that the catch is diminishing.

Unlike Teale's nation-spanning summer volume, Bayshore Summer is focused on a few square miles of land and bay, and on the almost unnoticed ways of life that linger there, though as the area gets "discovered", those ways of life are passing away.

One chapter is devoted to an influence that could well mightily delay "development" of the bayside: biting flies. In coastal areas of Salem, Cumberland, and western Cape May counties, you'll find the most dreaded collection of flying pests in the nation, and perhaps in the world. For seven months of the year, many residents wear a hooded, screened "fly shirt" when going to the coast, and they never wear shorts. To do so is akin to self-sacrifice.

People in many places learn to dread the deer fly. The New Jersey strawberry fly is worse, though being soft-bodied, one swat will do one in, perhaps before it inflicts a bloody bite. But the greenhead fly, a bit bigger than a horsefly and armored like a knight, will simply drive you inland if you fail to armor yourself. The author writes that if you are lucky, a swat followed by a rolling drag will knock one to the ground where you can stomp it, twisting your foot to be sure you actually crush it. Maybe. Well-designed clothing and a stiff breeze are your only defenses.

But there are delights here for the residents, who love the place dearly. A chapter on recreational fishing, whether singly or in a "party boat", explains that fishing draws a person into a different world, where different values and rhythms take hold. I recall talking with an elderly woman about fishing once, and I remarked on my frustration with spending a day to drag up a couple of barely-legal crappie (this was in South Dakota), when I could have bought better fish at the market, for less than the price of my bucket of bait. "Don't tell me you fish for economic reasons!" she scolded. I know many, many folks fish for the love of it, whether they catch much or not. At the time of the scolding, I'd already fished for the last time in my life.

The rhythms of life are different enough in these South Jersey places—akin in my mind to southern Delaware and rural Pennsylvania, and to other rural places I've lived—that one doesn't have to go fishing for a refreshing change of routine. In my case, most of the places I've chosen to live, I simply have to go home from work.

For many South Jersey residents, the place is their work. The watermen who fish for crabs, whether blue or horseshoe (I know they are in different taxonomic families), or for weakfish or eels, work harder for a living than anyone except perhaps coal miners. And, as many will tell you, they "get to work on the water." Many work a "day job" so they can afford to spend the half day between pre-sunrise and the start of the "9-5 workday" catching fish or crabs for market. These are not the "commercial fishermen" derided by the shallower thinkers among environmentalists. They are doing what they love.

The last chapter of the book describes the complex web of forces that underlie just one fishery, the weakfish of the Bay. The author spent a day on the water with "Captain George" Kumor, catching blue crabs and baitfish. He did some portion of the work, which probably slowed the Captain down a bit, but was received with good humor. But there are many forces at work behind the continually dropping population of weakfish, in spite of environmental remediation efforts. Just one example: The land that was flooded to "restore" buffering marshland had been growing salt grass for a generation or two, and as this grass rotted on the bottom, oxygen levels dropped. This forced the young fish into deeper water, where more were lost to predators. Although the weakfish population is dropping everywhere, it has been dropping fastest where "they" are doing the most to restore it!

A chapter on light pollution hit a chord with me. (It's already official; before the year 2000 began, there was no place left on Earth that did not have measurable light pollution. On a map of the night side of Earth as seen from satellites, a few stand out as the darkest: mountaintops such as the Himalayas and the Andes and the top of Mauna Kea—partly due to lighting regulations in nearby Hawaiian cities—, plus one more: the center of North Korea, where the feudal conditions don't allow such amenities as night lighting. Isn't it a pity that North Korean kids may be the only ones to really see the night sky!) The author recounts the gradual loss of the night sky, first in his boyhood home in northern New Jersey, and over the past twenty or so years in Cumberland County. How rare it is to see the Milky Way any more! (I see it no more than once or twice a year)

This well-focused book limns summer for us in just this one small portion of the planet. Summer is well-loved by many, everywhere, and there is room for a shelf-full of books on the seasons, as they are experienced everywhere. "Join the club, Pete, and much welcome to you!"

Running aground in mid-lake

kw: musings, observations, geography

When I was living in Ohio, almost right on Lake Erie, one of my high school teachers told this tale: He was an avid SCUBA diver, and went to tropical oceans whenever he could afford it. He practiced in various locations in western Lake Erie, usually west of the islands between Sandusky and Point Pelee, Ontario. There is a lot of small-to-medium boat traffic between the islands themselves, but little where he usually goes.

One day, he was no more than twenty feet down (about as deep as one can go in the area) when he heard quite a crunch. He surfaced quickly, to find a rather impressive yacht no more than two hundred yards away, not far from where his own boat was anchored. It was stuck on a "reef", actually a shallow rock outcrop. He swam over to offer help. It didn't take long to rock the boat off the reef.

He showed us a newspaper article that appeared a couple days later, in which the president of the Rocky River Yacht Club (RR is a little West of Cleveland) thanked an unnamed diver for helping him "after his yacht struck an underwater object". "If he'd looked at a chart, he'd have seen that the area was full of shallow reefs, no more than four feet down. The 'underwater object' was the bottom of Lake Erie!" he told us.

I happened to remember this story recently when using Google Maps to look for aerial views of places I've lived. In this view of western Lake Erie, you can see the shallow section, all of the lake west of Point Pelee (the "thorn" of the north shore). The average depth in the greenish area is six feet (less than 2m). A few areas (more bluish) go as deep as twenty feet; the orangey colored area is the "reef" complex where the yacht ran aground.

I have fond memories of living near Lake Erie. I worked a few summers at Cedar Point (almost invisible at this scale, but due south of the largest island shown). In the early-to-mid 1960s it was just getting safe to swim in the lake, after the old sewer outlets were replaced by 2- and 3-stage sewer systems starting about 1960. Raw sewage was formerly "disposed" directly into the lake five miles offshore, particularly by Cleveland. The lake is in much better shape now.

But the water is still too shallow to go yachting in much of western Lake Erie!