Polar December: ‘Tis the season to be Jolly!
AINSE Ltd.
Facilitating world-class research and education across Australia and New Zealand for over 60 years.
AINSE Ltd. are sleighing to the poles in the spirit of Christmas, spotlighting two AINSE students, Rebecca Duncan and Lottie Stevenson , who have explored the icy worlds of the Arctic and Antarctic to investigate the impacts of climate change.
Rebecca Duncan’s big Arctic adventure to investigate tiny phytoplankton
From the high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard to the Australian Synchrotron!
Rebecca Duncan, an AINSE PGRA scholar, 澳大利亚悉尼科技大学 / UNIS Svalbard PhD graduate, and STA Superstar of STEM, has been investigating the impacts of climate change on the nutritional value of sea ice algae.
Rebecca has spent the last three years working on the frozen ocean, collecting sea ice algae in the Arctic. Using the powerful infra-red beamline at ANSTO Australian Synchrotron, Rebecca obtained rare, single-cell insights into how individual species of sea ice algae respond to environmental changes.
Her findings revealed that shifts in sea ice and ocean conditions affect sea ice algae community structure and the nutritional value they provide—things like fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. These changes have cascading effects throughout polar marine ecosystems.
Rebecca’s research provides incredible insights into the adaptability of polar microalgae, whilst shedding light on how climate change could disrupt energy flow in polar ecosystems, affecting everything from the smallest algae to the largest marine predators.
To read more about Rebecca’s research visit https://www.ainse.edu.au/beneath-the-ice-climate-change-is-impacting-the-building-blocks-of-polar-marine-food-webs/
领英推荐
Lottie Stevenson’s icy walk back in time
Ka mua, ka muri ‘Walking backwards into the future’ (Māori proverb)
Pathway scholar Lottie Stevenson, in collaboration with the Victoria University of Wellington and ANSTO, has investigated the deglacial (ice melting) history of Byrd Glacier, a critical East Antarctic outlet glacier.
Why is this important?
The Antarctic ice sheet holds 61% of all the fresh water on earth. The response of this ice sheet to climate warming is the biggest source of uncertainty in future global sea levels. Interpreting clues from the past ice margins is critical to understanding the future, and that’s where Lottie Stevenson comes in.
Using cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating at ANSTO’s Centre for Accelerated Science, Lottie was able to determine the rate, timing, and magnitude of thinning ice at Byrd Glacier. She did this by using the geological ages derived from glacial erratic cobbles (rocks) deposited by the glacier as it thinned since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).
Understanding these changes to Byrd Glacier better informs the past extent, timing, and rate of retreat of marine-based ice in the Ross Sea through the last period of sustained global warming on Earth.
This research is extremely useful for informing ice sheet modellers, as it will strengthen numerical models used to predict future ice sheet and sea level response to present-day climate change.
To read more about Lottie’s research visit https://www.ainse.edu.au/cosmic-clocks-in-antarctic-rocks-forecasting-future-sea-levels-by-understanding-the-response-of-byrd-glacier-east-antarctica-to-climate-change/