Forging the Future of Space Science The Next 50 Years (2010) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Understanding the Poles of Earth, the Moon, and Mars--Christopher Rapley
Understanding the Poles of Earth, the Moon, and Mars--Christopher Rapley
Pages 91-107
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From page 91... ...
Figure 6.2 is one of the relatively few photographs of Earth that were taken by the Apollo astronauts. This lack of Earth images is a bit puzzling until one accepts that the whole point of the Apollo program was to leave Earth and to get to the Moon, which was therefore the FIGURE 6.1 Earth from Space.
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From page 92... ...
because he did not live to see it completely, by an SOURCE: Courtesy of NASA National Space Science Data Austrian naval lieutenant, Karl Weyprecht. He devel- Center.
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From page 93... ...
Meteorology, • The scientific committees for Antarctic research, including the "jet stream" and ionospheric studies were SCAR, and for ocean research, SCOR, the subjects of a lot of the effort. The initiative was not • World data centers, quite as successful as it might have been because it took • COSPAR, place during the Great Depression, and there simply • World Climate research programs, and was not the financing available for it to be anymore • The International Geosphere-Biosphere than it was.
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From page 94... ...
You see the ice melting the Antarctic Peninsula. At least in part, this is because back to the minimum, and if you know where to look, as you melt white ice or snow, it reveals dark ocean or the northwest and northeast passages open up in a way land, so instead of reflecting away 80 percent of the that is quite unprecedented.
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From page 95... ...
ers struggled to do for the best part of 50 years. This The Northeast Passage, which still required a little bit is a good thing for those who wish to transport goods of ice breaking to get through last year, is marked in during these brief summer months, and in South Korea FIGURE 6.7 Average arctic sea ice extent for September 2007 (left)
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From page 96... ...
It is making a significant the other hand, it's not such a good thing if you're a contribution now to sea level rise, which previously polar bear or if you're a frontier person whose livelihood was dominated by thermal expansion and the melting depends on having sea ice to fish from or to catch seal of glaciers. from.
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From page 97... ...
6.09 from IGY_Paris_Rapley.eps THE ANTARCTIC a succession of ice shelf collapses all due to human induced global warming, combined with an effect of Let us look at the Antarctic now. One of the things that the ozone hole.
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From page 98... ...
They are not reached before. flying along a fracture between two major pieces, but One of the things that the Larsen ice shelf collapse look at these extraordinary perfect pieces of ice shelf did for us was resolve a long-standing dispute amongst that have broken almost at right angles and with almost glaciologists as to whether these ice shelves provide a plain "R" cracks.
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From page 99... ...
This showed that the What we do not know, because we do not have ice accessible for discharge is equivalent to a one and a the physics to put into the models, having never seen a half meter, mean sea level rise. Of course, the whole of marine ice sheet collapse before, is whether this retreat the West Antarctic ice sheet would raise sea level by 5 will come to a halt, or whether it will continue until all meters if it melted.
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From page 100... ...
Increasingly these days, serious people are taking the threat very seriously. INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR In order to try and sharpen up on the answers to some of these questions, such as how much, how quickly, what is going on, the International Polar Year was established by ICSU and the World Meteorological Organisation, F IGURE 6.14 Annual averages of the global mean sea level (mm)
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From page 101... ...
Courtesy of International Council for Science, World Meteorological Organization PRIC Presentation.eps 6.17 Joint Committee. bitmap image Ai rcraft and in-situ METOP Aqua & Sounders and GP R DMSP T erra GRAC E S ystems SSMI ADM-Aeolus AMSR-E AV HRR MO DIS / AS TER AS CAT ERS-2 Envisat IceSat SMOS RA DA RSAT AS AR M ERI S / A -ATSR GOC E SP OT -4 ALOS HRVIR / V GT PA LS AR P RIS M / A VNIR-2 H f FIGURE 6.17 Global Inter-agency International Polar Year Polar Snapshot Year, the IPY 2007–2008 Snapshot.
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From page 102... ...
Given the above, a lot of the Mars science has to do with "following the water" and also "following the carbon dioxide." Indeed, it is interesting to note that the north polar cap, about 1,000 kilometers in diameter, FIGURE 6.18 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this close has substantial water ice, up to 1.8 kilometers thick; up of Mars when it was just 55 million miles away on Decem with the seasonal carbon dioxide frost there, up to a ber 18, 2007. SOURCE: Courtesy of NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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From page 103... ...
For instance we have MARSIS data, from the sub The south polar cap possesses water ice (Figure surface radar sounder on the Mars Express space6.21) plus a substantial carbon dioxide ice that seems craft which has allowed us to measure the thickness
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From page 104... ...
of these polar caps and indeed map that thickness (Figure 6.22)
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From page 105... ...
The global climate NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will begin system is a complex interconnected non-linear system, to tell us a little bit more about the Moon, including capable of going through major reorganizations. A case whether or not water ice really does exist in shaded in point: there is a 50 degrees centigrade temperature spots at the poles, and if so, how much there is.1 It will differential between the equator and the poles, and also be looking for safe landing sites for future crewed that, combined with the angular momentum effects or missions, locating potential resources, characterizing coriolus effects of being on a rotating planet, is what the radiation environment, and demonstrating new determines the flows of the fluids, the atmosphere, technologies.
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From page 106... ...
450 B.C.) : "Man must rise above ages of Earth such as this one that arguably crystallized Earth -- to the top of the atmosphere and beyond -- for in humanities mind the finite nature of the planet, its only thus will he fully understand the world in which limited resources and the need to take care of it.
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