The Winter 2013 Newsletter has been posted.  If you would like to have a hard copy in color, please email BrieLewis@umbc.edu or call 301.286.4403. 

Portions of two NASA Terra ASTER swaths, one before and one a decade after the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf (early 2002) illustrate dramatic changes in ice area and glacier thickness. The ice edge position in early 2012 is indicated by the thin blue line that now extends well into each tributary of what was the Larsen B ice shelf. In a decade, nearly 5000 km² (~1900 mi²) of ice has been lost along this part of the Antarctic Peninsula. Ice thickness changes totaling up to 220 m (~720 ft.) have been documented by DEM differencing (digital elevation models, e.g. Berthier et al., 2012, GRL) but can also be clearly seen by comparing bedrock outcrops in the lower Hektoria and other glaciers. Please click here for larger image.

JCET was well represented at the 2012 Fall AGU Meeting held in San Francisco, December 3 -7. Fifteen (15) JCET faculty members, one (1) JCET Staff member, one (1) GEST faculty member, and four (4) JCET graduate students attended AGU to present posters and participate in the oral sessions.  For additional information, link to JCET at AGU.

JCET faculty attending the 2012 Fall AGU Meeting included Allen Chu, Forrest Hall, Shin-Chan Han, Jay Herman, Fred Huemmrich, Ben Johnson, Jae Lee, Jasper Lewis, Simone Lolli, Bill Olson, Lorraine Remer, Chung-Lin Shie, Chris Shuman, Leonid Yurganov, Hai Zhang and Glenn Wolfe.  Erricos Pavlis, GEST, and Valerie Casasanto, JCET Program Coordinator, also attended.  Many of the posters are available for review using AGU's e-poster search at http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/.  Abstracts of the oral presentations are available utilizing AGU's program search at http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/scientific-program/.

The following four JCET graduate students presented their work at AGU:

Gergely Dolgos
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/a53i-0250/
Thishan Dharshana Karandana Gamalathge
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/a33i-0271/
Daniel Orozco
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/a53i-0258/
John Sullivan
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/files/2012/11/Newchurch_AGU_2012_TOLNet_v1-1.pdfandhttp://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/a53q-0439/

Three JCET employees were recognized at the UMBC Service Awards Ceremony held on December 5, 2012.  Research Analyst Keith Evans was recognized for 15 years of service.  Business Managers Mary Dawson and Margo Young received their 5 year service awards.  For more information including photos of the celebration, click here.

Approximately 2-m air temperatures have been measured since August 2005 at NOAA's Greenland Summit 'Baseline Observatory' climate monitoring station (72.58°N, 38.45°W, 3216 m or 10,550 feet above sea level).  Click here for the full size image.

Here, 1 hour average temperature observations are plotted for the period 1 June through 31 August for 2005-2012.  The hourly average air temperature exceeds zero Celsius on 11 July for several hours and almost reaches zero on 12 July.  On 10 July and 13-14 July, the hourly air temperature peaks suggest that the surface would very likely have been briefly melting.  All five days have peaks well in excess of the NOAA temperature data observed in previous years.  A lesser event happened during 28-30 July with a period of brief melting occurring on the 29th.

Additional Information:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html

Data courtesy of Tom Mefford, NOAA:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/sum/summary.html

Graphic created by Mike Schnaubelt and Christopher Shuman, UMBC

JCET's Dr. Lorraine Remer is featured in the NASA/UMBC News Release: Dust Dominates Foreign Aerosol Imports to North America.   Additional information can be found here.

Our knowledge of the terrestrial planets, Mercury, Venus, and Mars, the gaseous giants Jupiter and Saturn, the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, and asteroids has been informed by flyby, orbiter, penetrometer, lander, and rover missions plus Earth-based and near-Earth orbit telescopes. To date, there have been 2 missions to Mercury, 12 to Venus and Mars respectively, 5 to Jupiter and the Galilean satellites, 3 to Saturn and its satellites, 1 to Uranus and Neptune with their respective satellites, and 89 missions to the Moon. A recent focus has been the study of asteroids, and there have been four missions to date for this purpose.

These missions have carried sensors designed to obtain data over the range of the electromagnetic spectrum best suited to local conditions. Using data from these sensors as well as from Earth-based telescopes, researchers have identified features with the characteristics of mass-movement deposits on the planetary surfaces of Venus, Mars, and Mercury, and on the Martian moons of Phobos and Diemos, the Moon, the moons Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa orbiting Jupiter, Iapetus orbiting Saturn, and the asteroids of 433 Eros, 253 Mathilde, 951 Gaspra, 243 Ida, and 25143 Itokawa. Knowledge of mass movement processes on Earth has been used to inform interpretation of geomorphic features identified on these surfaces, and comparisons are much debated within the planetary science community. Here specific focus is given to selected landslides on Mars, Venus, and on the moon of Io orbiting Jupiter, because they all have characteristics of long-runout landslides, but have been triggered and emplaced in very different environments. With the availability of data from planets, moons, and asteroids and the increasing sophistication of analysis that can be undertaken, observations, interpretations, and explanations of mass-movement features on these bodies will increasingly inform our understanding of landslide triggering and emplacement on Earth. For additional information, please click here.

Thinning at Hektoria and Green Glaciers