 |
Where Every Issue is a Green Issue| Providing Wisdom in Building a Sustainable Future | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
 A number of elephant seals were fitted with a sensor that measured water temperature, salinity and depth of a dive  A map from Australia's Antarctic Climate and Ecosystem Cooperative Research Centre shows journeys made by huge elephant seals around Antarctica over 3,000 days  The radio transmitter and sensors used to collect data on climate change that were glued to the heads of elephant seals |
Seals Help Scientists Tackle Climate Change Elephant seals are helping scientists tackle climate change by providing crucial data on ice formation and ocean currents in the Antarctic ocean, a new study has revealed. Sea ice reflects sunlight back into space, so less sea ice means more energy is absorbed by the earth, causing more warming. Until recently scientists have only had conventional oceanographic monitors such as ships, satellites and drifting buoys. These could not provide observations under the winter's sea ice. 'Our ability to represent the high-latitude oceans and sea ice in oceanographic and climate models has suffered as a result,' study co-author Steve Rintoul said, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But elephant seals regularly swim under Antarctic sea ice. By tagging them the scientists have overcome the 'blind-spot.' As a result, nine times more data than had been previously available from buoys and ships and 30 times more information than had been known from beneath the winter sea ice, allowing them to calculate how fast sea ice forms during winter. Between 2004 and 2005, the seals swam up to 40 miles a day, supplying scientists with 16,500 ice profiles. The seals dived to a depth of more than 500 metres and to a maximum depth of nearly 2 km. 'They have made it possible for us to observe large areas of the ocean under the sea ice in winter for the first time,' Mr Rintoul said. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Copyright © 2000-2008 GreenSage. All rights reserved.