Information about CASA Project
According to the 2006 report by the World Meteorological Organization, since the start of the
twentieth century, the global average surface temperature has risen ca. 0.7 deg. C and this year was also the warmest year in the 348 years of the Central
England temperature series. Further the 1990's to present are the warmest period for the last 2000 years and model projections suggest that average global
temperature could rise between 1.4 deg. C and 5.8 deg. C by 2100 (IPCC, 2001, 2007). Although the scientific evidence of global warming is now widely
regarded as indisputable, predicting regional impacts is proving more problematic. The Southern Hemisphere climate record is particularly sparse. However
what we do know about the State of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Climate System (SASOCS) (Mayewski et al., in press) is that it has, for example,
experienced changes in ice extent along the northern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula (Scambos et al., 2004; Vaughan et al., 2003), dramatic surface
warming recorded in the Antarctic Peninsula (Turner et al., 2005), significant warming during winter near 500mb over Antarctica (Turner et al., 2006),
Antarctic ozone depletion impacts on atmospheric circulation (Thompson and Solomon, 2002), and recent periods of extensive surface melt (Nghiem et al.,
2007). Significant temperature change of +4 deg. C to +6 deg. C by 2100 (IPCC, 2007) is expected over Antarctica in coming decades based upon model
estimates. The full effect of warming is thus far masked by the thermal capacity of the Southern Ocean, albedo and elevation related cooling effects of
the vast Antarctic Ice Sheet, and natural climate variability (Mayewski and Maasch, 2006). Implications for future change over the Southern Hemisphere are
immense since this region contains vast expanses of climatically-dynamic sea ice, several meters of sea level frozen in potentially unstable sections of
West and East Antarctica, climatically sensitive marine ecosystems, and atmospheric circulation systems that are connected to regional to global scale
climate features. We propose to contribute to an IPY project awarded to Dr. Jefferson Cardia Simoes of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
(UFRGS)), Porto Alegre, Brazil titled: ''Brazilian multidisciplinary expeditions to the Antarctic ice sheet: Investigating the cryosphere response to
global change''. This project is funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) with logistic support via
the Brazilian Antarctic Program (PROANTAR). A letter of collaboration from Prof. Simoes plus an MOU between CCI and three Chilean institutions from the
city of Punta Arenas: Universidad de Magallanes, (UMAG), Instituto Antartico Chileno (INACH), and Centro de Estudios del Cuaternario (CEQUA). This
international program of scientific collaboration and shared logistics provides an efficient way to investigate ongoing climate and glaciological changes
impacting the Antarctic Peninsula.