Meet the Adventurers of the Year: Biogeochemist Katey Walter Anthony

Last week we announced the 2009 Adventurers of the Year, selected for their extraordinary achievements in exploration, conservation, action sports, and humanitarian work. Now, for the first time ever, you can vote for the Readers' Choice Adventurer of the Year. For the next two weeks, we are going to highlight a different adventurer daily, starting today with Katey Walter Anthony. You can only vote once, so make sure to check out each adventurers' profile, video, and photo gallery, before firing up our voting machine.

Arctic Sage
By the third day of drifting in the storm-tossed Arctic Ocean, with no engine and no real prospects of rescue, a question came to Katey Walter Anthony: “What’s a data point really worth?”

Others might have had other things on their minds, but to Walter Anthony, data is everything. As a biogeochemist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, she studies methane. The greenhouse gas is 25 times more potent than CO₂ and is being rapidly released into the atmosphere from thawing permafrost. But this source of methane is not factored into most climate change models, something that does not sit well with Walter Anthony. Continue reading this story >>

Special Report: Maldives - The Future of a Sinking Island Nation

On the eve of his election, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed made the mother of all campaign promises. Once in office, the 42-year-old pledged to set aside revenue from the country’s sizable tourism industry to buy land in India, Sri Lanka, and Australia. If the oceans around his low-lying island nation continued to rise as predicted—by two feet in the next 90 years—he would simply move the entire population. “It’s an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome,” he explained to the press. Soon after, Nasheed again made headlines, this time with his plan to make the Maldives the first carbon-neutral country in the world—in ten years. “I don’t think we have any choice but to make this our priority,” he told me in February. “The Maldives is the front line in the climate battle.”—Text by Jon Bowermaster; Photograph by Fiona Stewart

Update: Expedition Findings Predict Arctic Summer Ice Gone in 20 Years

Last summer, Arctic adventurer Pen Hadow led the Caitlin Ice Survey on a scientific expedition to the North Pole. Their objective was to take ice core samples to measure the average thickness of the ice and add valuable data to the discourse surrounding global warming. Avid ADVENTURE readers will recall that things got a bit hairy for Hadow and co. with the team having to abandon the mission before they actually reached the pole. They may not have gotten to zero degrees longitude and latitude, but their findings, which debuted yesterday in London, have still proved highly important. Unfortunately, they have not done anything to dissuade the theory that the Earth is rapidly getting warmer.

Climate Ride Kicks Off Saturday - Cyclist Pedal 300 Miles From NYC to DC

This Saturday (September 26) the second annual Brita Climate Ride will roll away from lower Manhattan en route to our nation’s capitol. The five-day, 300-mile cycling tour will help raise money and awareness for climate change education through organizations such as Focus the Nation and Clean Air – Cool Planet. It will also raise hope for a future powered by renewable energy and a green economy.

Last year I pedaled the inaugural Climate Ride from NYC to D.C. for the first charity ride of its kind. The brainchild of two former Backroads biking guides, the event ran smoother than a well tuned S-Works. And it did not disappoint, either as a fully-supported bike tour through beautiful countryside or an inspiring message for change.

Melting Glaciers Move Border Between Switzerland and Italy

On Wednesday, the Swiss government approved the altering of its border up to 500 feet into some areas of Italy due to melting glaciers in the high Alps. Swiss topographers determined the watershed that had determined the border in 1942 had moved, and Italian topographers agreed. This means Switzerland now owns the last stop of the renowned Furggsattel Sesselbahn ski station near Matterhorn peak. Atlases will not be corrected. Read the AP story here.  –Alyson Sheppard

The World's Highest Ski Resort Has Melted

The world's highest ski resort, Chacaltaya, 17,400 feet up in the Bolivian Andes, has melted. Over the last two decades, the glacier on which the resort was built shrunk by more than 80 percent—so much so that the 60-year-old main lodge is now stranded atop a rocky ridge and the only run left is a 600-foot schuss. 

North American Glaciers Are Shrinking Fast

Three chief glaciers--Alaska's Gulkana and Wolverine and Washington state's South Cascade--are shrinking dramatically, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study released last week. These glaciers have been acutely measured since 1957, and scientists say their changing shape indicates a warming climate.

"These are the three glaciers in North America that have the longest record of mass change," wrote Shad O'Neel, a glaciologist in Anchorage. "All three of them have a different climate from the other two, yet all three are showing a similar pattern of behavior, and that behavior is mass loss."

Geo-Engineering: Five Radical, Dangerous Global Warming Solutions

Text by Joe Battle

Geo-engineering, the intentional manipulation of nature to compensate for the damage humans have done over the past two centuries, has become a very hot topic. In "Re-Engineering the Earth" (The Atlantic, July/August 2009), writer Graeme Wood profiles several scientists who are developing radical "solutions" to climate change. Here are five of the most outrageous. 

1. Launching zeppelins to fly through the air with long tubes connected to them that pump out sulfur dioxide. During the day, these continuously puffing machines would protect us against the sun. Unfortunately the pollutant's chemical makeup would cause the sky to glow red. 

2. Creating 20 electromagnetic guns that shoot 800,000 Frisbee-size ceramic disks into space every five minutes to block and redirect sunlight. The firing of these disks would go on continually for ten years. Imagine the Earth with an ostentatious pair of sunglasses. 

3. "Carbon eaters" - Engineered trees created to suck carbon out of the air: like normal trees—but on steroids. 

4. Painting the skies white through the use of propellers that are individually attached to a permanent fleet of 15,000 ships. The propellers would cause sea water to fly in the air creating more moisture. Wind would take it to the clouds making them the clouds bulkier and whiter. Sunlight would then be bounced back into space. 

5. Taking carbon to the ocean floor to create an enormous bloom of carbon-absorbing plankton. In essence, sweeping our carbon problem under the (plankton) carpet.

Get the full story here.

Go Green: Geoengineering - The Unnatural Solution

Text by Andy Isaacson

Earlier this year, a team of scientists dumped several tons of iron into the Atlantic Ocean off the Chilean coast, hoping to fuel a massive algae bloom (algae eat iron), which would in turn suck up massive amounts of CO2 from the air. Instead, shrimp wolfed down the algae, causing yet another wrinkle in the complex world of geoengineering. 

Expect to hear that buzzword more often. Generally speaking, geoengineering is the large-scale manipulation of the environment to counter climate change. And though the concept has been around for decades, worsening warming trends are pushing it into the spotlight. 

Even President Obama’s science and technology adviser, John Holdren, has expressed interest in the subject. Proposed methods for cooling the Earth include building carbon-scrubbing towers that would capture CO2 from the atmosphere, and shooting droplets of seawater into clouds to enhance their reflectivity. In September, Britain’s Royal Society will release a report on which geoengineering ideas (e.g., a plan to reflect solar radiation by timed release of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere) deserve further research. Many scientists worry that attempts to fool Mother Nature will create bigger problems than those they aim to solve. “It’s best to start testing these things gradually, so if something bad happens you can back off,” says Ken Caldeira, a Carnegie Institution climate scientist who champions the sulfur dioxide idea. But if a true emergency were to arise? “I think we could be putting particles in the stratosphere next year,” Caldeira says. “The technology is there.”

Adventure in 60 Seconds: Last Week in Exploration

Text by Tetsuhiko Endo

SPACE

The astronauts on the International Space Station are welcoming three more members to their crew, the BBC reports. The Soyuz TMA-15 capsule carrying three Russian astronauts docked with the space station Friday morning and discharged its crew, effectively doubling the number of men on board. Sound cramped? Well, one of the primary objectives of the mission is to see how well these men–one American, one Japanese, and four Russians–live together in a confined space. This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. (Read more at BBC.com.)

MOUNTAINS

A few miles below them, no one is laughing on Everest. Apa Sherpa, the man who holds the record number of Everest summits at a staggering 19, told Reuters that climate change has melted glaciers on the mountain exposing rocks and making it harder to climb (read more). Apa Sherpa is also involved in the project to clean accumulated trash off the mountain and reports that his team has picked up more than five tons of garbage. That includes old tents, ropes, different kinds of plastic, oxygen tanks, parts of an Italian helicopter that crashed in 1973, and, of course, plenty of human waste. This year, Apa Sherpa topped out with a metal vase containing 400 sacred Buddhist offerings in hopes of restoring some sanctity to the mountain. It appears Everest, or Sagarmatha, as it is know to the Sherpa, is going to need every one of those offerings.

Climbers all over the Himalaya were looking for a bit of divine help last week as they scampered down to lower altitudes with bad weather nipping at their heals. Everest is all but deserted except for a few optimistic souls still hoping to get a shot at the North Side, reports Explorersweb. The final week of climbing was one of the worst of the season, claiming the life of Kazakh climber Sergei Samoilov, who was attempting the Lhotse-Everest Traverse, and almost killing Norwegian Jarle Traa, who had to be rescued and driven to a hospital in Kathmandu where he is currently in stable condition (read more at mounteverest.net).

Although we must depart from the dizzying heights of Tibet, we can skip right over to Pakistan, wherer the climbing season is just beginning. Check back later this week for all the action from Broad Peak and K2.

OCEANS

If things were hard in the mountains, they were equally difficult for anyone tough/crazy enough to be rowing through the Indian Ocean this week. Brit Sarah Outen turned 24 on the 27th, and celebrated by sitting in her cabin and being battered by high seas. Despite the negative drift, she is approaching Mauritius and is in good spirits (read more).  A team of Irish researchers have just completed tests on a new unmanned submersible that they are promising will be better and cheaper to use than any of its predecessors (read more on the bbc.com). One of it’s main envisioned uses? Defining continental perimeters so nations can make legitimate claims to mineral rights. Just don’t mention it to the astronauts on the International Space Station, they have enough to deal with at the moment.