EOS
VOLUME 90 NUMBER 3 20 JANUARY 2009
TRANSACTIONS
AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
The Newspaper of the Earth and Space Sciences
Editors
Anny Cazenave: Laboratoire d’Etudes en
Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales,
Toulouse, France; anny.cazenave@cnes.fr
John W. Geissman: Department of Earth and
Planetary Science,University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, USA; jgeiss@unm.edu
Wendy S. Gordon: Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department, Austin, USA; wendy.gordon@tpwd
.state.tx.us
Manuel Grande: University of Wales,
Aberystwyth; mng@aber.ac.uk
Hassan Virji: START, Washington, D. C., USA;
hvirji@agu.org
Editor in Chief pro tem
Judy C. Holoviak: AGU, Washington, D.C., USA;
eos_ jholoviak@agu.org
Editorial Advisory Board
M. Lee Allison Earth and Space Sciences
Informatics
Roni Avissar Global Environmental Change
Roland Bürgmann Tectonophysics
Noah S. Diffenbaugh Atmospheric Sciences
John E. Ebel Seismology
Michael N. Gooseff Hydrology
Stephen Macko Education
Stefan Maus Geomagnetism and
Paleomagnetism
Jerry L. Miller Oceanography
Peter Olson Study of the Earth’s Deep Interior
Michael Poland Geodesy
Paul R. Renne Volcanology, Geochemistry,
and Petrology
Jeffery J. Roberts Mineral and Rock Physics
John B. Rundle Nonlinear Geophysics
Susan E. H. Sakimoto Planetary Sciences
Sarah L. Shafer Paleoceanography and that human activities are a major cause
Paleoclimatology
David G. Sibeck Space Physics and
Aeronomy
Maribeth Stolzenburg Atmospheric and genic warming have met with criticism.
Space Electricity
Jeffrey M. Welker Biogeosciences
Staff
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tion Coordinator; Liz Castenson, Editor’s Assis-
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http://www.agu.org/pubs/eos
Mineral Physics
cont. from page 21
it possible to directly probe some of these
properties in situ statically using advanced
synchrotron light sources and detecting
techniques. Scientists are also gearing up in
building new facilities that will help couple
dynamic shock wave techniques with syn-
chrotron light sources so as to allow in situ
probing of these properties under extreme
dynamic conditions. Efforts to search for
and develop universal pressure and temper-
ature scales are also under way to establish
consistent results for a coherent picture of
the core. The expectation of mineral physi-
cists involved with these efforts is that within
a decade, these mineral physics missions to
the Earth’s core will provide crucial informa-
tion to greatly enhance our understanding of
the nature of the core.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge S. D. Jacobsen for con-
structive comments. Leonid Dubrovin-
sky is supported by Deutsche Forschungs­
gemeinschaft (DFG) and European Science
Foundation EuroMinSci programs. Jung-­Fu
Lin is supported by the U.S. National Sci-
ence Foundation Geophysics Directorate
(­E AR-­0838221), Carnegie/­Department of
Energy Alliance Center (­CDAC), and Con-
sortium of Materials Properties Research in
Earth Sciences (­COMPRES).
References
Antonangeli, D., F. Occelli, H. Requardt, J. Badro,
G. Fiquet, and M. Krisch (2004), Elastic anisot-
ropy in textured hcp-­iron to 112 GPa from sound
wave propagation measurements, Earth Planet.
Sci. Lett., 225(1-­2), 243–251.
Badro, J., G. Fiquet, F. Guyot, E. Gregoryanz, F. Occel-
li, D. Antonangeli, and M. d’Astuto (2007), Effect of
light elements on the sound velocities in solid iron:
Implications for the composition of Earth’s core,
Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 254(1-­2), 233–238.
Belonoshko, A. B., N. V. Skorodumova, A. Rosen-
gren, and B. Johansson (2008), Elastic anisot-
Examining the Scientific Consensus
on Climate Change
Fifty-­t wo percent of Americans think
most climate scientists agree that the
Earth has been warming in recent years,
and 47% think climate scientists agree
(i.e., that there is a scientific consensus)
of that warming, according to recent poll-
ing (see http://​­www​.­p ollingreport​.­com/​
­e nviro​. ­htm). However, attempts to quan-
tify the scientific consensus on anthropo-
For instance, Oreskes [2004] reviewed 928
abstracts from peer-­r eviewed research
papers and found that more than 75%
either explicitly or implicitly accepted
the consensus view that Earth’s climate
is being affected by human activities.
Yet Oreskes’s approach has been criti-
cized for overstating the level of con-
sensus acceptance within the examined
abstracts [Peiser, 2005] and for not cap-
turing the full diversity of scientific opin-
ion [Pielke, 2005]. A review of previous
attempts at quantifying the consensus and
criticisms is provided by Kendall Zimmer-
man [2008]. The objective of our study
presented here is to assess the scientific
Fig. 1. Response distribution to our survey question 2.The general public data come from a 2008
Gallup poll (see ­http://​­www​.g
­ allup​.c­ om/​­poll/​­1615/​­Environment​.­aspx).
22
Fig. 2. Representative phase diagram of iron and iron-­nickel alloys at high pressures and
temperatures. The hcp iron is stable over a wide range of pressures and temperatures, while
bcc iron is predicted to exist in the inner core (blue dashed line) and bcc iron with 10%
nickel alloy is experimentally observed at 225 gigapascals and 3400 K (blue hexagon).
Melting curves of iron measured from shock waves (red diamonds) are much higher than
static diamond cell results (black dashed line). Shaded area indicates current survey of the
melting temperatures of iron at core pressures; inset shows hcp iron with 10% nickel alloy at
195 gigapascals and 2150 K.
ropy of Earth’s inner core, Science, 319(5864),
797–800.
Dubrovinsky, L., et al. (2007), Body-­centered
cubic iron-­nickel alloy in Earth’s core, Science,
316(5833), 1880–1883.
Lin, J.-­F.,W. Sturhahn, J. Zhao, G. Shen, H.-K. Mao, and R. J.
Hemley (2005), Sound velocities of hot dense iron:
Birch’s law revisited, Science, 308(5730), 1892–1894.
Vočadlo, L. (2007), Ab initio calculations of the
elasticity of iron and iron alloys at inner core
conditions: Evidence for a partially molten inner
core?, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 254(1-­2), 227–232.
consensus on climate change through
an unbiased survey of a large and broad
group of Earth scientists.
An invitation to participate in the sur-
vey was sent to 10,257 Earth scientists.
The database was built from Keane and
Martinez [2007], which lists all geosci-
ences faculty at reporting academic insti-
tutions, along with researchers at state
geologic surveys associated with local
universities, and researchers at U.S. fed-
eral research facilities (e.g., U.S. Geo-
logical Survey, NASA, and NOAA (U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration) facilities; U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy national laboratories; and
so forth). To maximize the response rate,
the survey was designed to take less than
2 minutes to complete, and it was admin-
istered by a professional online survey
site (­http://​­www​.­questionpro​.­com) that
allowed one-­t ime participation by those
who received the invitation.
This brief report addresses the two pri-
mary questions of the survey, which con-
tained up to nine questions (the full study
is given by Kendall Zimmerman [2008]):
Vočadlo, L., D. Alfè, M. J. Gillan, I. G. Wood, J. P.
Brodholt, and G. D. Price (2003), Possible ther-
mal and chemical stabilization of body-­centred-
­cubic iron in the Earth’s core, Nature, 424(6948),
536–539.
Author Information
Leonid Dubrovinsky, University of Bayreuth, Bay-
reuth, Germany; ­E-mail: ­Leonid​.­Dubrovinsky@​­uni​
-­bayreuth​.­de; and Jung-­Fu Lin, University of Texas
at Austin
1. When compared with pre-­1800s lev-
els, do you think that mean global tem-
peratures have generally risen, fallen, or
remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a sig-
nificant contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures?
With 3146 individuals completing the sur-
vey, the participant response rate for the
survey was 30.7%. This is a typical response
rate for Web-­based surveys [Cook et al.,
2000; Kaplowitz et al., 2004]. Of our survey
participants, 90% were from U.S. institu-
tions and 6% were from Canadian institu-
tions; the remaining 4% were from institu-
tions in 21 other nations. More than 90%
of participants had Ph.D.s, and 7% had
master’s degrees. With survey participants
asked to select a single category, the most
common areas of expertise reported were
geochemistry (15.5%), geophysics (12%),
and oceanography (10.5%). General geol-
ogy, hydrology/hydrogeology, and pale-
ontology each accounted for 5–7% of the
total respondents. Approximately 5% of
the respondents were climate scientists,
and 8.5% of the respondents indicated that
more than 50% of their peer-­reviewed publi-
cations in the past 5 years have been on the
subject of climate change. While respon-
dents’ names are kept private, the authors
noted that the survey included participants
with well-­documented dissenting opinions
on global warming theory.
Results show that overall, 90% of par-
ticipants answered “risen” to question 1
and 82% answered yes to question 2. In
general, as the level of active research
and specialization in climate science
increases, so does agreement with the two
primary questions (Figure 1). In our sur-
vey, the most specialized and knowledge-
able respondents (with regard to climate
change) are those who listed climate sci-
ence as their area of expertise and who
also have published more than 50% of
their recent peer-­r eviewed papers on the
subject of climate change (79 individu-
als in total). Of these specialists, 96.2%
(76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1
and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to ques-
tion 2. This is in contrast to results of a
recent Gallup poll (see ­http://​­www​.­gallup​
.­com/​­poll/​­1615/​­Environment​.­a spx) that
Climate Change cont. on next page
EOS VOLUME 90 NUMBER 3 20 JANUARY 2009
Climate Change
cont. from page 22
suggests that only 58% of the general pub-
lic would answer yes to our question 2.
The two areas of expertise in the survey
with the smallest percentage of partici-
pants answering yes to question 2 were
economic geology with 47% (48 of 103)
and meteorology with 64% (23 of 36).
It seems that the debate on the
authenticity of global warming and the
GEOPHYSICISTS
Honors
AGU executive director Fred Spilhaus
and Joseph Burns, Cornell University,
Ithaca, N. Y., have been made honorary fel-
lows of the Royal Astronomical Society
MEETING
A Community Ice Sheet Model
for Sea Level Prediction
Building a Next-Generation Community Ice Sheet Model;
Los Alamos, New Mexico, 18–20 August 2008
Recent observations show that ice sheets
can respond to climate change on annual
to decadal timescales and that the Green-
land and West Antarctic ice sheets are losing
mass at an increasing rate. The current gen-
eration of ice sheet models cannot provide
credible predictions of ice sheet retreat, as
underscored by the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (­IPCC) in its Fourth
Assessment Report (2007). The IPCC pro-
vided neither a best estimate nor an upper
bound for 21st-­century sea level rise because
of uncertainties in the dynamic response of
ice sheets.
In response to this need, a workshop was
held at Los Alamos National Laboratory
(­L ANL). The workshop was sponsored by
the ­L ANL Institute for Geophysics and Plan-
etary Physics, with additional support from
the U.S. Department of Energy and National
Science Foundation. The workshop’s goal
was to create a detailed plan (including
commitments from individual researchers)
for developing, testing, and implementing a
Community Ice Sheet Model (­CISM) to aid in
predicting sea level rise. This model will be
freely available to the glaciology and climate
modeling communities and will be the ice
sheet component of the Community Climate
System Model (­CCSM), a major contributor
to IPCC assessments.
The workshop was attended by 35 scien-
tists from U.S., U.K., and Canadian institu-
tions. The discussion was organized around
role played by human activity is largely
nonexistent among those who under-
stand the nuances and scientific basis
of long-­t erm climate processes. The
challenge, rather, appears to be how
to effectively communicate this fact to
policy makers and to a public that con-
tinues to mistakenly perceive debate
among scientists.
(RAS), a U.K. society for professional astron-
omers and geophysicists. The Society, on
9 January, also honored other AGU mem-
bers: Eric Priest of the University of St.
Andrews, United Kingdom, received the
Gold Medal for Geophysics for his work in
the fields of solar and solar-­terrestrial phys-
ics. Malcolm Sambridge of the Australian
National University, Canberra, received the
four focus areas: (1) ice sheet dynamics
and physics, (2) ice shelf/ocean interac-
tions, (3) software design and coupling, and
(4) initialization, verification, and validation.
Because of the short timescale for includ-
ing ice sheet forecasts in the next IPCC
assessment, participants prioritized model
improvements according to their impor-
tance for sea level prediction. The following
improvements were deemed critical:
•  a higher-order flow model with a uni-
fied treatment of vertical shear stresses and
­horizontal-­plane stresses;
•  improved models of basal sliding over
hard and soft beds, with explicit ice sheet
hydrology;
•  a well-validated parameterization of
melting and refreezing beneath ice shelves;
•  an accurate, semiempirical law for ice-
berg calving; and
•  an accurate, numerically robust treat-
ment of grounding-line migration.
Workshop participants also agreed that
CISM should be modular, portable, and user-
­friendly, with transparent source code sup-
plemented by data sets for initialization,
forcing, and validation. The model should
scale efficiently to hundreds or thousands
of processors, using existing parallel solvers
(e.g., Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scien-
tific Computation (PETSc); ­http://​­www​-­unix​
.­mcs​.­anl​.­gov/​­petsc/​­petsc​-­a s/) and infrastruc-
ture from other Earth system models (e.g.,
CICE; ­http://​­climate​.­lanl​.­gov/​­Models/​­CICE/).
23
References
Cook, C., F. Heath, and R. Thompson (2000),
A meta-­analysis of response rates in Web-­or
Internet-­based surveys, Educ. Psychol. Meas., 60,
821–836.
Kaplowitz, M., T. Hadlock, and R. Levine (2004),
A comparison of Web and mail survey response
rates, Public Opin. Q., 68, 94–101.
Keane, C. M., and C. M. Martinez (Eds.) (2007),
Directory of Geoscience Departments 2007, 45th
ed., Am. Geol. Inst., Alexandria, Va.
Kendall Zimmerman, M. (2008), The consensus
on the consensus: An opinion survey of Earth
Price Medal for his major contribution to
algorithms in geophysics. In honoring David
Kerridge of the British Geological Survey
in Edinburgh with the Award for Services to
Geophysics, RAS noted the Survey’s effort
at leading a multiagency study to assess the
tsunami risk to the United Kingdom.
Wallace Broecker of Columbia Univer-
sity’s Lamont-­Doherty Earth Observatory,
Because warm-­water intrusions beneath ice
shelves could drive rapid ice sheet retreat,
new methods are needed for coupling
ocean models to ice sheet models, attendees
noted. Software development is proceeding
from the GLIMMER model (­http://​­forge​.­nesc​
.­ac​.­uk/​­projects/​­glimmer/), which has already
been coupled to CCSM.
Six focus groups have formed to guide
ongoing CISM development. These groups
are working on hydrology, calving, ice-
­ocean coupling, software development,
data sets, and climate assessment. In the
near term the assessment group will use the
best available current models to provide
M E E T
A N N O U N C
NN 4–6 May 2009 First U.S. Atlantic Meridional
Overturning Circulation Annual Meeting,
Annapolis, Maryland, USA. Sponsor: U.S. Cli-
mate Variability and Predictability Program Of-
fice (U.S. ­CLIVAR) (J. Reisdorf, E-mail: ­reisdorf@​
­ucar​.­e du; Web site: http://​w ww​.­atlanticmoc​.org/​
­A MOC2009​.php)
The meeting will focus on initial, near-term ob-
jectives outlined in a 5-year implementation strat-
egy for a new interagency program that together
with activities from the U.S. Climate Change Sci-
ence Program and international partnerships,
will develop components of an Atlantic meridi-
onal overturning circulation (AMOC) monitor-
ing system and AMOC prediction capability. The
meeting also will discuss overarching issues
scientists on global climate change, 250 pp., Univ.
of Ill. at Chicago.
Oreskes, N. (2004), Beyond the ivory tower: The
scientific consensus on climate change, Science,
306, 1686–1686.
Peiser, B. J. (2005), The dangers of consensus sci-
ence, Can. Natl. Post, 17 May.
Pielke, R. A. (2005), Consensus about climate
change?, Science, 308, 952–953.
—Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmer-
man, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University
of Illinois at Chicago; ­E-mail: ­pdoran@​­uic​.­edu
Palisades, N. Y., has received the 2008 BBVA
Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
in the climate change category. The award
certificate notes that Broecker’s research
into the oceans’ biological and chemical
processes “pioneered the development of
Earth system science as the basis for under­
standing global climate change, both past
and present.”
quantitative upper bounds for sea level rise;
these assessments will inform longer-­term
model development. CISM source code and
tools will be posted on a public Web site.
For more information, including work-
shop presentations, focus group reports, and
the full workshop report, please visit http://​
­oceans11​.­lanl.gov/​­trac/​­CISM.
—William Lipscomb, Group T-3, Los Alamos
National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, N. M.; ­E-mail: ​
­lipscomb@​­lanl​.­gov; Robert Bindschadler, NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; Ed Buel-
er, University of Alaska Fairbanks; David Holland,
New York University, New York; Jesse Johnson, Univer-
sity of Montana, Missoula; and Stephen Price, LANL
I N G
E M E N T S
including the current state of the AMOC, what
governs AMOC changes, and what the impacts of
AMOC variability are.
NN 13–18 September 2009 2009 South African
Geophysical Association (SAGA) Biennial
Technical Meeting and Exhibition, Swaziland,
South Africa. Sponsors: SAGA; Society of Explora-
tion Geophysicists; European Association of Geo-
scientists and Engineers. (Conference Secretar-
iat, Tel.: +27-0-11-728-8173; Fax: +27-0-11-728-1675;
­E -mail: ­events@​rca​.co​.za; Web site: http://​w ww​
.­s agaonline​.co​.za/​­2009Conference/​­index​.htm)
The conference, whose theme is “Ancient Rocks
to Modern Techniques,” welcomes papers on many
geophysical topics. Abstract deadline is 30 June.