FW: Announcement: Cryosphere Session at the 2002 Association of A merican Geographers Annual Meeting

[Katherine HARLE]

PLease send any enquiries to Ellen Mosley-Thompson
-----Original Message-----
From: Ellen Mosley-Thompson [mailto:thompson.4 at osu.edu] 
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2001 1:19 AM
To: Paleoclimate List
Subject: Announcement: Cryosphere Session at the 2002 Association of
American Geographers Annual Meeting 


Dear Colleagues: 

Below is an announcement for a session sponsored by the AAG (Assoc. Am.
Geographers) Cryosphere Specialty Group in conjunction with the Climate and
Mountain Specialty Groups as co-sponsors.  Please consider submitting your
recent research as appropriate.

Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Chair of the Cryospheric Specialty Group

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special session at the 98th Annual Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers (AAG), Los Angeles, CA, March 19-23, 2002.

This session is sponsored by the Cryosphere Specialty Group in conjunction
with the Climate Specialty Group and the Mountain Specialty Group.  You may
remember that this is the Year of the Mountain.
-----------------------------------
Proposed session title: 

The changing cryosphere: Implications for recent climate and environmental
changes

Description 

Human activities are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere, modifying the
landscape, and placing stresses on critical resources including soils, water
and biota.  Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are above any levels
experienced in  millions of years and this is generating concern that the
Earth system will warm in coming centuries.  Indeed, 20th  century warming
is well documented and the cryosphere, consisting of ice in all its forms,
may serve as a bellwether for the increasing human impact on the climate
system.  One of the most evident changes is the accelerating retreat of
mid-latitude and tropical ice fields.  In fact, cryospheric observations
alone provide nearly unequivocal evidence of 20th Century warming.  Research
reveals that Arctic sea ice is thinning, permafrost thicknesses are
diminishing, some Antarctic ice shelves are disintegrating, many lake and
river ice covers are freezing later and breaking up earlier, and the
southeastern part of the Greenland ice sheet may be thinning.  In some
regions the amount and distribution of seasonal snow fall have become more
variable. Another consequence of the retreat of glaciers and ice caps is the
likely loss of critical archives of the Earth's climate history.   

Papers are solicited to examine the nature of these cryospheric changes and
their potential linkages to 20th Century warming.   Papers exploring the
climatological controls on the cryosphere and exploiting data from the
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) are also encouraged. We invite
submissions covering all aspects of the cryosphere including polar ice
sheets and ice shelves, alpine glaciers and ice caps, sea ice, permafrost,
river and lake ice, and seasonal snow cover.

Please contact Ellen Mosley-Thompson (contact information below) if you plan
to submit a paper. 

Note that starting this year, registration and abstract submission are only
available from the AAG web site. Also, special sessions can only be
requested after session presenters have individually registered for the
meeting and received their Participant Number. The registration deadline is
August 31, 2001, so please e-mail me your Participant Number and
presentation title no later than Friday, August 17 to allow enough time for
submission of the special session!!

Details on the Los Angeles Meeting can be found at the AAG web site:
http://www.aag.org/ <http://www.aag.org/%A0%A0>   (clicking on the "Annual
Meeting" link)

Ellen Mosley-Thompson
Professor, Department of Geography 
Research Scientist, Byrd Polar Research Center 
The Ohio State University
108 Scott Hall 1090 Carmack Road
Columbus OH 43210
Phone (614)-292-6662
FAX   (614)-292-4697
email: thompson.4 at osu.edu
web page: http://www.geography.ohio-state.edu/faculty/mosley-thompson
<http://www.geography.ohio-state.edu/faculty/mosley-thompson>