Richard Levy is a New Zealand glacial stratigrapher and paleoclimatologist with expertise in microfossil analysis. As a principal scientist at GNS Science he has been involved in international and New Zealand environmental research programmes focussing on the evolution of the Earth's climate and building an understanding of the role of greenhouse gases in causing anthropogenic climate changes, in particular those impacting global sea levels. He has had extensive experience in scientific drilling, leading major projects, including the ANtarctic geological DRILLing (ANDRILL) Program in Antarctica. Since 2018, Levy has co-led the government funded NZ SeaRise programme.
Levy co-authored the guide for the ANDRILL project in 2006 [1] and had a leadership role in the establishment and running of the program. [2] From 2008 to 2019 he was a senior scientist at GNS Science, becoming a principal scientist with a specific role as Environment and Climate Theme Leader in 2019. [3] Between 2007 and 2015, he was Project Leader for the Global Change Programme that aimed "to advance understanding of past climate and environmental change in the New Zealand region, Southern Ocean and Antarctica". [4] Levy was Program Leader of the Past Antarctic Climate and Future Implications (PACaFI - K001), a GNS project, from 2010 to 2018, [5] and Director of the Joint Antarctic Research Institute (2013-2017). Since 2016 he has been the National Representative on the Executive Committee of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program. [6] In 2018, Levy along with Tim Naish, became a leader of the NZ Searise project. [7]
He is a staff member at the Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington [8] and works with the Antarctic Science Platform on Project 1-Antarctic Ice Dynamics to investigate how models based on paleoenvironmental data can improve understanding of what controls and drives environmental change and the impact of ice melts in the Antarctica on sea levels. [9] [10] [11]
As a paleoclimatologist, Levy participated in research to develop an understanding of how humans have influenced Earth's climate over time. This identified patterns in the history of the Earth's climate system by analysing ice caps sealed in glaciers and sediment buried in lakes, allowing the examination of the causes of past climate change and providing data to explore the degree to which warming in the 21st century may be explained by natural causes, such as solar variability, or by human influences. [12] [13] [14]
Studies in which Levy participated that involved examination of rock and sediment under the Antarctic ice sheet, concluded that because of the sensitivity of the sheet to temperature changes, it was under threat from anthropogenic climate warming caused by carbon emissions. [15] [16] He also stated that monitoring the ice sheets in this way would allow for predictions of how they will change as the climate warms, specifically enabling "computer models to predict how the Ross Ice Shelf and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will change as our climate warms". [17]
Levy contributed to a report by the World Meteorological Organisation which recorded that globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 403.3 parts per million (ppm) in 2016 up from 400ppm in 2015 and this was likely to see dangerous temperature increases by the end of the 21st century. [18] When gathering data for this report Levy worked with other members of the GNS team, Jocelyn Turnbull and Nancy Bertler, to show that by observing rates of change in the past through the analysis of ice core records, it is possible to estimate the effect on the climate if this rate increased. The rate of increase in CO2 concentrations in 2017, was considerably faster than rates in the mid-Pliocene era, about 5 million years ago when similar concentrations had caused the collapse of ice sheets in Antarctica resulting in global sea levels 10 to 20 metres (33 to 66 ft) higher and temperatures 2 to 3 °C (3.6 to 5.4 °F) warmer than in 2017. [19]
In 2019, Levy contributed to an article in the journal Nature Geoscience which explored the degree that an increasingly warm climate could affect the axial tilt or obliquity of Earth's orbit around the Sun due to a loss of sea ice through warming of the ocean, possibly triggering instability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet with dire implications for global sea levels. [20]
Much of Levy's research has focused on recovering and interpreting geological and climate records that were "preserved beneath Antarctica's blanket of ice" and he was involved with the ANDRILL programme, an international effort investigating the role of Antarctica in global environmental change over the past 65 million years to understand how the area might respond to future global changes. [21]
In 2007 the ANDRILL team drilled to a depth of 1,138.54 metres (3,735.4 ft) in the Southern McMurdo Sound in Antarctica and recovered sedimentary rock samples that showed a record of the last 13 million years of "glacial and climatic variation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Ross Sea region". [22] Levy contributed to a journal article in 2007 which summarised the results of the project and concluded that it was likely environmental changes in Antarctic ice volume had contributed significantly to sea levels and ocean circulation. [23] Levy has noted that changes in Antarctica due to the Earth getting warmer and the melting of the ice, would affect sea levels and the climate around the coastal regions. [24]
Levy joined an international consortium of scientists, who in 2010, extended the earlier work of the ANDRILL project. [25] [26] Frank Rack from the University of Nebraska who also worked on the team, explained that drilling into an earlier time could show the transition of Antarctica from being ice-free about 40 million years ago, to the creation of the ice sheet. [27] Levy said the research showed that the ice sheets were highly sensitive to relatively small changes in CO2, and this information allowed scientists to consider Earth's potential future if greenhouse gas levels and temperatures continued to rise and large parts of Antarctica became ice-free. [28]
In 2020, as part of a $250 million redevelopment of Scott Base, Levy was a member of the GNS Science team that ran models on projected sea levels in Antarctica based on various scenarios. When discussing this research, Levy clarified that predicting sea levels in polar regions was difficult because of the complicated relationship between the melting of the ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland, but concluded that, based on their projections, "there [was] a 95 per cent chance that local sea level could rise or fall within the range between −116 and +164 centimetres (−3.81 and 5.38 ft) by 2120". [29]
Part of the research carried out with ANDRILL involved establishing how Southern Ocean phytoplankton (diatoms) communities, which are an important part of the carbon cycle, responded to major environmental disturbance. [30] Levy worked in the team that developed a model to reconstruct how diatom began as a new species, became extinct and then re-created or turnover, possibly due to climate change. The model enabled informed predictions of the effect of environmental change on this marine microflora, and other ecosystems that might be vulnerable to climate change. [30]
This 5-year research programme (2018-2023), funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (NZMBIE), has the goal of enabling more accurate estimates of future sea levels on New Zealand coastlines by building knowledge of the possible impact of polar ice sheets and, "vertical land movements and changes in sea-surface height" on these. [7] As the leader of the program, Levy acknowledged that it was difficult to make predictions of future sea levels because the New Zealand coastline was continually moving up and down, but concluded that the reducing emissions and avoiding melting of the ice sheets was key to overriding these movements of the shoreline. [31] This confirmed earlier research in which Levy was involved. [32]
When NZ Searise provided data in May 2022 that indicated parts of the North Island of New Zealand were sinking by almost a centimetre a year, Levy noted that due to a rapidly-changing system, the solution was not just to build walls, suggesting moving away from hard infrastructure such as concrete as these can "worsen extreme events if they're breached...[and]...in the most vulnerable locations, entire communities might have to be moved". [33] Levy also noted the highest subsidence rates were along the Wairarapa coast, and predicted that [along that coastline], "sea levels could rise by well over one and a half metres by 2100...[following]...the least optimistic climate change scenario". [34] Levy warned that the risk from sea-level rise in New Zealand needed to be better defined and noted that "current sea-level projections in the Ministry for the Environment coastal hazards guidance do not take into account local vertical land movements". [35]
The SeaRise team was awarded the 2019 Prime Minister's Science Prize for highlighting the relationship between global warming, melting Antarctic ice and rising sea levels. Their prediction that the melting of the Southern Continent could cause the flooding of coastal cities and regions, helped support the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and Levy said he was humbled "because we love what we do and we feel we're doing something important." [36] Levy credited Tim Naish with bringing the team together, noting that "this work requires connections. It's not something we can do by ourselves and it takes a massive team effort. Tim Naish has had the vision of what's needed and brought all the components together to help us achieve what we have". He also said that winning the award was significant [because] "we need to tell people what we know and help them understand why it's important to act sooner rather than later". [37]
The Antarctic is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole.
The Ross Sea is a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica, between Victoria Land and Marie Byrd Land and within the Ross Embayment, and is the southernmost sea on Earth. It derives its name from the British explorer James Clark Ross who visited this area in 1841. To the west of the sea lies Ross Island and Victoria Land, to the east Roosevelt Island and Edward VII Peninsula in Marie Byrd Land, while the southernmost part is covered by the Ross Ice Shelf, and is about 200 miles (320 km) from the South Pole. Its boundaries and area have been defined by the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research as having an area of 637,000 square kilometres (246,000 sq mi).
The climate of Antarctica is the coldest on Earth. The continent is also extremely dry, averaging 166 mm (6.5 in) of precipitation per year. Snow rarely melts on most parts of the continent, and, after being compressed, becomes the glacier ice that makes up the ice sheet. Weather fronts rarely penetrate far into the continent, because of the katabatic winds. Most of Antarctica has an ice-cap climate with extremely cold and dry weather.
The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica. It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 kilometres (370 mi) long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface. Ninety percent of the floating ice, however, is below the water surface.
An ice shelf is a large platform of glacial ice floating on the ocean, fed by one or multiple tributary glaciers. Ice shelves form along coastlines where the ice thickness is insufficient to displace the more dense surrounding ocean water. The boundary between the ice shelf (floating) and grounded ice is referred to as the grounding line; the boundary between the ice shelf and the open ocean is the ice front or calving front.
In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi). The only current ice sheets are the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers. Masses of ice covering less than 50,000 km2 are termed an ice cap. An ice cap will typically feed a series of glaciers around its periphery.
The Amundsen Sea is an arm of the Southern Ocean off Marie Byrd Land in western Antarctica. It lies between Cape Flying Fish to the east and Cape Dart on Siple Island to the west. Cape Flying Fish marks the boundary between the Amundsen Sea and the Bellingshausen Sea. West of Cape Dart there is no named marginal sea of the Southern Ocean between the Amundsen and Ross Seas. The Norwegian expedition of 1928–1929 under Captain Nils Larsen named the body of water for the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen while exploring this area in February 1929.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies well below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice shelves. The WAIS is bounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the Ronne Ice Shelf, and outlet glaciers that drain into the Amundsen Sea.
The Antarctic ice sheet is a continental glacier covering 98% of the Antarctic continent, with an area of 14 million square kilometres and an average thickness of over 2 kilometres (1.2 mi). It is the largest of Earth's two current ice sheets, containing 26.5 million cubic kilometres of ice, which is equivalent to 61% of all fresh water on Earth. Its surface is nearly continuous, and the only ice-free areas on the continent are the dry valleys, nunataks of the Antarctic mountain ranges, and sparse coastal bedrock. However, it is often subdivided into East Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS), West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS), and Antarctic Peninsula (AP), due to the large differences in topography, ice flow, and glacier mass balance between the three regions.
Timothy Raymond Naish is a New Zealand glaciologist and climate scientist who has been a researcher and lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington and the Director of the Antarctic Research Centre, and in 2020 became a programme leader at the Antarctic Science Platform. Naish has researched and written about the possible effect of melting ice sheets in Antarctica on global sea levels due to high CO2 emissions causing warming in the Southern Ocean. He was instrumental in establishing and leading the Antarctica Drilling Project (ANDRILL), and a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (2014).
ANDRILL is a scientific drilling project in Antarctica gathering information about past periods of global warming and cooling.
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) lies between 45° west and 168° east longitudinally. It was first formed around 34 million years ago, and it is the largest ice sheet on the entire planet, with far greater volume than the Greenland ice sheet or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), from which it is separated by the Transantarctic Mountains. The ice sheet is around 2.2 km (1.4 mi) thick on average and is 4,897 m (16,066 ft) at its thickest point. It is also home to the geographic South Pole, South Magnetic Pole and the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.
Antarctica is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km2 (5,500,000 sq mi). Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi).
Between 1901 and 2018, average global sea level rose by 15–25 cm (6–10 in), an average of 1–2 mm (0.039–0.079 in) per year. This rate accelerated to 4.62 mm (0.182 in)/yr for the decade 2013–2022. Climate change due to human activities is the main cause. Between 1993 and 2018, thermal expansion of water accounted for 42% of sea level rise. Melting temperate glaciers accounted for 21%, while polar glaciers in Greenland accounted for 15% and those in Antarctica for 8%.
The Antarctic Research Centre (ARC) is part of the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. Its mission is to research "Antarctic climate history and processes, and their influence on the global climate system. The current director of the Antarctic Research Centre is Associate Professor Robert McKay.
Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities occurs everywhere on Earth, and while Antarctica is less vulnerable to it than any other continent, climate change in Antarctica has already been observed. There has been an average temperature increase of >0.05 °C/decade since 1957 across the continent, although it had been uneven. While West Antarctica warmed by over 0.1 °C/decade from the 1950s to the 2000s and the exposed Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by 3 °C (5.4 °F) since the mid-20th century, the colder and more stable East Antarctica had been experiencing cooling until the 2000s. Around Antarctica, the Southern Ocean has absorbed more heat than any other ocean, with particularly strong warming at depths below 2,000 m (6,600 ft) and around the West Antarctic, which has warmed by 1 °C (1.8 °F) since 1955.
Christina Riesselman is an American paleoceanographer whose research focus is on Southern Ocean response to changing climate.
Nancy Bertler is an Antarctic researcher, who has led major initiatives to investigate climate history using Antarctic ice cores, and best known for her leadership of the Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution Programme (RICE). She is a full professor at the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
Louise Tolle Huffman is an American teacher with over 30 years of teaching experience with many years focused on polar science and climate studies, and has written educational outreach books and articles on Antarctica. She is the Director of Education and Outreach for the US Ice Drilling Program Office (IDPO), responsible for outreach efforts highlighting IDPO scientists and their research results.
Robert Murray McKay is a paleoceanographer who specialises in sedimentology, stratigraphy and palaeoclimatology, specifically gathering geological evidence to study how marine-based portions of the Antarctic ice sheet behave in response to abrupt climate and oceanic change. He has been involved in examination of marine sedimentary records and glacial deposits to show melting and cooling in Antarctica over the past 65 million years and how this has influenced global sea levels and climate. This has helped climate change scientists overcome uncertainty about how the ice sheets will respond to global warming and how this can be managed effectively in the 21st century. He has participated in international projects including ANDRILL and the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), led major New Zealand government-funded research teams and has received several awards in recognition of his work. Since 2023 McKay has been a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington and from 2019, director of the Antarctic Research Centre.
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