Geologic Climate Research in Siberia
Update
Meet the Team
Teacher - Tim Martin
Although he grew up in several locations around the country, Tim Martin has always felt most at home in the natural world. His persistent curiosity led to his undergraduate study of the natural sciences and art at Goshen College and recently he completed his M.S. in teaching geosciences through Mississippi State University. Whether using recent data for weather forecasting, seismograms for mapping plate tectonics, or making real-time observations with an Internet accessible radio telescope, Mr. Martin has a passion for bringing real time science into his Earth Science classroom at Greensboro Day School. In his free time, he may be found "up close and personal" with earth science while rock climbing with his family. Mr. Martin is excited to be a Polar TREC teacher as he sees Lake El'gygytgyn as an important crossroads for geology, climatology, and planetary science. For more information about Mr. Martin, his class, and his previous earth Science adventures, visit Tim's Adventure Earth Science web site.
Researcher - Julie Brigham-Grette
Dr. Brigham-Grette is also involved in the IPY STEM Polar Connections project to integrate the study of polar regions and International Polar Year activities into the middle and high school curriculum.
Researcher - Christian Koeberl
Researcher - Martin Melles
Researcher - Pavel Minyuk
Journals
Project Information
Where are They?
Lake El'gygytgyn (pronounced el'geegitgin) is located 100 km (62 miles) north of the Arctic Circle and 250 km (155 miles) inland from the Arctic Ocean (67.5° N and 172° E) on the remote Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian Far East. This large lake measures 12 km (7.5 miles) wide and roughly 170 m (558 feet) deep. It is positioned on the continental divide between the Arctic Ocean and the Bering Sea in the middle of Anadyr Mountains. The team will live and work out of a temporary camp located on the west shore of the frozen lake ice.
What are they Doing?
An international team of researchers from the United States, Germany, Russia, and Austria will be traveling to northeast Russia to conduct a large-scale scientific drilling project in Lake El'gygytgyn (pronounced el'geegitgin), a crater lake created 3.6 million years ago by the impact of a meteorite measuring about 18 km in diameter. The team will work on the lake ice throughout the winter, using a customized light-weight drill rig to obtain drill cores of layered muds from two sites in the lake.
Lake El'gygytgyn possesses a unique record of prehistoric climate change in the arctic. Because this basin was never glaciated, an uninterrupted sediment sequence of nearly 400 m (1312 feet) has accumulated at the bottom of the lake. Sediment cores collected during this expedition will be used to gather information about the history of the basin and compare it with similar paleoclimate records from other parts of the world, helping researchers to better understand the arctic's role in global climate change.
The team also plans to drill a short distance into the highly fractured rock layer below the sediments to learn more about meteorite impacts. Because of the particularly well-preserved rock structure in Lake El'gygytgyn, the team will be able to learn how igneous target rocks in this area respond to impacts, potentially providing the basis for important understanding related to cratering processes on Mars.
Geologists will use the data collected from the project to reconstruct past climate records on longer time scales, improve understanding of the climate system, and better inform scientists who predict future climate change. To learn more about the Lake El'gygytgyn drilling project, and other geological drilling projects worldwide, visit the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program or the Drilling, Observation and Sampling of the Earths Continental Crust (DOSECC) Websites.
Vocabulary
- Climate
- Climate Change
- Climatology
- Continental Divide
- Cratering
- Forcing
- Geology
- Glacial geology
- Glaciated
- Glacier
The average weather over a particular region of the Earth. Climate originates in recurring weather phenomenon that result from specific types of atmospheric circulation.
A statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or the mean variability of the climate that persists for an extended period (typically 10 years or more). Climate change may result from such factors as changes in solar activity, long-period changes in the Earth's orbital elements, natural internal processes of the climate system, or anthropogenic forcing (for example, increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases).
The science that deals with the phenomena of climates or climatic conditions.
A divide separating river systems that flow to opposite sides of a continent.
The creation of a bowl-shaped depression in the surface, made by the impact or collision of a body, such as meteoroid.
With respect to climate, processes and factors outside of the climate system that when changed, generate a change in the climate system. Examples of climate forcing include variability in solar output, different amounts of sunshine received by a region of the Earth due to orbital changes, volcanic eruptions that inject particles and gases into the atmosphere, and changes in the positions of continents.
The science that deals with the dynamics and physical history of the earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the physical, chemical, and biological changes that the earth has undergone or is undergoing.
Science that deals with the dynamics, processes, and physically history of glaciers and their relationship with the earth.
Is or was at one time covered with ice or glaciers or affected by glacial action.
A mass of ice that persists for many years and notably deforms and flows under the influence of gravity.
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