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UAF researchers to speak at web-streamed press events

December 9, 2016

Sue Mitchell
907-978-2040

Two scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute will speak about their research during live press events from the 2016 American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco next week.

Members of the media outside San Francisco can access the events via the AGU 2016 webstream site at http://bit.ly/uafagu2016webstream. The events will also be archived on AGU’s YouTube channel.

The American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting is the largest earth and space science conference in the world, drawing more than 24,000 scientists from around the globe. More than 100 University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers were selected to deliver poster and oral presentations at the 2016 meeting.

Following are descriptions of the two press events. The times are Pacific time zone.

Mapping the flow of ice around the globe
Monday, Dec. 12, 11:30 a.m. (10:30 a.m. Alaska time)

Glaciers and ice sheets are melting faster due to climate change, contributing substantial volumes of water to the world’s oceans. Knowing how fast the planet is losing ice will improve projections of sea level rise and provide insights into other global and local impacts. At this briefing, scientists will discuss a new database that uses the NASA/U.S. Geological Survey Landsat satellites to track the velocity of all glaciers and ice sheets in near real time. This new venture shows how ice velocity changes globally from season to season and from year to year.

Participants:


  • Mark Fahnestock, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute

  • Twila Moon, University of Bristol

  • Ted A. Scambos, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado at Boulder

  • Alex Gardner, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory


Early returns from four far-flung field experiments (media workshop)
Wednesday, Dec. 14, 5 p.m. (4 p.m. Alaska time)

Starting one year ago, a series of major new field experiments fanned out across the world to capture the pulse of our planet in innovative ways. These multiyear projects sponsored by NASA cover a lot of scientific ground, from expanding our view of coral reefs to probing climate-driven changes in Arctic ecosystems. Together these experiments seek to fill in important gaps in our knowledge of how Earth works. This workshop will introduce media to four of these new experiments, present initial observations and insights from their first year in the field and preview reporting opportunities for 2017 and beyond.

Participants:

  • Franz Meyer, University of Alaska Fairbanks Alaska Satellite Facility

  • Lynn Russell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego

  • Ian Fenty, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

  • Eric Hochberg, Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences


ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Jeff Richardson, 907-378-9878, jarichardson6@alaska.edu.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Visit http://bit.ly/uafagu2016webstream for information about joining the live webstream for AGU 2016 press events. Additional information about these and other press conferences is available at http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2016/media-center/press-conferences/.