Want to know more about the Climate Change College French ambassador project?  

The Cool Mountain Project goal is to promote water and energy savings in French ski resorts. The idea is to help ski resorts hostels and public offices to use water more efficiently and save on their water heating bill, by getting an Alpine Water Saver Kit. They contain water saving showerheads and taps, which use 30 to 60 percent less water and energy for heating water, while providing the same comfort.

A ski resort which uses 500 water saving shower heads could save in one year the equivalent of 7 Olympic swimming pools of water, 40 flights Paris–NY–Paris of CO2 emissions and more than 120 000 euros ! We’re not playing, we’re saving.

My partners in the Cool Mountains Project are Mountain Riders and Ecoperl. See why I’m lucky:

Mountain Riders works with French ski resorts, its stakeholders and partners, to promote sustainable development alternatives with the setting of a sustainable tourism.

www.mountain-riders.org

Ecoperl is specialized in top quality showerheads, which are more efficient while using less water (-60%). Ecoperl works together with WWF and La Cle Verte (The Green Key), an ecolabel for tourist facilities.

www.ecoperl.fr

Casper is one of the WWF "Voyage for the future" ambassador. It is about training 18 youth from 9 different countries to push for a legally binding, international treaty to follow Kyoto and cut CO2 emissions by at least 80%.
Keep an eye on http://www.caspersarcticvoyage.wordpress.com
He's leaving tomorrow to the Arctic (he did not want to put me in his suitcase) to see for himself the fact that there is less ice than ever before - and what that means.

Have a good trip, fellows!

Everyone can do his bit!

Want to know more about the glacier’s breath? Here is the beginning of the story:

A few days ago, we were ready to walk into the Alaskan wilderness…After a night in the comfort of the Withier Inn (If you could see the view I had! I almost did not sleep, and spent a lot of time looking at the slopes, the glaciers, and the avalanche tracks…). In the afternoon we loaded all the gear on a small icebreaker boat. Destination: deeper into Prince William Sound, in the Harriman Fjord…

We made the camp on a small black sand beach, lost among trees, small icebergs, overlooking the Cox, Barry and Cascade glaciers.

Jen Gessert explained the basics of “sustainable camping”, or how to enjoy the wilderness without spoiling it.

Laura and Serena cooked a great dinner, with lots of veggies (yup!), local fish, then a dessert with cream and strawberries. As you can see, I liked it!

In the evening, we enjoyed a fire under the stars, listening to the glaciers’ roar. Magic.

Some of us have had the opportunity to take an helicopter to fly over the Prince William Sound area and see the sunset from the sky...

"I wished to find, amidst the solitude and grandeur of the western wilds, more correct views of human nature and of the true interests of man. The season of snows was preferred...that I might experience the novelty of danger"

Estwick Evans

Thanks Jakob for the pics!

Lucky, lucky me. After travelling from Fairbanks to Anchorage, we arrive in Prince William Sound, on the southern coast of Alaska, surrounded by the Chugach Mountains. It is an area of intricate coastline and tidal glaciers.

We are here to focus on glaciers and their response to climate change. Glaciers advanced and retreated over the years, due to climatic fluctuations. But nowadays, this is clear:Alaska’s glaciers are the fastest melting on the planet. The latest topographic maps are not up to date. Even our guides, who came in the fjord 5 years ago, see a drastic retreat. In 5 years ! The unvegetated bedrock of the glaciers we have seen gives stark evidence of how recently it was covered by millions of tons of glacial ice.  

Dramatic...but still, how majestic are they...And when glacier calve ice into the sea with tremendous roar...

As magnificent as the first day of the world. No kidding. I have seen the beauty of the Kantishna Hills and the Outer range, "that sprawls across the flats like a rumpled blanket on an unmade bed", exacltly where Christopher Mc Andless walked into the wild, by the way. Then, I crossed the Alaska range. Wild and high...Something echoes in me.

"The solitude and total freedom of the wilderness creates a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation" Roderick Nash.

Determining how much of the carbon stored in permafrost may be released as temperatures warm and permafrost thaws: that is the job of Christian Trucco and Jason Vogel, who work with Ted Schuur, from the University of Florida.

Between 1985 and today, the permafrost has shown an average temperature increase of 0.5 to 1.5 degree celsius (data from the study area of Eightmile lake). And thawing of permafrost—wrought by climate change—affects the carbon balance of the area. A lot of carbon becomes available: will it be offset by the uptake of the vegetation? Or, most probably, will there be a positive feedback?

To study what is the most important processes occuring (photosynthesis-which traps CO- or respiration-wich releases CO and leads to a positive feedback),the scientists established a methodology to monitor carbon fluxes:six plexiglass boxes get positioned, with a network of cables snaking between them and connecting to an infrared gas analyzer, a battery, and a data logger. This system automatically opens and closes the doors on each box, thereby trapping the air at regular intervals. Each chamber's carbon dioxide concentration and sunlight and moisture levels are monitored and logged.

Data show that the carbon released from thawing permafrost represent a growing part of the total ecosystem respiration. Here is another sign of climate and ecosystem change.

Jason Vogel on the study site near Eightmile lake, explaining how data are collected from the plexiglas chambers

Magnificent ! Here is what we could see from the 8 Mile Lake, when we were working with Katey Walter. The Denali National Park exemplifies interior Alaska`s character as one of the world`s great frontiers for the wild and the unspoiled nature...Nothing less

The Outer Range and the Kantishna Hills

Alaska scientist Katey Walter studies an aspect of climate change that has been overlooked: methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, which means it is much more efficient at trapping heat. As a result, methane feeds into a loop of global warming.

In the bottom of the many lakes of the Arctic, bacteria feed on the carbon that previously had been frozen underground and burp it out as methane.As permafrost thaws because of climate change, methane is now being released from lakes in the far north at a far greater rate than only Katey has estimated. Katey told me that projections for global warming could be far worse than currently estimated as methane emissions from lakes haven't been carefully studied, this is why her research are so important.

Katie looking for hotspots 

We ve had he honor to meet Katey Walter and her assistant Laura, at the 8 miles Lake, in the Denali National Park. We help them by collecting a core of lake sediments, organic matter and methane samples. We saw some hotspots, where a lot of methane is burped out.

Cara and Katie collecting organic matter

After drilling on the ice, I catch some organic matter that was on the lake

Let`s give you guys an avant-premiere of my campaign! As you know, my project is about water and energy efficiency in the french alpine ski resorts. The great Cool Mountains project!

Saving water shower heads help save water (-60 percent), energy and money without sacrificing comfort and performance.

Mountain water is at the begining of the water cycle. Ski resorts need water the most during the ski season, when the ressource is the scarcest. The resorts struggle with lacks of water because of the artificial snow, the huge consumption and the extension of urban areas. So, guys, even in places when you think there is plenty of water, the water  ressources can actually be precious and scarce! Using a water-saving shower head can make a difference: over one year, 1000 shower heads can represent water savings equivalent to 3 olympic swimming pools and savings of CO2 equivalent to 40 flights from Paris to New York! Saving water, energy and money, while taking a shower, insn`t it great?

So, fight for the white, keep slopes cool!

Icy bikini

The weather station of Barrow, which belongs to the NOAA network, takes upper air observation by releasing weather ballons twice a day. An instrument (called a radiosonde) attached to the balloon measures the atmospheric pressure, air temperature and relative humidity.Weather balloons are released daily from as far north as Barrow and from as far south as the South Pole. There are 870 land-based upper air stations in more than 150 countries. Weather ballons give instant data about the weather conditions in the different layers of the atmopshere. These data are used for the National Weather Service but, most of all, give us precious informations for the study of climate change!

We met John Heidleberg, the weather station technician and saw him release one of the two balloons of the day. For us it was important and we hurried up to get there on time, so John was nice and took time to explain his work. Pretty funny to see on a screen the data coming from the balloon, which is so high in the sky.

John Heidelberg

Meet George Devoky, the most dedicated scientist I have ever seen. He studies Black Guillemots, pigeon-sized black arctic birds. And he started 30 years ago! At first, he came on Cooper Island (not far from Barrow) to see what could be impacted if oil companies came on the island. Then his passion grew up...and he never stopped studying the island`s birds.

In 30 years, he has witnessed huge changes, and unprecedented retreats and melt of the arctic pack ice that resulted in 23 percent less ice cover than the previous annual minimum. Oceanographers are now predicting an ice-free Arctic as early as 2013.

On Cooper Island, this means a complete shift in prey for guillemots, as less desirable fishes become abundant and subarctic birds species are now fighting to move in... 

George Devoky

S aventurer sur l ocean gele, terrain de chasse des ours polaires, n est pas anodin. Les "polar bear guides" scrutent l`horizon et assurent la securite, armes de leur fusil. Il vaut mieux eviter de les deconcentrer...

Michael the Great

Nok and Erika

As climate records are growing, the evidence of change has mounted. A great certainty has come across the scientific community that humans are affecting the climate. This human-induced warming trend has a discernable influence on many physical and biological systems.And there is the potential for much greater change in the future. The increased certainty is reflected in the 4th report of the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change). The key message is: humans interfer with the climate, and human-induced climate has already started. Wich, guys, in not a good news. But dont give up, its time to fight! The future remains largely in our hands: the magnitude of the expected changes depends on what humans choose to do about Green House Gases (GHG) emissions.

Things are changing even faster than the models worst hypotesis. So we need to have a new understanding of the climate system and the cause-and-effect relationships.

Dr Chris Petrich, a great scientist from the University of Fairbanks is studying one of those cause-and-effect relationships. He studies the surface albedo, which is the reflectivity of the earth`s surface: a lighter surface such as snow ice reflects more solar radiation than a darker surface does. But when parts of sea ice melt on surface, it creates pockets of dark water which, instead of reflecting the light, absorb it. This extra heat absorbance could accelerate the melting of the arctic ocean. Chris studies this positive feedback dynamics, in order to link them with the climate chamge models and give us a better understanding of the changes in the Arctic.

Chris (on the right) explaining the albedo effect 

Chris (also knowm as sea-ice guy) took on sea ice and gave us the opportunity to help him collect data. We all have seen pictures of people holding strange equipments in a beautifull icy landscape: well, that was us this time!

I drill on the ice (that keeps me warm :)

We started by drilling through the ice, which was only 1m50 thick! And not the 4m I had imagined  (remember Im not an expert). I also had the chance to make cross section of the snow. With Jakob, we`ve had to walk away on sea ice using a GPS which made wierd noises.

Cara making a snow profile with a GPS (twit twiit twit)

When we started to dance on it and get lost in the blizzard, we knew it was time to stop and join the other ambassadors! But a great Inupiat polar Bear Guard was following us, so we were not completely lost.  

It was really a great day. I study geography and am really interested in snow and sea ice dynamics and the way they respond to climate change. Well, Chris, see u at Fairbanks University for a PhD!

Marc Cornelissen (my favorite polar explorer, a very good man) and me

Here we are in Barrow, the USA`s northernmost city. The inupiat culture...and the arctic ocean. For real. Flat and white, but magnetic, awesome...I thought i wouldnt bear the wind and the cold, but I did and I enjoyed every moment on the sea ice. Ok, that was not a North Pole expedition (which Ill do, some day) but it was really awesome. After a long day working on the ice, I did not want to come back and spent one more hour outside. Just to be near.

The northern sun on the flat and white ocean

Going to the study site with ski doo's. I drove one of them (yeahhh!!!)

Barrow: the road by the ocean

Alice, responsable logistique du centre scientifique BASC ou nous sommes bases, nous a accueillis a bras ouverts chez elle, afin de nous en dire un peu plus sur la culture Inupiat et ses traditions culinaires...