Dr. Peter Neff

Friday science update. Gophers in Antarctica. Ocean instruments removed while working. White House wants to override experts for federal grants. Thwaites Glacier ice shelf may collapse soon (don’t freak!) in Antarctica, as @newscientist.com reports & @adrianluckman.bsky.social illustrated here.

How do we know old Antarctic ice is old? Got a few minutes? Atmospheric argon isotope dating: a process discovered last century here at UMN (Al Nier) & perfected by scientists at Princeton (Bender). This is COLDEX science funded by NSF and conducted in university communities nationwide.

Like Antarctic ice cores & the climate perspective they provide? They only happen with the 7 decades of sustained support we’ve given to the National Science Foundation, United States Antarctic Program, and Operation Deep Freeze. My two cents (or 180 seconds):

US #Antarctic scientists have no research #icebreaker. In a world where #polar regions are changing and increasingly tense, this is a big blind spot limiting progression of human knowledge and preservation of Antarctica for peace, international cooperation, and science.

US McMurdo Station, #Antarctica on departure. Largest research station on the continent, operated by the United States Antarctic Program of the National Science Foundation. Supported by Operation Deep Freeze. Jan 2023.

Please read books. They are helpful. These are about the #Arctic. I think #peace and international cooperation in the polar regions should remain a thing.

Take a break to touch grass if you can. Or in Minnesota, a crisp walk on snow in the woods. Keep leading the way through these unprecedented abuses, Twin Cities.

Take a journey through time down a new NSF COLDEX ice core borehole just completed by the team in #Antarctica! If you’re at #AGU25 stop by the COLDEX booth in the Exhibit Hall to talk to COLDEX team members from across the 15-institution center funded by NSF! @agu.org Follow us on IG @ coldex_stc

Timeline cleanse: Antarctic sun dogs/halo version. January 2024, RAICA ice core project at Canisteo Peninsula, West Antarctica supported by Korea Polar Research Institute and US National Science Foundation. 🌞 ❄️

I’ll be with @pbsnews.org tomorrow from 11am for a live online AMA on science communication! Join in. Details below.

NSF terminated NB Palmer’ lease early presumably due to flat funding + budget uncertainty going forward. American dominance in #Antarctica wanes, & our polar workforce falters despite how critical polar knowledge is to national security. Follow @ EidsonAerial (IG) for drone 📸 in #Louisiana.

Two miles of ice core on the shelf at our national ice core facility in Lakewood, Colorado. The WAIS Divide core from West Antarctica is a 3400m long (deepest US core, 2nd deepest ice core ever) 68,000 year old record of high resolution climate.

The US ice core research community, with international partners, has recovered valuable records of past climate from the Arctic & Antarctic since the 1950s. Here is a sampling of cores—including 6,000,000 year old ice via NSF Center for Oldest Ice Exploration—at the NSF Ice Core Facility.

6,000,000 year old ice & plenty of wind and cold! What folks go through for old ice. Team is headed back to Allan Hills now, follow more at COLDEX.org Support via the incredible National Science Foundation and US Antarctic Program. PNAS 6Myr results: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

What’s it like to sleep in a tent in #Antarctica? If you like white noise, it’s great! All of our work in Antarctica collecting ice cores to learn about past climate is funded by the US National Science Foundation and the United States Antarctic Program. Teams head south again in November.

Trying to engage more about US Antarctic science and presence, mostly over on IG and TikTok (3 min video limit here, clipped). 🙏 ❄️ @icy_pete

And who funded this work…? NSF funded all the US Antarctic ice cores (💚🩵) & NOAA funds Mauna Loa (🖤). Antarctic ice is the only archive clean enough to preserve unaltered air in bubbles in the ice.

Almost forgot that this is the whole point. (It’s a tiktok thing) The US National Science Foundation funds nearly ALL ice core research done by US university researchers. These cores preserve layers of time & bubbles of old air dating back 10s, 100s now even 1,000,000s of years.

Annoying & dangerous gap in #noaa #nws upper air soundings upwind of tornado alley (SD, MT CO), just as tornado season arrives. No way to justify losing these observations that feed directly into forecast models. #wx

This is the National Science Foundation. We can’t access #Antarctica without expert pilots, logistics experts, mountaineers, etc. We all bring our skills to bear. I bring being an ice nerd who understands how polar logistics and science teams come together…

Let’s not lose all of this. Defend our investments in publicly-funded science. We love the National Science Foundation & want to keep doing world-leading science in Antarctica and elsewhere. Thanks to all who have worked, do work, and will work at NSF.

Snow blowing off the front of Dotson Ice Shelf, Antarctica. This timeline cleanse brought to you by US National Science Foundation and Korea Polar Research Institute funded research to understand past climate history in changing Antarctic coastal regions.