GI News
Institute scientists with the Alaska Earthquake Information Center were the first to pinpoint the location and the magnitude of the largest on-land earthquake in the United States for 1995.
The 6.2 earthquake occurred about 34 miles northwest of Fairbanks in the Minto Flats area. It was followed by a 4.3 aftershock, which is movement felt as the fault continued to slip, 18 minutes after the initial earthquake. Within the following week, more than 3,000 measurable aftershocks were detected by AEIC, a cooperative effort of the Geophysical Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Alaska State Seismologist Roger Hansen received numerous reports of damage caused by the earthquake, one of the largest to occur in Alaska's Interior in more than 25 years.
Homes, schools and office buildings in Alaska often are constructed using earthquake protection codes based on seismic data from California. Professor of Geophysics Niren Biswas and his colleagues hope to create more pertinent codes using a network of 15 seismometers designed to monitor earthquake movement in Anchorage. The seismometers are calibrated to record strong local shaking, a motion most conventional seismometers can not respond to adequately.
With assistance from the Alaska Science and Technology Foundation, information from the network will be used to draw up new building codes for Anchorage. When the program is complete, researchers plan to install the network in other cities around the state and to rewrite construction codes to make all of Alaska's buildings more earthquake resistant.
The Arctic already shows signs of global warming, according to more than 60 scientists who attended the Wadati Conference on Global Change and the Polar Climate in Japan last November. Scientists from the Geophysical Institute and from the University of Tsukuba jointly organized the four-day international conference, which grew out of a desire to synthesize the results of polar climate research into a consistent picture of recent global changes.
Evidence compiled at the conference showing that global warming has occurred in the polar regions was found throughout a spectrum of variables, including temperature, precipitation, snow, and ice.
The combined findings are consistent with what scientists expected to see as a result of the enhanced greenhouse effect, which is created when pollutants in the atmosphere trap solar heat close to Earth. However, the scientists were not able to determine with certainty if the warming has been caused by natural or manmade influences.
"We recognize an urgent and international need to monitor the polar climate system carefully for rapid, complex and perhaps surprising changes in the near future," said Professor Gunter Weller, who serves as the institute's deputy director and the director of the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research.
An International Workshop Instruments and research designed to monitor global warming across international boundaries were discussed during a three-day workshop this winter in Fairbanks. The symposium was sponsored by the Communications Research Laboratory of the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the Geophysical Institute, and NOAA's Environmental Technology and Environmental Research laboratories in Boulder, Colorado.
Long-range plans to conduct research in the Arctic, remote sensing technologies, and new instruments at Poker Flat Research Range used to monitor the middle atmosphere were reviewed during the workshop, which was attended by 65 scientists from Japan and the United States.
The workshop grew out of an agreement signed last year by the Geophysical Institute, NOAA, and the Japanese government to jointly conduct arctic research.
Geophysical Institute professors offered free, weekly public lectures about their research as part of the Science for Everyone lecture series in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau this winter.
The after-dinner seminars, presented in terms understandable to all ages, covered a variety of topics including the aurora, volcanoes, laser rock dating, global climate change, mountain ranges, earthquakes, and glaciers.
An average of 300 people crammed into libraries in Fairbanks and Anchorage to hear each talk in the series, which was dedicated to former UA president Dr. William Wood and his wife Dorothy Jane. Two free public lectures were offered each night of the series to accommodate science enthusiasts in Anchorage.
Speakers for this year's lecture series were Syun Akasofu, Doug Christensen, Keith Crowder, Charles Deehr, John Eichelberger, Tom Hallinan, Will Harrison, Paul Layer, Steve McNutt, Charlotte Rowe, Glenn Shaw, and David Stone.
A special continuing-education course was offered in conjunction with the series so science teachers from elementary, middle, and high schools in Fairbanks and Anchorage could prepare lesson plans based on individual lectures.
Geophysical Institute On-line Computer users around the world can learn about research and services offered at the Geophysical Institute on a new home page at http://www.gi.alaska.edu/.
Also accessible from the home page is information about organizations affiliated with the institute, such as Poker Flat Research Range, the Alaska Earthquake Information Center, the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility, the Center for Global Change, the Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research, and the Alaska Climate Research Center.
The home page also displays regularly updated information, such as weekly aurora predictions, the latest institute news, current opportunities in graduate education, and upcoming research ventures.
It additionally provides pages to report various observations, such as sightings of Red Sprites and Blue Jets, the upper atmospheric flashes captured on color video above storm clouds by institute professors Davis Sentman and Gene Wescott.
Several institute publications, including this GI Quarterly, also are accessible from the home page, as well as several animations, including black-and-white MPEG movies of the aurora taken with an automated all-sky camera at Poker Flat once each minute during moon-down periods located in Poker Flat's Science Archives.
Santa Search Geophysical Institute scientists set up a special telephone hot-line on Christmas Eve to help children track Santa and his eight tiny reindeer during their flight around the world. The hotline rang into the control room of the Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility, where technicians used data from polar-orbiting satellites to locate Saint Nick. The hotline script, written by ASF Program Assistant Donna Sandberg, described Santa's whereabouts in colorful, educational language suited for children.
Nobel Prize for Ozone Studies Sydney Chapman was honored last fall when the first Nobel Prize in chemistry was given to three atmospheric scientists for explaining how the destruction of the ozone layer, which absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation, can be harmful to life.
Chapman, the scientific director of the Geophysical Institute from 1951 to 1970, was recognized for formulating the first photochemical theory describing the creation and destruction of ozone in the atmosphere.
Chapman's contributions were mentioned by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences when the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to professors Paul Crutzen of Germany, Mario Molina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and F. Sherwood Rowland of the University of California.
Several nations have agreed to ban man-made agents that destroy ozone due in part to the scientists' research, which shows how chemical mechanisms affect the thickness of the ozone layer.
Institute professors Glenn Shaw, Dan Jaffe, Richard Benner, and Roger Smith have worked with the Nobel laureates on common problems involving the ozone layer over the Arctic.