Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2013
Volume 58, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 18–22, 2013; Baltimore, Maryland
Session R0: Kavli Foundation Special Session: Forefront Physics for Real World Problems: Energy, Climate, and the Environment |
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Sponsoring Units: APS Chair: Michael Turner, APS President and University of Chicago Room: Hilton Baltimore Key Ballroom |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 2:30PM - 3:06PM |
R0.00001: The Promise of Photovoltaics Invited Speaker: Steven Chu |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 3:06PM - 3:42PM |
R0.00002: Earth's Climate History from Glaciers and Ice Cores Invited Speaker: Lonnie Thompson Glaciers serve both as recorders and early indicators of climate change. Over the past 35 years our research team has recovered climatic and environmental histories from ice cores drilled in both Polar Regions and from low to mid-latitude, high-elevation ice fields. Those ice core --derived proxy records extending back 25,000 years have made it possible to compare glacial stage conditions in the Tropics with those in the Polar Regions. High-resolution records of $\delta^{\mathrm{18}}$O (in part a temperature proxy) demonstrate that the current warming at high elevations in the mid- to lower latitudes is unprecedented for the last two millennia, although at many sites the early Holocene was warmer than today. Remarkable similarities between changes in the highland and coastal cultures of Peru and regional climate variability, especially precipitation, imply a strong connection between prehistoric human activities and regional climate. Ice cores retrieved from shrinking glaciers around the world confirm their continuous existence for periods ranging from hundreds to thousands of years, suggesting that current climatological conditions in those regions today are different from those under which these ice fields originated and have been sustained. The ongoing widespread melting of high-elevation glaciers and ice caps, particularly in low to middle latitudes, provides strong evidence that a large-scale, pervasive and, in some cases, rapid change in Earth's climate system is underway. Observations of glacier shrinkage during the 20th and 21st century girdle the globe from the South American Andes, the Himalayas, Kilimanjaro (Tanzania, Africa) and glaciers near Puncak Jaya, Indonesia (New Guinea). The history and fate of these ice caps, told through the adventure, beauty and the scientific evidence from some of world's most remote mountain tops, provide a global perspective for contemporary climate. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 3:42PM - 4:18PM |
R0.00003: Physical Controls of the Earth's Climate and Climate change Invited Speaker: Graeme Stephens The Earth's climate system and changes to it are determined by the physical processes that govern the flows of energy to and from the atmosphere and Earth's surface. Although the energy exchanges at the top of the atmosphere are well determined from available satellite measurements, the global character of the energy flows \textit{within} the climate system, and to and from the Earth's surface in particular, are not directly measured and thus are much more uncertain. The surface energy balance is particularly important since geographical variations of its distribution drives ocean circulations, dictates the amount of water evaporated from the Earth's surface, fuels the planetary hydrological cycle and ultimately controls how this hydrological cycle responds to forced climate change. This talk reviews our state of understanding of the physical processes that determine the energy balance, couple to the Earth's water cycle and are responsible for the most important climate feedbacks that dictate the pace of climate change. Challenges in understanding the mechanisms responsible for feedbacks associated with clouds and precipitation, water vapor, snow cover and carbon will be highlighted. The further complexity and uncertainty that aerosols add to the cloud and precipitation feedbacks will also be reviewed. The effects of uncertainties in our understanding of the physical climate system, and feedbacks within it, will be reviewed in the context of climate change projections. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:18PM - 4:54PM |
R0.00004: Environmental Forensics: Molecular Insight into Oil Spill Weathering Helps Advance High Magnetic Field FT-ICR Mass Spectrometry Invited Speaker: Amy McKenna The depletion of terrestrial global oil reserves has shifted oil exploration into offshore and ultra-deep water ( \textgreater\ 5000 ft) oil reserves to meet global energy demands. Deep water reservoirs are currently in production in many parts of the world, including the Gulf of Mexico, but production is complicated by the water depth and thick salt caps that challenge reservoir characterization / production. The explosion aboard the \textit{Deepwater Horizon} in April 2010 resulted in an estimated total release of $\sim$5 million barrels (BP claims that they collected $\sim$1M barrels, for a net release of 4 M) of light, sweet crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and shifted attention toward the environmental risks associated with offshore oil production. The growing emphasis on deep water and ultra-deep water oil production poses a significant environmental threat, and increased regulations require that oil companies minimize environmental impact to prevent oil spills, and mitigate environmental damage when spills occur. Every oil spill is unique. The molecular transformations that occur to petroleum after contact with seawater depend on the physical and chemical properties of the spilled oil, environmental conditions, and deposition environment. Molecular-level knowledge of the composition, distribution, and total mass of released hydrocarbons is essential to disentangle photo- and bio-degradation, source identification, and long-term environmental impact of hydrocarbons released into the environment. Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS) is unsurpassed in its ability to characterize complex mixtures at the level of elemental composition assignment. Only FT-ICR mass spectrometry can routinely achieve the required minimum resolving power necessary to elucidate molecular-level characterization of crude oil. Conversely, the spectral complexity of petroleum facilitates identification of systematic errors in the accumulation, transfer, excitation, and detection events in the FT-ICR experiment. For example, the high density of peaks at each nominal mass unit provides unprecedented insight into how excitation conditions affect ion motion during detection. Aggregated oil (i.e., tar balls, tar mats) that reached the surface exhibits a more than two-fold increase in the total number of detected species, with an increased number of oxygenated species. Principal component analysis (PCA) applied to two possible source oils (contained within the same ship) and weathered samples provide the first application of FT-ICR MS for source identification. Molecular formulae from parent and weathered oil indicate that the lightest petroleum fractions (saturated hydrocarbons) are the most readily oxidized components, and can serve as a template to determine chemical transformations that occur throughout the water column. The ability to differentiate and catalogue compositional changes that occur to oil after its release into the environment relies heavily on gains achieved in nearly all steps in the FT-ICR mass spectral experiment required to accommodate larger ion populations inherent to heavily weathered crude oil. Here, we present the requirement for FT-ICR MS for comprehensive oil spill characterization, and highlight advances made to FT-ICR MS experimental conditions developed from petroleum characterization. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 4:54PM - 5:30PM |
R0.00005: Forefront Research in Batteries for Electric Vehicles Invited Speaker: Stephen Harris |
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