Summer 2004
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Summer 2004 |
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By Dale Long If you think the summers are getting increasingly warmer in your part of the world, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology alumnus Terrence Joyce shares your concern, and he has the scientific data to back it up.
As senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Joyce (Physics, ’68) has spent most of the past 30 years examining climatic change through groundbreaking research into the increasing temperatures of oceans. His findings, concurred by internationally respected scientists, assert that common fears over global warming may be misguided. In a New York Times op-ed article, titled “The Heat Before The Cold,” (April 18, 2002) Joyce advised that global warming could actually result in colder temperatures for Eastern North America and Western Europe, and set off catastrophic changes to the global system of ocean currents. This phenomenon could plunge a portion of the northern hemisphere back into mini ice-age conditions. He reminds persons that about 500 years ago a reduction of the ocean currents may have turned the climate in northern Europe and the northeastern United States much colder, during what became known as the Little Ice Age, which lasted for about 300 years. Joyce’s conjectures may receive even more exposure this summer with the film “The Day After Tomorrow,” which depicts global warming triggering a cascade of events that practically flash-freeze the planet. The movie could do for interest in climatic issues what “Jurassic Park” did for dinosaurs. “Anything that reawakens the issue of abrupt climate change as a possible consequence of global warming is a positive thing,” Joyce says. “There simply has to be more research in this area.” Hoping to add more evidence to global warming issues, Joyce has made 25 extensive research cruises to observe the changing ocean climate. In his latest journey, conducted last fall, he led a 25-person American team on a 24-day excursion that conducted a hydrographic survey of Atlantic Ocean waters near Trinidad. The cruise is part of a large international effort to understand how the ocean is changing globally and how it may be influenced by and, in turn, influence future climate variability. “The ocean is a huge reservoir of carbon dioxide and a huge heat storage reservoir,” Joyce observes. “A global ocean-observing system would greatly enhance our ability to monitor changes that can spawn major, long-lasting climate shifts and lead to reliable predictions of what may follow.” Joyce became interested in oceanography after attending a summer educational program on earth sciences at the University of Miami (Fla.) between his junior and senior years at Rose Polytechnic Institute (now Rose-Hulman). He was among the first graduates of a new physical oceanography Ph.D. program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and WHOI (1972), and has spent his entire professional career with the largest independent, not-for-profit, oceanographic research organization, located on Cape Cod. The center’s research is supported by a mix of grants from federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. “Research requires we either relearn or learn something new every day, or risk falling behind,” states Joyce, who estimates to be working on as many as three research projects at a time. “The reward is being able to understand something brand new about the ocean and how it works. “The (New York Times) op-ed about abrupt climate change is certainly not my main contribution to science. Like many researchers, I feel that my best work is yet to come. That motivates me to keep working,” he continued. “Although we have been making serious oceanographic observations since the late 1950s, our modern record is too short to draw many definitive conclusions. The period since the mid-1960s until now, for example, can be seen to be rather anomalous, based on late 19th and 20th century air temperature records in the U.S. Yet this recent period is the one with most of our ocean data. So we risk making great errors in our inferences drawn from the most recent, anomalous years.”
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