The Icy Planet: Saving Earth's

Refrigerator Colin P. Summerhayes

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-icy-planet-saving-earths-refrigerator-colin-p-sum
merhayes/
The Icy Planet
Frontispiece

The Geological Timescale for the Phanerozoic Eon and the Neoproterozoic Era of the
Proterozoic Eon (in millions of years, rounded up or down)

Era Period Epoch Base Age ×106 yrs

Cenozoic *1 Quaternary Holocene 0.0117

Pleistocene 2.6
Neogene Pliocene 5.3
Miocene 23
Paleogene Oligocene 34
Eocene 56
Palaeocene 66
Mesozoic Cretaceous Upper 100
Lower 145
Jurassic Upper 163
Middle 174
Lower 201
Triassic Upper 237
Middle 247
Lower 252
Paleozoic Permian Upper 259
Middle 273
Lower 299
Carboniferous Upper 323
Lower 359
Devonian Upper 383
Middle 393
Lower 419
Silurian 444
Ordovician 485
Cambrian 541
Proterozoic Neoproterozoic 1000

From Cohen, K.M., Finney, S.C., Gibbard, P.L., and Fan, J.-​X. (2013; updated 2018) The ICS International
Chronostratigraphic Chart. Episodes 36, 199–​204.
The Icy Planet
Saving Earth’s Refrigerator

Colin Summerhayes
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022946541

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​762798–​3

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197627983.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
This book is dedicated to all our children, grandchildren, and great-​grandchildren
and their descendants, who will have to live with the consequences of the
overheating of our atmosphere and our ocean and the melting of our ice through
the global pollution we and our predecessors have caused by the seemingly
innocuous act of burning coal, oil, and natural gas.

I would also like to pay tribute here to some of the often overlooked female
scientists who are making a huge difference in studies of polar climate and past
climates (which provide examples of what may happen if we fail to limit global
overheating), in the hope that it will encourage yet more young women to enter
these challenging research fields to follow these great examples: Jane Francis,
Maureen Raymo, Valérie Masson-​Delmotte, Dorthe Dahl-​Jensen, and Robin Bell.
Contents

Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii

1. Introduction  1
Ice—​The Canary in the Coal Mine  2
Let’s Talk about Ice  3
Entering a New Geological Era—​The Anthropocene  10
The Role of Ice in Earth’s Climate System  12
What Is Global Warming Doing to the Planet’s Icy Places?  19
Connections 20
Why Should We Care?  24
Experiencing the Icy Regions on a Virtual Journey  26

2. Icehouse Climates  28
Snowball Earth  28
The Icehouse Worlds of Paleozoic Time  38
The Mesozoic Greenhouse Interlude  45
The Cenozoic Icehouse and the Modern World  52

3. East Antarctica—​The World’s Biggest Ice Cube 64

Heading South  64
Ice Runways and Air Networks  69
Ice and Climate 76
A Drifting Continent  86
Buried under Ice  88
Melting Ice Shelves  90
Emperors on Ice  92
A Cooling Ocean  97
Science on Ice  98
Tourism  106
A New Ice Runway  108
Lakes and Polynyas  109

4. West Antarctica and Dry Valleys  118

Early Explorers of the Ross Sea  118
Ross Sea Tourism  128
Dry Valleys  133
Subantarctic Islands 135
The Changing Climate  138
viii Contents

Numerical Models and Climate Forecasts  142

Drilling into Climate History 146

5. The Antarctica Peninsula, the Falklands, and South Georgia 152

South to the Peninsula 152
Patagonian Glaciers  156
Antarctic Expedition  157
Drake Passage  158
Icebergs and Pack Ice  164
Old Volcanoes and Adélie Penguins  169
Into the Caldera  174
Chinstraps and Elephants  176
Fjords and Islands  179
Paradise Harbour  182
Palmer Station, an American Outpost  183
Lemaire Channel and the Iceberg Graveyard  187
Glaciers and Ice Shelves  190
The Falkland Islands and South Georgia  193
Island Arcs, Trenches, and Volcanoes  200
Back across the Drake  204
Signs of Climate Change  205

6. The Arctic  209

Arctic Glaciation—​Beginnings 209
The Land of Trolls  217
Svalbard  222
The Land of Ice and Fire  225
The Ice Plateau  229
North America’s Laurentide Ice Sheet  245
Alaska  248
Siberia  252
A Frozen Sea  255
Arctic Warming  261

7. The Third Pole—​Mountain Ice 275

The Alpine Refrigerator  276
The Growth and Decay of Alpine Ice  279
Shrinking Glaciers Worldwide  285
A Close Acquaintance with Alpine Ice and Snow  291
The Glaciers of the Pennine Alps  297
Mountain Ice and Water  300
8. Rising Seas  304
Sea Level through Time  305
Rising Seas  311
Coastal Damage  316
Subsidence, Uplift, History, and Forecasts  319
 Contents ix

9.  Our Future  326

Losing Our Refrigerator  326
Coastal Impacts  332
Unintentional Planetary Engineering  334
Population, Energy, and Climate  336
Consequences  338
Intentional Planetary Engineering 341
UN Guidance from Glasgow  348
Cooling the Climate—​Technological Solutions  351
The Nuclear Option  365
Adaptation  368
Geoengineering  369
Linking Global Warming and Biodiversity  371
What Can Individuals Do?  373
Closure  379

10. Epilogue  383

Sustainable Development  383
Economics, Ideology, and the Environment  386
Solutions  392
Where Next? 395

Appendix 1: List of Common Acronyms  401

Appendix 2: List of Figure Sources and Attributions 403
Notes  405
Index  439
Preface

Human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least
the last 2000 years. [As a result] In 2011–​2020, annual average Arctic sea ice area
reached its lowest level since at least 1850. Late summer Arctic sea ice area was
smaller than at any time in at least the past 1000 years. The global nature of glacier
retreat, with almost all of the world’s glaciers retreating synchronously since the
1950s is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years.
—​IPCC, 2021 (in press): Summary for policymakers. In Climate Change
2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the
Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Cambridge University Press (ipcc.ch).

Making sure our planet remains habitable demands the same ambition, organiza-
tion, planning, bottom-​up experimentation, public-​private risk sharing and sense
of purpose and urgency as the Apollo project [which put men on the Moon].
—​Mariana Mazzucato (2018) The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in
the Global Economy. Penguin, 358pp.

The damage we are doing is no longer incremental but exponential, and we are
fast reaching a tipping point . . . change is possible when you set your mind to it . . .
[we need] collective ambition, and a can-​do-​spirit, to find solutions . . . urgency +​
optimism =​action.
—​HRH Prince William (2021) Introduction. In Butfield, C., and Hughes, J.,
with Pearce, F., Earthshot: How to Save Our Planet. John Murray, vii–​xiv.

Our Global Refrigerator

For most of us, the world’s icy wastes are outside our experience, readily available
only on TV, and for the few who like to ski in the winter or climb mountains in the
summer. Most people never get to see ice, unless it’s in a drink. Being out of sight, it
is largely out of mind. Most of us never give a thought to the fact that people live in
the Arctic, and that scientists work on the Antarctic ice sheet. These realms are far
away, the conditions are extreme, very few people live there, and even getting there
is both time consuming and costly. Why do it, just to be uncomfortable? And yet,
when land ice melts, the oceans rise. No matter how far away you live from melting
ice, your sea level is likely to rise to some degree depending on where you live. Coastal
xii Preface

populations will bear the brunt. The few places where that is not the case include, for
instance, northern North America centered on Hudson Bay, and Scandinavia cen-
tered on the Baltic Sea coast. They are now popping up like corks—​although at geo-
logical (or should I say glacial) rates—​having shed the ice sheets that weighed them
down during the peak of the Ice Age 20,000 years ago. Ongoing melting in Greenland
and Antarctica will make their margins rise too, hence sea level will fall along their
coasts in due course.
Why should we care about ice melt? It may come a surprise to you to learn just how
icy our planet is. But all that ice is what gives us a global climate suitable for life as we
know it. The ice is Earth’s refrigerator—​cooling our planetary temperatures to bear-
able levels, and, in the process, keeping our sea levels stable.
Why should we worry? Aren’t the rates of temperature rise and sea level rise ex-
tremely slow? This is indeed the impression the members of the public who attend my
lectures have. But to scientists assessing the data, the rates of rise of temperature and
sea level are increasing with time and beginning to be “fast” compared with natural
events in the distant past. I am reminded of the boiled frog syndrome: put a frog into
cold water and heat the pan and the frog may slowly cook; pop him into a pan of hot
water and he’ll jump right out. We are now the frogs in the pan of cold water, and the
heat is rising. If we do not save our refrigerator, we will cook.
Our climate baseline is slowly shifting, almost imperceptibly to the hypothetical
“man in the street.” In contrast, the modern climate scientist sees a significant upward
trend in temperature and sea level. Members of the public can find it confusing when
their local climate cools in response to some temporary regional or global wobble
that might last a decade or so. As a young man I experienced the European cold of the
early 1960s. Some of the climate scientists of the day thought that it might presage a
new Ice Age. But by the time my children were born, that cold had passed. My grand-
children, in turn, have been born into a world warmer than the one their parents
grew up in. With the benefit of hindsight we now know that the cooling of the 1960s
was a temporary blip driven by natural decadal variation and exacerbated by the
dirty air our factory and power station chimneys emitted before Clean Air legislation
forced them to clean up their acts. It has been followed since 1970 by a substantial
global warming trend punctuated from time to time by other brief natural coolings
or pauses in the upward trajectory. Global overheating is now melting polar ice at a
rate that has accelerated since 1980. The rising heat and the ice are not in equilibrium,
because it takes a long time to melt ice, and because 90% of the heat of global warming
is trapped in the oceans. Think how long the ice in your drink lasts, even on a hot day.
Even if we stopped warming the world tomorrow by stabilizing the climate at some
arbitrary level, like an average global temperature of 1.5°C, the ice sheets would go
on melting for centuries, making sea level rise more. Think about it this way: a stable
warm climate will pour heat every year into yet more ice melt, losing us progressively
more reflective sea ice every year, which in turn will expose more ocean to warming,
creating a feedback process that will melt yet more sea ice, and so on.
 Preface xiii

By how much will sea level rise? Conservative estimates put the global average rise
by 2100 at close to half a meter (1.6 ft) compared with what it was in 1900. It is already
20 cm (8 in) above the level of 1900. Analogies with the geological record suggest that
a heating of 2°C–​3°C (3.6°F –​5.4°F) above the average for 1900 will generate a rise of
10+​m (33+​ft) in the 300-​year time frame. If this happened overnight, as in a tsunami,
it would be a catastrophe. The actual rate of rise is slow, at close to 4 mm (0.16in)/​
year, but gradually speeding up. I call this situation a “creeping catastrophe,” because
its ultimate effects would be catastrophic for the people, villages, towns, and cities in
coastal regions if nothing were done to stave off these effects in the meantime.1
Orrin Pilkey suggests we should think of this slow rise as a slow tsunami.2 The
closest I can come to imagining the effect would be to remind readers that there once
was a population of paleolithic people living and hunting on what is now a major
fishing ground in the North Sea—​the Dogger Bank. The bank slowly drowned as sea
level rose with the ice melt that began 20,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age.
Fishermen now occasionally catch the remains of mammoths, or ancient hand axes in
their nets on the Dogger Bank. Nobody lives there now.
We humans have been around on the planet for just 300,000 years. During most of
that time our forefathers were hunter-​gatherers living mostly in Africa and Arabia.
Those who forayed into more northern regions would have bumped up against
the tundra, which covered much of Europe during the cold periods of advancing
ice sheets that extended as far south as Kansas City in the United States and north
London in the United Kingdom and covered most of the Alps. Looking across much
of Europe, Asia, and North America, it is hard to believe that not very long ago the
places many of us live in were covered either by an ice sheet or by the tundra along its
southern edge. Those of us who live in these formerly icy regions are all immigrants to
previously empty lands.
From time to time our ancestors would have experienced the quite rapid coolings
typical of Northern Hemisphere climate changes during the Ice Age, which tended to
keep populations well south of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Himalayas. In warmer
periods they would have migrated north following game—​especially the migrating
reindeer and bison depicted on the walls of caves in southern France and Spain. The
most recent of those warmer periods covered the past 12,000 years, during which
human civilization developed, stimulated by the invention of agriculture, which
allowed early humans to escape from their hunter-​gatherer lifestyle.
As our climate emerged from the peak of Ice Age cold some 20,000 years ago, ice
melted and sea level rose. Global temperatures at mid-​latitudes stayed fairly constant
for most of the past 12,000 years, but over that same time in the polar regions global
heat first climbed toward an optimum as ice sheets melted away and sea level rose.
Once the major ice sheets were gone, the polar climate began to cool, and the ice
began to regrow over the past 4,000 years. Since 1900 both the “flat” climate trend of
the mid-​latitudes and the declining climate trend of the polar regions have gone into
reverse.
xiv Preface

Our current overheating is now attacking Earth’s ice cover. We can expect that (as
in the past) there will be a lag in ice melt behind the present rise in temperature, which
will last for centuries. Although our Paleolithic ancestors at the northern edge of their
European range might have occasionally experienced changes as fast as the present
one, this is the first time our settled global civilization has experienced such a change
in its 10,000-​year history. As yet there is every sign that our current overheating will
continue way beyond what our ancestors experienced in their 300,000-​year history—​
unless we act to stop the change that we have created through polluting the air with
combustion products from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas.
To stop the rot we are going to have to work together collectively and coopera-
tively across the globe to manage our planetary climate. We have already done this
in a small way through the actions needed to close the ozone hole over Antarctica.
Managing the climate of the entire planet is a far greater challenge. Will we measure
up to it, or will our tribalist nationalism get in the way? Will the rich nations that have
created the global overheating help the poor nations who suffer the most from its
effects?
Big decisions are called for. And we have already stepped back from the brink sev-
eral times, afraid to go far enough, at previous Conferences of the Parties (COPs)
to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, like the one in Glasgow
in November 2021. I speak from experience, having attended the 15th COP in
Copenhagen in December 2009. The road to hell, they say, is paved with good inten-
tions. The time has come for actions. We must take the plunge.
This book will explore multiple questions about the world’s icy places. Just how
cold are they? We now know that sea ice melts increasingly in the summer in the
Arctic, but not in the Antarctic—​why not? Is it because Antarctica is colder than the
Arctic, and if so, why? And what does it matter in the global scheme of things? What
is permafrost, and where is it, and why should we care that it’s melting? Are glaciers in
the world’s mountains really in decline? By how much, and how fast, and where were
they in the past when it was much colder? What does their retreat bode for those who
rely for water on summer ice and snow melt? What does drilling through the ice tell
us about past climate change? And what bearing does that knowledge have on our un-
derstanding of today’s climate? Are the Arctic and the Antarctic really connected di-
rectly through the ocean? Wouldn’t that be amazing if it were true? Well, it is true, but
the connections have changed with time. This is all part of the great climate change
story that we will be exploring in these pages.
We shall also see what it’s like in these icy places. How do scientists survive in
Antarctica, and under what conditions? What are they measuring when they’re down
there for the winter, and why are they doing it? What’s the point? What are tourists
going to see in the Arctic and the Antarctic? Is it just the scenery that motivates them,
or a desire to see these places before they melt away? And how do their visits affect the
rest of us? My personal view is that such visits make people ambassadors for climate
and environmental science when they get back home.
 Preface xv

How dangerous is it to work in a mainly icy world—​do people still fall into cre-
vasses? Given how easy transportation and communication are there now, what was it
like for the early explorers, and why did anyone go exploring in these places anyway?
They knew it was dangerous, they had no maps, and if something went wrong they’d
die! Brave men hazarded much to enlighten us, and some did die in the process.
Men, yes, because early exploration wasn’t a woman’s game. Since those early male-​
dominated years, women have become an accepted feature of Arctic and Antarctic
science, especially in recent decades, and rightly so.
Questions like these stimulate the imagination, as does the wonderful if sometimes
desolate scenery of the ice world, and as also does the exotic wildlife, which cannot
be experienced anywhere else except in zoos (or on TV). Think for a moment, for
example, about the amazing migrations of the elephant seal, which can dive to sev-
eral hundred meters (up to 2,500 ft) to feed, while slowing its heartbeat. Why should
anyone care about that? Well, if you are a climate scientist, you can stick a little device
onto the animal’s head to record water temperature with depth in places it would be
impossible to monitor by ship or other means. That’s a plus for understanding how
the world works. Does it hurt the animal? No, it falls off when the animal molts every
year. How useful is the data? This book explains.
It is becoming clear that we humans are now so abundant that we are acting like
a geological force on the surface of the planet, changing the air, the oceans, the ice,
and the plant and animal life. Our effects are rapid. Our largest effects have come
about since World War II, creating such a break with the climate and biodiversity
of the recent geological past (which geologists call the Holocene Epoch of the past
11,700 years), that the geological community is now considering naming the period
since 1950 as a new geological time period, the Anthropocene Epoch, which cur-
rently represents one human generation, but will continue. That does not mean that
all of the relatively recent temperature rise, ice melt, and sea level rise have taken place
in the Anthropocene. For example, there is good evidence for sea level having started
to rise very slowly perhaps as long ago as 200 years, and Alpine glaciers began their
modern retreat around 1860. However, temperature rise has accelerated since 1970
along with sea level rise, so a great deal of global overheating and its consequences
have taken place since 1950—​within the Anthropocene. Is there really a link to how
much carbon dioxide our fossil fuel burning has put into the atmosphere? Yes—​more
than 90% of all the coal, oil, and natural gas ever burned by humans has been burned
in my lifetime, since 1950.
To explore these and many other questions about what ice means for life on our
planet (including human life), these pages will take you on a journey to the world’s
main icy places, many of which I have visited in the course of a long career as a geol-
ogist, geochemist, and oceanographer. Journeys are where we experience differences
from the usual, and learn about other people and places and ourselves; they help our
imaginations to grow. I capitalize on my journeys to usher my readers from one sci-
entific truth to another and from one important question to the next, making sure to
highlight the differences as well as the similarities between the world’s three great icy
xvi Preface

regions, the “Three Poles,” comprising the Arctic, Antarctica, and mountain peaks,
whose snow and ice together, you may be surprised to learn, cover one full quarter of
the planet. I hope these journeys help you to grow in your appreciation of the vital im-
portance of the Three Poles, of the rapidity with which their ice and snow is melting,
of the dangers that holds for us, no matter where we live, and of the urgency with
which we must therefore stop polluting our atmosphere with a blanket of gas that
comes from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. The lives and well-​being of our chil-
dren and grandchildren are at stake here, so we all have an interest in leaving them
with a habitable planet. I am sure they would prefer not have to face more wildfires,
floods, heatwaves, and hurricanes than we have had to deal with.
Along the way we will meet numerous polar explorers and many of the ordinary
scientists doing extraordinary work to tease out the secrets of how Earth’s complex
climate system works. I name them because it is important for us all to be reminded
that it is people on the front line who ferret out the facts that we need, and doing that
in the world’s icy places is very expensive, far from easy, and—​at the poles—​almost
impossible in the six months of the year when darkness descends. These people are
heroes. I salute the work of this far-​flung and mostly youthful community. Finally,
I am happy to see that, as time has gone by during my 50-​year career in science, more
and more of these hard-​working scientific contributors are women. I highlight some
on the dedication page. May their numbers continue to grow.
I will end with a perceptive quote from the astronomer Carl Sagan:

Our talent, while imperfect, to foresee the future consequences of our present
actions and to change our course appropriately is a hallmark of the human species
and one of the chief reasons for our success over the past million years. Our fu-
ture depends entirely on how quickly and how broadly we can refine this talent. We
should plan for and cherish our fragile world as we do our children and our grand-
children; there will be no other place for them to live.3

At the time, Sagan was referring to the prospect of a global nuclear winter caused
by atomic warfare. But he and his colleagues were making it clear that “the human
power to alter the habitability of our planet marked a fundamental shift in our role on
Earth—​one that we [still have] not yet integrated into the institutions wielding that
power.”4
If we do the right things, there is still hope. And after all, we are responsible for the
way things are; we did it, so we should fix it. By doing so, we may be able to save Earth’s
refrigerator, or what’s left of it. Enjoy the ride.
Acknowledgments

Science is a collective enterprise—​aside from our individual efforts we build on what’s

gone before, and collaborate with those with complementary expertise to build our
pictures and stories of what is going on in the fields of our interest to find out how the
world works. I am immensely grateful to an enormous number of people who have
helped me throughout my varied 50-​year career in science to expand my knowledge
and understanding of how the Earth’s climate system works. There are far too many
to thank them all individually in these few pages; indeed the list would go as far back
as my chemistry and geography teachers in grammar school, who without knowing it
set me on the path that led me to a PhD in geochemistry.
I am also grateful to the large number of people whose names I never knew, but
who questioned me in depth after my many public lectures on climate change. They
showed me what people’s concerns were, and alerted me to the need for a popular ed-
ucational book about the role of ice in the climate system. Their questions reminded
me that very few people indeed have any acquaintance other than via a TV set of what
the world’s icy places are like, because all that TV sets do is provide you with a picture,
not an experience of reality. The reality is hard, as I discovered for myself during sev-
eral visits to the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the high mountains.
I am especially grateful to the officers of SCAR (the Scientific Committee on
Antarctic Research), who appointed me to be their first executive director, and es-
pecially to Professor Jörn Thiede (now deceased), the SCAR president at the time,
who arranged for me to gain firsthand experience of Antarctic science through an
inspection of the research stations in Dronning Maud Land in the southern summer
of 2004. I am most grateful, too, for the advice and the company of Hartwig (Hardy)
Gernandt, who showed me around down there. Settling in to my new job was made
much easier than it might otherwise have been thanks to the help of Peter Clarkson,
the former secretary of SCAR, who remains a good friend and who is always willing
to provide advice on Antarctic matters. Rosemary Nash, whom I hired as the SCAR
secretary, proved to be a most able assistant, and someone on whom I could rely 100%
to help me to get the job done.
I have made a great many friends throughout the SCAR organization, all of them
more than willing to provide me with wise advice. It seems almost invidious to single
any of them out, but I would like to express my gratitude in particular to Jeronimo
Lopez-​Martinez, Chuck Kennicutt, Stephen Chown, John Turner, Hong-​kum Lee,
Dongmin Jin, Peter Clarkson, the late David Walton, Peter Barrett, Eric Wolff, Jane
Francis, Chris Rapley, Daniella Liggett, Phil Woodworth, Paul Mayewski, and Martin
Siegert, not forgetting my trusty office assistants, Marzena Kaczmarska, Michael
Sparrow, and Renuka Badhe. It’s also been a pleasure to talk about ice and climate
xviii Acknowledgments

with experts like Robin Bell, Heinz Wanner, Valérie Masson-​Delmotte, and Bob
Binschadler.
Peter Barrett kindly agreed to read and comment on every chapter, and I was
given sound advice by: Peter Clarkson on the Antarctic (Chapters 3 and 5); Phil
Woodworth on sea level (Chapter 8); Volker Rachold on the Arctic (Chapter 6); Joel
Summerhayes and Monica Insoll on economics (Epilogue): and Eelco Rohling on my
first and final chapters—​but all the errors are mine. Paul Mayewski and Will Steffen
kindly reviewed my manuscript.
Chris Scotese, Mark Serreze, and Andre Berger kindly provided particular figures,
Kieran Baxter kindly provided photographs, and Dame Jane Francis kindly provided
access to the map-​making facilities of the British Antarctic Survey.
My SCAR office was based, as all previous ones have been, within Cambridge
University’s prestigious Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), and I am most grateful
to its director, Julian Dowdeswell, for housing us there, for providing me with wise
advice on polar matters, and, on my retirement from SCAR in 2010, for making me
an emeritus associate of the Institute and thus enabling me to continue my climate
change research. I also much appreciated being able to interface with the SPRI staff,
who provided me with much assistance and advice over the years.
I also thank my fellows on the team who managed the International Polar Year
2007–​2008, for furthering my education on the science of ice and snow at both poles,
and especially cochair Ian Allison for his friendship and encouragement, and Olaf
Orheim for facilitating my interactions with Norway. I would not wish to forget my
German colleague, Volker Rachold, who worked closely with me to bind SCAR to-
gether with the International Arctic Science Committee to address bi-​polar science
issues. We made an exceptionally good team.
My gratitude also goes to Kim Crosbie, former executive director of the
International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), who introduced me
to the travel company Abercrombie & Kent, with whom I spent five splendid cruise
seasons along the Antarctic Peninsula as a shipboard lecturer. I greatly appreciated
the assistance of Bob Simpson and Julia Evanoff in facilitating my trips south, the
education in Antarctic wildlife that I got aboard ship from Larry Hobbs, Charlie
Wheatley, Marco Favero, Patri Silva, Jim McClintock, and Rich Pagen, and the history
lessons in polar exploration from Bob Burton (now sadly deceased).
In recent years I have had the good fortune to have been invited to provide ad-
vice on how the science of ice melt and sea level rise bears on the proposed new ge-
ological time period, the Anthropocene. Thank you for that Jan Zalasiewicz. Apart
from my work with Jan, I have especially benefited from a close association on the
Anthropocene Working Group with Will Steffen, Colin Waters, Jaia Syvitski, and
Mark Williams.
I much appreciated assistance from the editorial team at Oxford University Press,
especially Jeremy Lewis.
 Acknowledgments xix

A special thanks is reserved for the late Ian Jamieson, who planned our glacier-​
hunting expeditions to the Alps.
Last but never least, I am as ever grateful for the support and understanding of my
long-​suffering wife, Diana, who put up with me staying bent over my keyboard while
I tapped out my thoughts on climatic matters, immersed in my own little world.
1
Introduction

July 2021 was the world’s hottest month ever recorded, 0.92°C (1.68°F)
above the 20th Century average of 15.8°C (60.4°F).
—​National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
August 13, 2021, https://​www.noaa.gov/​news/​its-​offic​ial-
​july-​2021-​was-​ear​ths-​hott​est-​month-​on-​rec​ord

At sustained warming levels between 2°C and 3°C, there is limited evi-
dence that the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets will be lost almost
completely and irreversibly over multiple millennia; both the probability
of their complete loss and the rate of mass loss increases with higher sur-
face temperatures. At sustained warming levels between 3°C and 5°C,
near-​complete loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet and complete loss of the
West Antarctic Ice Sheet is projected to occur irreversibly over multiple
millennia; with substantial parts or all of Wilkes Subglacial Basin in East
Antarctica lost over multiple millennia.
—​IPCC, 2021 (in press): Technical summary.
In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Cambridge University Press (ipcc.ch)

The rate of ice sheet loss increased by a factor of four between 1992–​1999
and 2010–​2019.
—​IPCC, 2021 (in press): Summary for policymakers.
In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Cambridge University Press (ipcc.ch)

The Icy Planet. Colin Summerhayes, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197627983.003.0001
2 The Icy Planet

Ice—​The Canary in the Coal Mine

Ice is the canary in the coal mine. When our planet’s ice starts melting year-​on-​year,
we know we’re in trouble, for two reasons. First, ice is a wonderful reflector of solar
energy. That property helps to keep our overall planetary temperature in a range suit-
able for life “as we know it.” Lose the ice and we lose that protection. Second, when
land ice melts, the sea level rises, putting at risk our coastal populations and our great
port cities, the hubs for the global trade on which we have all come to depend. The
stability of the world’s ice, then, is an extremely important part of our life-​support
system, impacting global temperature, the water cycle (floods, droughts, fires, and
water supplies), and the sustainability and habitability of the coastal environment
where 10% of the world’s population lives and works.
Yet, for most of us, permanent ice is out of sight and out of mind, at the poles or at
the tops of high mountains. Except seasonally, when those of us in temperate zones
might see some winter snow and ice, the most ice that we are likely to see is when
we go—​usually on long journeys—​to winter ski resorts, and not many of us do that.
These days most people live in cities, they are no longer closely connected to the land
as populations once were. Having lost their moorings in nature, they are unaware
both of the climate change that is occurring and of its implications. For the most part
only those who are immersed in nature, like gardeners, farmers, fishermen, back-
packers, or climbers have the high level of ecological awareness to appreciate the dire
ramifications of global warming and ice loss for our species. And it would appear that
for many people, “out of sight, out of mind” translates easily into “don’t care.”
Most ice loss is happening in places that don’t create news. If shrinking glaciers
were common in the populous areas of California or Great Britain, it would be on
the front page. As a result, unless they are skiers, skaters, or ice hockey players, most
people’s acquaintance with ice today comes from using ice in our drinks or watch-
ing reruns of the film Titanic. But had we lived in the 19th century, and even as late
as the 1920s, we might well have cooled our food in an “ice-​box” with ice imported
from somewhere cold. Transporting ice for ice-​boxes was quite a sizable industry
before modern refrigerators were developed in the 1920s and became widespread
thanks to the development of refrigerants and the increasing availability of elec-
tricity. We just don’t appreciate today how lucky we are, and what a boon refriger-
ation has been to global levels of human health. But even that is now seen to have a
dark side—​a byproduct of the early refrigerants was the creation of the ozone hole
over Antarctica.
Exploration of icy places has gripped our imaginations, not least as the bodies of
past animals and even people have emerged from their icy graves. Mammoths and
other large mammals that were entombed by ice during the last glacial maximum
some 20,000 years ago are sufficiently well preserved to tell us a lot about past con-
ditions in the tundra. And the discovery in 1991 of the body of Ötzi the Iceman in a
melting Alpine glacier provided insights into the clothing and diet of c.3,200 years ago.
 Introduction 3

In the following pages I will take you to the worlds icy places to see what is hap-
pening to ice, snow, and permanently frozen ground (or permafrost). Along the way
we will explore what the passing of our permanent ice will mean for the futures of our
offspring—​yours and mine alike. In effect, our icy places act as the world’s refriger-
ator, helping to keep our climate relatively cool. If we are not careful we will lose that
refrigerator, with unimaginable consequences.
I will illustrate my narrative with tales from my own visits to the world’s icy places,
where I have been both for work and pleasure. This will not be a dry tale of the sci-
ence of change. These environments are quite magical in their own right, and I have
taken the time to shine a light on some of the wonders I have seen along the way, as
well as the effects of change on wildlife. Exploring these far-​off realms has challenged
our hardiest and boldest explorers, and my tale will introduce you to some of their
exploits and discoveries. I hope you will find the ride illuminating, and that it gives
you a new “taste” for ice.
One thing I hope you will learn is that ice cores from the polar regions have given
us detailed and compelling records of climate change, providing us with an 800,000-​
year-​long baseline against which to assess to what extent the climate changes that
we are seeing now are remarkable or just the climate system doing its thing. As Paul
Mayewski of the University of Maine says, ice cores are “ice chronicles.”1 He sees the
climate history from ice cores as helping to locate us in time, in much the same way
that space exploration helps to locate us in space. These new technologies (ice coring
and space exploration) provide us with new views of our place in the universe. We can
now go even further and supplement the 800,000-​year-​long perspective, which has
only been available since 2006, with geological records of climate change that go far
back beyond that baseline, although in less detail, helping us to find near analogues
in the past for what we are seeing today. The past provides us with a window into the
future.
A key question we will address in this book is—​to what extent is what we see today
a reflection of “normal” change, especially in the polar regions, and to what extent is
it to do with our accelerating human activities? The people who will help us along our
way are the scientists studying the workings of the climate system, past, present, and
future. Most of them work on the front lines of scientific exploration either in univer-
sities, or in government laboratories devoted to the same ends.

Let’s Talk about Ice

Ice is amazing stuff. If you hit it with a hammer it behaves like a rock and shatters into
splinters. But it also flows, like a thick viscous fluid, under the influence of gravity. The
ice sheets on the very top of Greenland and Antarctica are very slowly flowing under
4 The Icy Planet

their own weight down toward and then out across the ocean. Can other rocks flow?
Yes, molten rock flows—​most of us have seen lava flows on the screen if not in re-
ality. Solid rock can also flow under the extreme heat and pressure deep in the Earth.
You can see the result in the contorted strata uplifted in mountains. Buried down
deep, the heated strata become malleable enough to bend into enormous folds before
being uplifted into mountain ranges that are then eroded to display their innards to
the passing traveler. But while “normal” rock doesn’t flow at surface temperature and
pressure, ice does. Why? Because at temperatures of around 0°C ice is very close to
its melting point, which makes it weak and easy to deform. Over time it can slowly
spread out sideways under its own weight, which helps it to form continental-​scale
ice sheets.
Ice also erodes as it flows. It’s not the ice that does the cutting. Rock breaks apart
when water within tiny cracks expands to form ice. Ice transports fragments of rock
torn from the beds of ice sheets and glaciers. Those fragments in turn act like coarse
sandpaper, gouging the rocks over which they pass and wearing them away to carve
vast U-​shaped valleys and deep troughs that when flooded by the sea form the fjords
common to coastlines north and south of about latitude 50° in places like Norway,
New Zealand, Alaska, and Chile.
Ice has a liquid counterpart: it is, after all, nothing more nor less than solid water.
But, unlike other rocks, ice floats on its fluid counterpart. It’s the only common sub-
stance to do that. Chunks of basalt will sink into a lava lake, but solid water floats on
its liquid parent. This is because when water freezes its volume expands, giving its
solid form a lower density than its liquid form: ice has a density of 917.4 kilograms
(kg)/​m3 in freshwater, while the density of pure water is 1,000 kg/​m3 (which was the
basis for the definition of the kilogram). The density of ice increases to1,025 kg/​m3 in
seawater, but seawater is denser than freshwater, so the ice still floats. The difference
in density between water and ice in the sea “is about 10% . . . [which] is why 10% of the
mass of an ice floe or an iceberg protrudes above the sea surface.”2
Ice has another fascinating property that is crucial for our understanding of how
the climate changes, as Peter Wadhams explains.2 You have to supply a lot of heat to
melt ice (which explains why it takes so long for the ice in your drink to melt). The
heat you need to melt a kilogram of ice when it has reached its melting point is known
as its latent heat of fusion, which is 80 calories per gram. Now, given that a calorie is
the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C, then if
you need 1,000 calories (1 kcal) to melt 1 kg of water, you will need 80 kcal to melt the
same amount of ice. That amount would heat the same mass of water to 80°C.
To cut a long story short, this means that as long as sea ice remains in the Arctic it
will keep the air temperature in contact with the ice, and the water immediately below
the ice to 0°C. In effect the ice is acting as an air conditioner, one which because of
global warming is about to break down. In the form of snow, ice has another impor-
tant property. When it blankets the ground or the sea ice it acts as a great insulator,
maintaining sea ice and permafrost throughout the summer melt season in the cold-
est regions.
 Introduction 5

Ice also has a gaseous counterpart—​water vapor—​which makes up on average

about 4% of the atmosphere, although in some places (as above deserts) there is al-
most none. Under the right (very dry) atmospheric conditions, ice has a very strange
property: it can convert directly into water vapor by a process known as sublimation,
known to occur in certain rare environments in Antarctica.
Our planet’s climate system is delicately balanced near the point where all three
phases of water can exist: solid, liquid, and vapor. And compared with the other plan-
ets, we have a lot of liquid water, which covers 72% of the planet’s surface as ocean, to
an average depth of about 3,700 m (12,154 ft). As the famous astronomer and science
popularizer Carl Sagan once said—​Earth is the Blue Planet. Seen from distant space
we appear as a “pale blue dot.”
So, with all that water, and masses of land, surely ice shouldn’t be much of a
problem? You could be forgiven for thinking that was true, if you lived on the plains
more or less anywhere between the 50th parallels of latitude, because our great
masses of ice lie mostly north or south of the 60th parallels, except on the tops of
mountains. To understand the importance of ice in our climate system we need to
know what area it covers, because that governs how much solar energy ice’s white
surface reflects back to space, helping to keep the planet cooler than it would be
without any ice.
It would be easy to tell ourselves that with 72% of Earth’s surface covered by ocean
we need only concern ourselves with ice on land, the remaining 28% of the planet’s
surface. If only that were true. But much of the surface of the polar seas freezes in
winter and becomes covered by sea ice. Taking Antarctica and the Arctic together, the
average amount of the global ocean covered by their sea ice amounts to about 20% of
the total in any one year, which amounts to roughly 14.5% of the global surface area.
What about ice on the land surface? Surface ice covers 10% of the land to depths of
more than 2.5 miles (4 km) in places in Antarctica and close to the same in Greenland.
Beyond the area of surface ice lies an area of permanently frozen ground, or perma-
frost, covering 20% of the land surface locally to depths of up to more than 1.25 miles
(2 km) in places, but usually less, and mostly in the Northern Hemisphere.
Covering much of the world in winter, also especially in the Northern Hemisphere,
is snow, which can cover up to 30% of the land surface, although, unlike permafrost
or surface ice, snow is not permanent. But let’s not forget that snowflakes are ice
crystals—​in effect snow is just another form of ice, and, as snow deposits thicken,
their bases eventually do compress into solid ice. It would not be unreasonable to as-
sume that between them, ice, permafrost, and snow cover up to 40% of the global land
surface throughout the year. That’s 11.2% of the global surface area.
Adding all this up, the combined area of sea ice, plus land ice, plus snow and per-
mafrost amounts to roughly 25% of the surface of the planet. That may be hard to get
your head around if you live between the 50th parallels of latitude, where there’s no
permanent ice or permafrost and hardly any snow. And those figures overlook the
fact that much of the drowned ground beneath the continental shelf in the polar re-
gions is permafrost—​permanently frozen ground. This formed when sea levels were
6 The Icy Planet

lower by perhaps as much as 130 m (427 ft) during the Pleistocene Ice Age of the past
2.6 million years (see Chapter 8 for an update on sea level lowering).
When the sea level began to rise 20,000 years ago after the Last Glacial Maximum,
the continental shelves were flooded, trapping that permafrost beneath a cover of
cold polar water. In modern times a thin active layer of permafrost melts at the sur-
face every summer. Below it are much thicker layers mixed in with ice (for example
old frozen ponds) which never melt (or have not until now).
We can make a rough calculation about how much ice, snow, and permafrost ex-
panded during peak Ice Age cooling, by considering the change in albedo (Earth’s
reflectivity). Today it is about 0.30 (that is, 30% of incoming solar energy is reflected
by Earth’s snow, ice, and deserts). However, calculations suggest that during the Last
Glacial Maximum, the albedo increased to about 0.32.3 Hence the coverage of the
Earth in ice, snow, and permafrost may have increased from some 25% today to closer
to 30% at that time.
Such a change would have come about because much of North America north of
Kansas City was covered by the Laurentian Ice Sheet, with permafrost and snowy
tundra further south. Scandinavia and most of Britain and northwest Europe north
of the latitude of London and Berlin were also under ice, as was much of Eastern
Siberia, with snowy tundra and permafrost further south. Land ice spread over the
exposed continental shelves around the Arctic Ocean, and covered the continental
shelf around Antarctica. Sea ice extended south from the Arctic to close to northern
Scotland, while in the south it extended a good 10 degrees of latitude north of its pre-
sent northern limit around Antarctica.
While the expansion in the area of ice, snow, and permafrost may have only been
an extra 5% or so, its volume expanded considerably, with the new ice sheets of the
north reaching much the same thickness as the Antarctic Ice Sheet—​up to nearly 3
miles (5 km). Probably the best expression of the enormous increase in ice volume
during the glacial maxima of the last Ice Age comes from the global fall in sea level,
which may have reached –​130m (427 ft), exposing most of the world’s continental
shelves to the atmosphere. This would have been a very different-​looking planet.
With modern global warming, some of the water flooding those polar continental
shelves in the Arctic is becoming warm enough to stimulate the decomposition of the
organic remains trapped in drowned permafrost. Researchers have come across bub-
bles of methane (CH4) streaming up through the Arctic Ocean to add to the growing
load of greenhouse gases in the air. Fortunately, this process is not rapid, nowhere
near as rapid as the melting of the shallow permafrost on land in the Arctic. As yet,
however, scientists are not sure of the extent to which the melting of the upper layers
of the permafrost on land or beneath the sea will contribute either carbon dioxide
(CO2), or methane (CH4) to the atmosphere.
Decomposition under oxidizing conditions produces CO2, while under reducing
conditions it produces CH4. Both are greenhouse gases, although CH4 is thought
to be 28 times more effective than CO2. The difference between the two is that CH4
is unstable in the atmosphere and will disappear within around 12 years unless it is
 Introduction 7

continually replaced, whereas CO2, being stable, has an extremely long residence time
in air of many thousands of years. Methane is also only present in tiny amounts—​
parts per billion (ppb) by volume, while CO2 is present in parts per million (ppm) by
volume.
Submarine permafrost is not the last part of the story of our planet’s ice. Deep
within the oceans, on the continental slopes that border our shallow continental
shelves, the coldness of the water and the pressure of its mass create conditions for ice
to form within the sediments on the ocean floor. As this deep ocean ice forms in the
sedimentary pore waters, in a zone between 200 m (656 ft) and 1,500 m (4,923 ft) or
more below the seabed, it traps gas from decaying organic matter. Most of that gas is
CH4, commonly known as “marsh gas” because it is produced in ponds and lakes by
the decomposition of rotting organic remains in the absence of oxygen.
The CH4 produced by decomposing organic matter in deep ocean sediments
becomes trapped within cages of ice to form structures known as gas hydrates, or
clathrates, which occupy pore spaces and can also form layers within the sediments.
We can detect these hydrates by sound, using seismic surveys, and sample them
through deep-​ocean drilling. They cover much of the world’s continental margins at
water depths greater than about 400 m (1,313 ft). That gives us a lot more ice on the
planet.
For our purposes, we may be able to largely ignore that ice as relevant to the story
of global warming, since most of it is so far removed from the Earth’s surface that
many thousands of years of warming of the deep ocean would be required before it
melted. Nevertheless, in 2009, over the continental slope west of Svalbard, Graham
Westbrook and colleagues found numerous plumes of CH4 rising through the water
column from near the top of the gas hydrate stability zone.4 Since these plumes orig-
inated from the continental slope they cannot have originated from permafrost
formed on the continental shelf when it was exposed during times of lowered sea
level; they must have come from destabilized CH4 hydrates. In a few places, Arctic
researchers have also found CH4 bubbling up to the surface over fractured subseabed
reservoirs of natural gas (fossil fuel) on the continental shelf.

So, here we are on a planet one-​quarter of which is covered by ice in one form or an-
other. There has been a lot more ice on the planet in quite recent times, geologically
speaking. For the past 2.6 million years of what geologists call Pleistocene time, Earth
has been passing through an Ice Age during which there have been periodic expan-
sions and contractions of polar ice in both hemispheres, as we shall see in later chap-
ters. The amount of ice has fluctuated with time in response to a beat driven by regular
changes in the Earth’s orbit. We’ll deal with that topic in more detail later.
In between the Ice Age maxima, the planet lived through what geologists refer to as
“interglacial” periods that were as warm as or a bit warmer than conditions have been
for the past 11,700 years, an interglacial period termed by geologists the Holocene.
8 The Icy Planet

The relatively warm and stable climate of the Holocene was ideal for the spread of ag-
riculture and civilization.
In the chapters that follow we will explore the history of our changing climate and
ice, starting in Chapter 2 with the long geological history of ice on our planet. We will
discover that for much of geological time Earth’s climate has been in a warm “green-
house state,” with average global temperatures between about 21°C (70°F) and 31°C
(88°F). But at particular times, and for particular reasons our climate has descended
into a cold “icehouse state,” featuring extensive ice. The most recent of these icy times
began when a great ice sheet formed on Antarctica 34 million years ago. Conditions
continued cooling to the point that by 2.6 million years ago extensive ice sheets cov-
ered much of northern Europe, Siberia, and North America.
We will see that the patterns of changing climate through time reflect multiple
interacting influences including: the changing influence of continental positions; the
gradual increase in the output of energy from the Sun over time; the development of
life, with plants using CO2 to grow; exhalations of gases like CO2 from volcanoes; the
chemical weathering of rising mountains, with the decomposition of silicate minerals
by acidic rain sucking CO2 out of the air; the burial of carbonate skeletal remains on
the deep sea floor, acting as a carbon sink; regular changes in the Earth’s orbit and the
tilt of the Earth’s axis; changes in the Earth’s albedo with the growth or decay of ice
and snowfields; and sunspot cycles, which change very slightly the amount of energy
Earth receives from the Sun on short to medium timescales.
Over considerable periods of geological time, some of the CO2 that was in the at-
mosphere and became transferred to the ocean becomes trapped on the seabed in
deposits of calcium carbonate or organic carbon. In deep water the carbonate depos-
its are mainly the skeletons of marine creatures, but in shallow water they may form
either coral reefs or, in some places, like the Bahama Banks, chemical precipitates in
the form of tiny egg-​shaped structures known to geologists as “ooids.” When clus-
tered together, carbonate ooids make up a particular form of limestone known as an
oolite.
Organic matter—​the remains of the soft parts of organisms—​usually forms a tiny
component of marine sediments, but may accumulate in large amounts when bottom
waters contain little or no oxygen. Such conditions prevail today for example in the
depths of the Black Sea, on the continental shelf off Namibia, and on the continental
slope off Peru. These organic-​rich deposits form more or less permanent traps for
what was once atmospheric CO2.
When deeply buried and “cooked” by rising heat from the Earth’s interior, organic-​
rich sedimentary deposits can form the source rocks for oil and gas. On land we find
similar carbon traps today in deposits of peat. In some past geological periods, condi-
tions in certain places where the climate was humid and forests abounded, led to vast
amounts of organic matter accumulating in deposits that we now know as coal. These
extremely slow processes of carbon entrapment played an important role in the varia-
tion of atmospheric CO2 on geological timescales.
 Introduction 9

How confident can we be in our understanding of past climate change?

Reconstructing past climate is the work of paleoclimatologists. Like much of geology,
of which it is a subdiscipline, paleoclimatology is a bit like putting together a jigsaw
puzzle in which many of the pieces are missing and, as Henry Pollack puts it, “there is
no picture on the box to guide you.”5 Like Henry, I am among other things a paleocli-
matologist, and have produced my own guide to the subject.6
Paleoclimatologists study the annual layers in ice cores and their equivalents in
marine sediments on the seabed or uplifted onto land by mountain building. We ex-
amine the annual climatic changes represented by tree rings, the growth rings in cor-
als, or the layers in stalactites from caves. Layers of dust and salt concentrations in ice
cores can give us crude indications of wind strength and direction, while layers of ash
can tell us about the timing of far-​flung volcanic eruptions.
When it comes to more recent times, we can use things like agricultural records of
harvest times for crops or grapes, for example, to tell us about annual change. We also
have access to public records of humidity and temperature, although most of these
don’t date back further than about 1600 ce. Records of the poleward migrations of
animals, plants, and insects tell us about the effects of warming on life. Fishing fleets,
whalers, and navies kept records in their log books of waves, weather, and even the
location and front of the pack ice through time. For generations, people have been
measuring the temperature of lakes, the dates of snowfall and melt, the dates at which
lake and river ice forms and melts, and—​from boreholes—​the changing temperature
of the subsurface of the Earth.
Thanks to satellites, we now have vast numbers of measurements of the shrinking
lengths of glaciers. Tide gauges around coasts have routinely measured sea level, mea-
surements that are now supplemented over the global ocean by lasers on satellites.
These kinds of records have helped us to document climate change through the ages
and the relation of those changes to ice. Records of such changes have been most lim-
ited from Antarctica, where the first weather station was not established until 1903,
in the South Orkney Islands, by the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition; it is now
managed by Argentina.
Today the weather is measured at thousands of places around the world and across
the oceans, many of the measurements being made by automated devices including
ocean buoys. Autonomous floats and gliders as well as strings of instruments deployed
through the water column measure the temperature and salinity of the ocean’s sub-
surface. Satellites measure atmospheric and oceanic temperatures, the properties of
the surface of land, ocean, and ice, and the height of the sea’s surface. Balloon-​borne
devices measure temperature profiles up through the atmosphere.
It is the amalgamation of these multiple and growing data sets that provides the
raw material that tells us that the world is warming and allows us to compare what
is happening now with what happened in the past. Combining these data from scat-
tered sites with numerical models enables us to map climate change today and in the
past, and to project into the future how the climate and ice may change, for example
10 The Icy Planet

by our adding yet more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The verdict: our activi-
ties are warming the Earth—​and we are losing Earth’s refrigerator.

Entering a New Geological Era—​

The Anthropocene
My geological colleagues and I concur that the changes we humans have wrought have
been so extensive that we are now living in a new geological age, the Anthropocene,
from the Greek “anthropos” meaning human, and “cene” meaning time.7 More
than 90% of all the fossil fuel ever burned has been burned since 1950, to meet our
demands. And there have been wonderful results—​far fewer people in poverty; fewer
deaths in childbirth; longer and healthier lives; more and cheaper food; cheaper,
faster, and more comfortable transport; amazing abilities to communicate across the
globe via satellite phone and video link; the ability to know instantaneously exactly
where we are on the surface of the planet via the GPS-​satellite link on the phone in our
hand or the receiver in our car. Much of what we now have seems like the coming to
life of the fantasies of the science fiction writers of my boyhood. Yet here it is. But in
the process we have, let’s face it, trashed the surface of the planet.
The rate of change in our impact on the planet increased dramatically in the so-​
called Great Acceleration starting in about 1950 as the conveyor-​belt industrial pro-
cesses that were developed during the Second World War to produce guns, bombs,
bullets, tanks, destroyers, and Spitfires were converted in the postwar era to produce
“stuff ” that Madison Avenue told us we could not do without, and the new religion
of consumerism took hold.8 Not surprisingly, the fossil fuel burning since 1950 has
infused the atmosphere with an inevitable byproduct in the form of CO2, a green-
house gas. A further byproduct is an even stronger greenhouse gas, CH4, the main
component of natural gas, which readily escapes from ill-​regulated oil and gas op-
erations and from livestock. To these we must add nitrous oxide (N2O), a byproduct
of burning hydrocarbons in car engines, and of the excessive application of nitrate
fertilizers to farm fields. Along with us humans, domestic cattle and chickens are now
the dominant forms of life on the planet. As David Grinspoon reminds us: “This is not
your grandmother’s Earth.”9
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb much of the heat radiated from the
surface of the Earth, then reradiate it in all directions within the atmosphere, which
warms the lower layers of the atmosphere in which we live. Physicists have known
about that since the mid-​1800s, when it was first demonstrated by experiments. Since
then, technological advances have made it possible for physicists to use radiometers
on spacecraft to measure by just how much the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
block the escape of Earth’s surface heat to outer space at specific wavelengths.10, 11,12
Hand-​held radiometers at ground level, looking up, prove that much of the blocked
heat is directed back down toward the Earth’s surface at those same wavelengths.13
There’s no doubting those simple facts of physics.
 Introduction 11

Much of the excess heat generated in this way warms the surface waters of the
ocean, which are then mixed down into the interior. That process has three side
effects. First, warm water contains less gas, so the warming ocean absorbs less CO2,
leaving more of our emissions in the air. Second, warm water expands, further raising
the sea level. And third, the warmth of the air and ocean enhance the evaporation of
water vapor, which is another greenhouse gas and so warms the air further. It is the
combined effect of these various gases that warms the air we breathe. Water vapor has
a larger effect than CO2 because it is more abundant than the other greenhouse gases.
But it is not effective in the stratosphere, where the air is too cold and dry to hold sig-
nificant amounts of water vapor. Instead, another greenhouse gas comes into play in
the stratosphere—​ozone, which tends to be concentrated at heights of 12–​19 miles
(20–​30 km).
We humans have not only radically changed the composition and tempera-
ture of the atmosphere and ocean, we have also radically changed the surface of the
planet, converting something like 75% of the land surface to agriculture or ranch-
ing. Constructing the roads and buildings to cater to our growing population has led
to massive amounts of cement being produced, with CO2 added to the air as a by-
product. And for our convenience we have used fossil fuels to produce vast amounts
of plastic. These and various related changes since 1950 are what underpin the geolo-
gists’ push to name the present era the Anthropocene. It is within the Anthropocene
that we have lost substantial amounts of ice as the world has warmed, contributing to
a further raising of sea level.
It is the emission of our greenhouse gases that has pushed global average tempera-
tures to 1.2°C above what they were in the preindustrial era (late 1800s). How do
these temperatures compare with those for the preceding geological period in which
human civilizations arose—​the Holocene of the past 11,700 years? Darrell Kaufman
and colleagues reminded us in 2020 that “During the two millennia prior to the 20th
Century, global mean surface temperature (GMST) cooled at a rate of roughly −0.15°C
per 1000 years.”14 We’ll look at that data in more detail in Chapter 6. Kaufman’s anal-
ysis showed that the global average surface temperature for the Holocene was highest
at around 6,500 years ago, when it reached a mean of 0.51°C above the average tem-
perature for the 19th century.14 That is what our average global temperature reached
in about 1985, which tells us that we are now 0.7°C above the average for the Holocene
thermal optimum.
In effect we have been unintentionally carrying out a gigantic geophysical exper-
iment on the planet by adding massive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmos-
phere.15 If we had done this on Mars, for example, it would be called “terraforming”
(i.e., converting Mars’s climate into an Earth-​like one). Instead we have been “terra-
forming” Earth. This was not what we set out to do. But now that we know what we are
(unintentionally) doing, and what the results are likely to be if we continue business
as usual, we can decide to do something different, a topic for Chapter 9.
This book focuses on the role of ice on Earth, and what we can do if anything
to avoid losing the ice that provides us with our natural refrigerator. What we are
12 The Icy Planet

discussing in effect is planetary evolution. We will have to shift from being uninten-
tional to intentional planetary engineers if our descendants are to be able to live the
kinds of lives we would wish them to have.9 We’ll look at planetary engineering in
Chapter 9.

The Role of Ice in Earth’s Climate System

Before we look at ice in detail in the chapters that follow, we will examine what we
know about how the Earth is warming. We need to know how much energy from the
Sun is coming in, and how much heat from the warmed surface of the Earth is going
out. Ideally the two should be in balance, in which case warming would remain static
apart from temporary ups and downs caused by internal fluctuations. As an analogy,
you might like to think of your calorie count. Eating more calories of energy than you
burn (equivalent to greenhouse gases trapping outgoing energy in the atmosphere)
will expand your waistline (equivalent to warming the atmosphere).16
The key measure of Earth’s climate state, then, is the amount of energy in the Earth
System.17 Energy entering or leaving the Earth’s climate system does so in the form
of radiation across the top of the atmosphere. The difference between incoming solar
radiation and the sum of outgoing solar radiation (e.g., reflected by snow and ice) and
longwave radiation (heat) emitted by the warming Earth, determines what physicists
call the net radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere. Changes in this global radia-
tion balance lead to the so-​called Earth Energy Imbalance, or EEI. If there is less en-
ergy going out than coming in, the EEI is positive, energy accumulates in the Earth
System, and the climate warms. If there is more energy going out than coming in, the
EEI is negative, the Earth System loses heat and the climate cools. Today the EEI is
positive and the globe is warming.
The natural order of events would be for the climate to adjust over time so that
all its components come back into equilibrium and the EEI is zero. If the EEI re-
mains positive, the climate system still has some adjusting to do to get to equilib-
rium. Because the EEI is positive, even if we stopped emitting CO2 the climate would
still continue to warm until the EEI fell to zero. To put it another way, the EEI defines
the warming still “in the pipeline.” Once the EEI hits zero, there is no more warming
in the pipeline.
The EEI is currently about 1 Watt/​m2. Most of its growth since 1900 resulted from
the emission of greenhouse gases through human agency, which caused heat to ac-
cumulate in the Earth System, 90% of it within the ocean. Most of that emission took
place after 1950, when more than 90% of the fossil fuels ever burned by human agency
were converted into CO2 emissions. CO2, however, is not the only culprit. As men-
tioned earlier, leakage from fossil fuel mining and transportation and the livestock in-
dustry boosted the concentration of CH4 in the air, and the burning of gasoline in cars
 Introduction 13

and trucks as well as vast applications of nitrate fertilizer added N2O to the air; both
are powerful greenhouse gases. All of these gases plus water vapor act like a blanket,
trapping heat temporarily in the atmosphere.
How is it that the ocean can contain so much heat? The answer lies in the ocean’s
tremendous heat capacity—​the top 3.5 m of the ocean contains as much heat as
the entire atmosphere. Incoming solar radiation warms the sea surface (and the
land surface, and us).17 The heat at the ocean surface is redistributed down into the
ocean’s interior by waves and eddies. In winter, big storms mix heat even further
down into the ocean. Warm surface water is taken down deep near Greenland by
the sinking of North Atlantic Deep Water, and near Antarctica by sinking Antarctic
Bottom Water.
While much of the ocean’s heat lies above the “thermocline” (the boundary be-
tween warm surface and cold subsurface water, which lies at a depth of about 100
m), these various processes have taken heat progressively deeper, to well over 2,000
m. Most of this has happened since 1950 (which is when the massive increase in fossil
fuel burning really took off). Warming of the ocean interior makes the water expand,
thus raising sea level. It will take a great deal of time for the ocean to heat to full ocean
depth, so we will not see the full extent of sea level rise for centuries.
The rate at which the ocean has been warming has increased with time, steepening
from about the year 2000 onward and leading to an increase of the EEI from 0.47 W/​
m2 in 1971–​2018 to 0.87 W/​m2 in 2010–​2018.17
This increase in oceanic heat storage coincides with a period (2000–​2013) in which
temperatures in the lower troposphere showed little growth, a period often referred
to as “the pause.” Clearly, there was no actual cessation of global warming during the
so-​called pause—​the additional heat was simply stored in a less obvious place—​in the
oceans instead of the atmosphere.
Do different measurement systems agree with Shuckmann’s calculation of EEI?
Yes. From mid-​2005 to 2019 the estimates of the trend of increasing oceanic heat be-
tween 0 and 2,000 m depth, determined largely from Argo floats, matched the en-
ergy flux detected independently at the top of the atmosphere by the Clouds and
the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite system.18 This agreement tells
us that the trend in the EEI is robust. In part the observed upward trend (increased
EEI) is related to a shift from a negative (cold) to a positive (warm) Pacific Decadal
Oscillation (PDO) in 2014. A future reversal in the PDO would likely reduce the rate
of heat uptake slightly.18
Schuckmann’s data show that the rise in ocean warming was accompanied by
an acceleration of sea level rise (see Chapter 8), accelerated surface warming, re-
cord temperatures and ice loss in the Arctic (see Chapter 6), and loss of ice from the
Greenland Ice Sheet (see Chapter 6) and the Antarctic Ice Sheet (see Chapters 3, 4,
and 5). Schuckmann’s team17 agree that we now need to extract Gigatonnes of CO2
from the atmosphere, bringing its concentration there down to about 350 ppm, about
where it was in 1988. This would increase radiation to space by 0.87 W/​m2, which
would bring the EEI down to zero.
14 The Icy Planet

If the heat currently stored in the ocean (i.e., “in the pipeline”) were released, it
would raise temperature by about 0.5°C (c.1°F). If we stop CO2 emissions, this heat
will continue to rise until equilibrium is reached in a world that is 0.5°C warmer.
But the ocean holds yet another pipeline conundrum for us. The air and the ocean
constantly exchange gases across the ocean surface, maintaining an equilibrium be-
tween them. What that means is that when we start to reduce our emissions of CO2,
this equilibrium exchange process will work to keep the CO2 content of the atmos-
phere from declining as rapidly as our emissions do. This exchange process and the
warming in the pipeline will conspire to slow the rate of cooling over decades to hun-
dreds of years, leading to more ice melt than if the benefits of CO2 reduction were
immediate.
The ocean plays a key role in controlling the amount of heat trapped in the cli-
mate system. First, it provides a source of water vapor when the climate warms, and
water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas in its own right. However, when water vapor
reaches the cold of the upper troposphere it condenses, forms clouds, and falls as rain,
snow, or sleet; the other greenhouse gases do not have that limitation. This makes
water vapor a “follower” of temperature change; it is a greenhouse gas amplifier, not a
primary driver of climate change.
Little or no water vapor makes it into the stratosphere, because it is too cold there.
NASA scientists calculate that water vapor is the dominant contributor (c. 50%) to
modern warming, followed by clouds (c.25%) and CO2 (c.20%).10–​12 Greenhouse
gases provide the primary forcing, while water vapor and clouds provide feedbacks
that accentuate the effects of those gases. For detail on the carbon cycle, on what global
warming is, and on how the effects of greenhouse gases are calculated, turn to sources
such as the IPCC reports (freely available to download from the IPCC website).
Modern deep ocean bottom water sourced from the surface around Antarctica
ranges in temperature from 1°C (34°F)–​ 3°C(37°F) with an average of about
2°C(35.6°F). During times of glacial maxima within the Ice Age, deep ocean tem-
peratures were close to 0°C (32°F). In contrast, during warm “greenhouse climates”
in Earth’s history, like the mid-​Cretaceous 100 million years ago, bottom water tem-
peratures rose to between 10°C (50°F) and 15°C (59°F). They did not originate near
Antarctica. Rather, their main source was warm water on shallow continental shelves,
where heating led to evaporation, making surface waters very salty and hence dense
enough to flow down slope to the deep ocean floor. Much the same happens today in
the eastern Mediterranean.
By contrast with much of geological time over the past 500 million years, when
CO2 was abundant and global average temperatures reached between 20°C (68°F)
and 26°C (79°F), we now live in a low CO2 world with an average global temperature
close to 14°C (57°F)–​15°C (59°F). Today, cold Antarctic Bottom Water is a key com-
ponent of the global thermohaline circulation, which connects the two poles through
the ocean. We’ll look at it in more detail in Chapter 6.
The ocean also plays an important role in natural oscillations within the climate
system. From time to time the ocean supplies heat to the atmosphere, while at other
 Introduction 15

times it absorbs heat from the atmosphere. This is because the ocean and the atmos-
phere are highly coupled. One well known example of this is provided by the El Niño–​
Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, in which, periodically, an El Niño Event warms
the equatorial Pacific and its atmosphere, while its opposite, a La Niña Event, then
cools the equatorial Pacific and its atmosphere. Both events lead to widespread at-
mospheric effects elsewhere, even as far away from the Pacific as the United Kingdom,
Brazil, and South Africa. These natural oscillations within the climate system cause
slight temporary variations in the EEI, as do major volcanoes that put fine-​grained
particles into the stratosphere to shade the Earth temporarily.
Systematic changes in the large ocean currents can also cause temporary changes in
the EEI, by changing the way they move heat around the world. The melting of snow
and ice provides further feedback to modify the EEI by reducing albedo (the reflec-
tion of solar energy). What results as our climate is not, therefore, a simple product of
CO2 emissions; rather, it depends on how their effect is modified by multiple internal
feedbacks.3
The ocean’s vast heat store is crucial for the story of ice in two ways. First, it pro-
vides substantial amounts of heat to melt Antarctic ice shelves and Arctic tidewater
glaciers from beneath, and, second, ocean currents transport heat from the tropics to
the high latitudes, thus contributing to the warming of the air in those environments.
In turn, ice plays an important role in modifying the EEI, by absorbing the heat
needed to bring the temperature of ice to 0°C (32°F) so that it can melt. About half of
the energy uptake by the cryosphere (the world of ice, snow, and frozen ground) is as-
sociated with the melting of grounded ice, with the remaining half associated with the
melting of ice shelves and sea ice.
It is largely the increase in the EEI that has warmed Earth’s surface on average by
1.2°C (2.2°F) since the preindustrial era, which climatologists take as ending in 1880–​
1900 and stretching back for over 1,000 years. Warming was modest until about the
mid-​1940s, when the climate (but not the ocean) cooled slightly to a plateau until
about 1970, before warming fast to the present. Some places, notably the Arctic, have
warmed at least twice as fast. Some other places warmed rather slowly. The pattern
of average global warming slowed a bit between 2000 and 2012 (although not in the
Arctic, nor in the ocean), before speeding up again. For the past 50 years the global
average climate has been warmer than it was in the Medieval Warm Period. In the
polar regions it is now warmer than it was in the warmest period of the Holocene (the
past 11,700 years).14
When did this recent warming begin? One of the difficulties in establishing that
is the fact that as we go back in time beyond 1900, the observations of temperature
become rapidly more sparse. Nevertheless, we can instead use proxies for tempera-
ture, measured from geological materials (corals, stalactites, ice cores, tree rings, lake
and ocean sediment cores, and so on). These proxies tell us that temperatures began
to warm significantly from about 1840 onward.19 That coincides with the time that
mountain glaciers began serious declines in the Alps, for example.20 Prior to1830,
several large volcanoes (notably Tambora in 1815) put sufficient reflective dust into
16 The Icy Planet

the atmosphere to keep the climate quite cool between 1800 and about 1830, and
glaciers grew. At the same time, sunspot activity was weak in the Dalton Sunspot
Minimum (1800–​1830).21 So a warming from about 1835 onward would be expected
as sunspot’s strengthened and volcanic activity declined. At the time, CO2 was only
very slowly rising in the atmosphere, so is unlikely to have made much of a contribu-
tion to this particular warming. Nowadays, in contrast, greenhouse gases are abun-
dant and warming is accelerating.
One of the internal feedbacks mentioned above comes from aerosols—​fine par-
ticles spread through the atmosphere. These may include among other things vol-
canic dust; sulfuric acid droplets formed by combining volcanic emissions of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) with water vapor; wind-​blown desert dust; soot (black carbon); and
spheroidal carbonaceous particles about 1–​2 microns across and derived from the
smoke from chimneys on coal-​fired power stations. Many aerosols reflect solar en-
ergy, cooling the atmosphere. Others, like black carbon, absorb solar energy, con-
tributing to warming.
Considering the increase in the rate of rise in mean global temperature from 2014
onward, Jim Hansen noticed that instead of the cooling associated with the La Niña
events of 2018 and 2021 falling below the trend line of rising temperature, it fell on
the line.22 Something was preventing this natural cooling from being as extensive as
it had been since 1970. This observation went along with the fact that the El Niño
warming events of recent times (2016 and 2020) led to substantially higher tempera-
tures than expected. That “something” was accelerating global warming. It was not
an increase in the rate of supply of CO2, nor could it be attributed to solar activity.
Hansen deduced that this acceleration was due to a decrease in aerosols, suggest-
ing that some of this arose from regulations imposed (in 2015) by the International
Maritime Organization on sulfur emissions from ships, which led to a reduction in
dirty smoke. Cars, trucks, trains, and planes also produce aerosols. As we begin to
phase out fossil fuel burning, Hansen realized, aerosol production should “decline
substantially in the next several decades.”22 That will inevitably warm our climate
faster. He calculated that the effect of declining aerosols had been enough since 2015
to increase global heating to 1 W/​m2, substantially above the 0.87 W/​m2 referred to
by Schuckmann.17 In effect, in the past reflective aerosols have “clouded” the picture,
dragging down the full warming that we should have seen from greenhouse gases. As
the aerosols decline, the greenhouse effect is beginning to emerge with full force, cre-
ating yet more hazards for the world of ice.

Modern warming arises from clearing land for agriculture, and from the burning of
fossil fuels, both of which add CO2 to the atmosphere. The rates of warming have
varied through time, along with changes in land clearance and fossil fuel burning.
In the European context, records of the extent of glaciers in places like the European
Alps show that substantial retreat began about 1850, suggesting an expansion of
 Introduction 17

warming at that time.20 Glacier lengths were longer during the Dalton Sunspot
Minimum centered on 1790–​1820,23 and the period 1809–​1835 was also character-
ized by large volcanic eruptions, like that of Tambora, Indonesia, in 1815, which
caused the European and American “Year without a Summer” in 1816, and which
would have prolonged any solar induced cooling beyond the peak of the Dalton
Minimum.20 The Dalton Minimum was followed by a period of sunspot maxima
lasting from 1840–​1860,23 which may have contributed to the substantial glacial re-
treat beginning in 1850.
Could the slow growth of fossil fuel burning during the early stages of the indus-
trial revolution have triggered that glacial retreat? We can discern the influence of
the growing burning of fossil fuel (mainly coal) in the industrial revolution from the
incidence of black carbon, which began noticeably increasing in Alpine glaciers and
Greenland by 1875.20 However, that signal appears to be misleading, because history
tells us that coal burning for industry and the early years of rail transport was already
well established by that time in both Europe and North America. For instance, world
coal production rose by a factor of 10 from about 8 million tonnes in 1800 to about
80 million tonnes by 1850,24 well before the jump in the black carbon signal in ice.
Coal-​powered trains began running commercially from 1830 onward, starting with
the run from Liverpool to Manchester in England.
Another early influence on Earth’s early warming was the change in agricultural
practices due at least in part to the rise in global population, from about 1700 on-
ward. This resulted in a noticeable increase in croplands and rangelands at the ex-
pense of woodlands.25 One might argue that since “trees eat carbon,” removing them
to make way for open fields would tend to keep more CO2 in the atmosphere, leading
to gradual warming as more land was cleared. A counterargument might focus on the
increased albedo of, say, open wheat fields compared with the lower albedo of forest
canopy. However, in winter, open fields ploughed in preparation for the next season’s
crops would have low albedo.
One of the first to point out humans’ effect on albedo was the American astron-
omer and science popularizer Carl Sagan, back in 1979. He and his colleagues agreed
that “Considering only global albedo changes, we find it possible that human altera-
tion of the environment has made a significant contribution to the observed global
climatic shifts of both the last several decades and the last several millennia.”26 They
went on to say, “we believe it is . . . likely that the human species has made a substantial
and continuing impact on climate since the invention of fire.”26 Our human effect on
the climate is evidently not a new story. But careful calculation would be required to
assess the degree to which changing ecologies affected Earth’s albedo, in addition to
assessing the effect of increasing greenhouse gases.
The temporary influence of volcanism was evident from a local advance in Alpine
ice in 1883, the year Krakatoa erupted in Indonesia. We have had very few large
eruptions since then. However we have had another minor sunspot minimum, the
Gleissberg Minimum of 1890–​1910, which would have helped to slightly cool the cli-
mate at that time.
18 The Icy Planet

Although variable solar output is likely to have affected Earth’s climate, calcula-
tions suggest that in periods of sunspot minima the total solar irradiance decreases
by no more than about 0.1% to 0.3%, which would imply rather small global average
temperature decreases of between about 0.1°C (0.18°F) to 0.3°C (0.54°F).16 The in-
verse would be expected with sunspot maxima. Locally these effects may well be
exacerbated by feedbacks of various kinds. That raises the question—​what role might
variation in solar output have played in controlling the rise in temperature of the 20th
century? Here we should note that sunspots were at about the same maximal peak in
1780 prior to the Dalton Minimum as they were after it between 1840–​1860 and again
in 1980.23 Given that conditions were much colder in the 1840–​1860 period than in
1980, we cannot blame the temperature rise to 1980 on the Sun. Indeed, if the Sun
were responsible for that warming the global average temperature should have fallen
from 1990
onward, a period during which sunspots have significantly declined.23

How do we know what is happening to the ice? For years scientists have visited the
world’s icy places, measuring change. The difficulties of getting to icy terrains, and
of measuring how they change year-​round mean that this is an extremely difficult
and expensive process. But since the beginning of the satellite era we have greatly
benefited from an eye in the sky. Remote sensing can detect ground movements from
changes in area and elevation, allowing us to calculate rates of change in mass and
volume. Remote sensing enables us to measure the albedo from the reflectance of the
surface, assess surface temperature, and identify different types of ice, snow, and de-
bris. Microwave imaging systems allow us to see through clouds and to collect data by
day and by night using radar.
Satellite altimeters that are used to measure the height of the sea’s surface with in-
credible precision can also show us changes in ice thickness by comparison between
repeat satellite tracks collected at different times. Other satellites can also measure
changes in the amount of ice by weighing it—​they can carry gravimeters that con-
tinuously measure subtle differences in gravity from ice gain or loss as they pass over
ice sheets. Lasers supplement radars for measuring topography. Satellites also sup-
plement aerial photography, which can provide a higher level of detail, but at greater
expense and only in summer.
For readers wanting more detail on these various techniques, Vivien Gornitz
explains how they can be used to extract information about how the ice is changing.27
The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) archives and shares data on
all aspects of the cryosphere including ice sheets and glaciers. The World Glacier
Monitoring Service (WGMS) in Switzerland holds a global collection of global gla-
cier data sets in the World Glacier Inventory. And the Global Land Ice Measurements
from Space (GLIMS) project holds a web-​based glacier database. These all confirm
that our icy world, the cryosphere, is shrinking.
 Introduction 19

It should not surprise you to learn that we ourselves are the root of the decline in
ice over the past 100 years or so. Our emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 from
burning fossil fuels, CH4 from cattle and from leaking gas pipelines, and N2O mostly
from agriculture but also from waste management and as a byproduct of burning
fossil fuel, absorb and re-​emit heat escaping from the Earth, trapping it in the atmos-
phere. The trapping process operates more like a blanket than a greenhouse. But we
have been piling on the blankets: our emissions have increased dramatically with
time. In May 2021 the atmosphere contained on average 417 ppm of CO2, (i.e., 0.04%
of the atmosphere), but the “absolute” greenhouse effect of all three gases was sub-
stantially higher (closer to 0.05%). From time to time, when I am lecturing about
global warming and its effect on ice, I get asked, “can such a tiny amount of gas, 0.04%,
really have any effect on the planet?” The answer is simple—​we all know that tiny
amounts of the substances we introduce into our large bodies can have extremely sur-
prising effects.
Drink just two beers in the United States, and your blood alcohol level is likely
to exceed 0.04%. If you are driving a commercial vehicle or piloting an aircraft with
that in your blood, you can be charged with being under the influence of alcohol. In
Norway, Sweden, and Poland, the level for all drivers is a mere 0.02%; throughout
much of the European Union and Australia it is 0.05%. And I am sure all readers will
know that the tiniest amount of cyanide can kill you. Remember—​small concentra-
tions can have massive effects. So, yes, small amounts of greenhouse gases can indeed
have large effects.

What Is Global Warming Doing to the Planet’s

Icy Places?
In this book we will take a look at what global warming is doing to the planet’s ice.
The ice at the poles is a key component of the world’s climate system. It acts like a re-
frigerator, keeping our climate relatively cool by reflecting solar energy back to space.
Take away the ice, and we lose our refrigerator. Not a good outcome for plants, an-
imals, or humans. Melt the ice and we raise the world’s sea level—​also not a good
outcome for humans. Sea level will rise about 7 m (23 ft) if all of Greenland’s ice goes,
a further 4–​5 m (13–​16 ft) if West Antarctica’s ice melts, and 65 m (213 ft) if all ice
disappears, which it did in Jurassic and Cretaceous times between 200 and 66 million
years ago. However, the sea level during the Cretaceous was much higher again than
65 m because at that time there were many more midocean ridges on the seabed than
there are now, which displaced seawater onto the continents (more on that process in
Chapter 8, where we look at sea level through time).
Everyone knows that we have white cliffs at Dover. Many of those people know that
the cliffs are made of chalk. But far fewer people know that the chalk is mostly made
20 The Icy Planet

of the remains of the skeletons of microscopic plankton. And even fewer realize that
this means that southern Britain and much of the adjacent continent must have been
well below sea level during those ice-​free times. Fortunately, a return to such extreme
conditions is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, geological investigations around the world show that in the not too
distant geological past, just 3.5 million years ago in Pliocene time, when atmospheric
CO2 was about 400 ppm (even less than the 417 ppm registered in May 2021) and the
world was some 2°C (3.6°F)–​3°C (5.4°F) warmer than it was in 1900, average global
sea level was as much as 9–​20 m (29–​65 ft) higher than it is now. If such a rise hap-
pened rapidly in future, it would drown most of the world’s coastal cities, which is
where much of the world’s population lives. However, as we will see in Chapter 8, this
kind of rise is what scientists envisage happening over the next few centuries, as tem-
perature, ice melt, and sea level rise gradually come into a state of equilibrium with
one another.
Do most people realize that a sea level rise of 9–​20 m (29–​65 ft) is on the cards if we
continue with business as usual? No. Do most politicians? No. But that may simply be
because the 5-​year reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) tend to restrict their forward looks to the year 2100. Bearing that potential sea
level rise in mind, we would be wise to do everything in our power to prevent it from
happening. Let’s take the blinkers off.
And remember—​global warming is not going to stop in 2100, which seems to be
an impression shared by many in my lecture audiences. The IPCC provides forecasts
to 2100, but it is abundantly clear that the oceans and the ice sheets, which are key
elements in the climate system, respond very much more slowly than the atmosphere.
These slow feedback elements will continue to cause further warming and sea level
rise for centuries long after 2100 even if we stop emitting CO2 now.
My message is simple: regardless of where we live or what we do for a living, we
are—​although most of the world’s population doesn’t realize it—​heavily dependent
on our planetary ice cover. Under the circumstances it seems rather urgent that we
should learn more about Earth’s icy mantle, about how we are losing it, and about
what we can do to minimize the consequences of losing our refrigerator.

Connections
It’s a truism of Buddhism that everything is connected, and we are now realizing that
this is true of the science of the environment. When we harm our natural environ-
ment, we harm ourselves. Let’s take one very simple example: trees eat carbon, so that
when some company chops down a tropical rainforest to produce garden furniture it
is removing a prime means of sucking CO2 out of the air. It may be hard to make the
connection when all you see is nice-​looking garden furniture in your local store.
 Introduction 21

Life, however, is all about interconnections. Breathing is an obvious example: we

breathe in oxygen that expired by plants, and breathe out CO2 that plants use for pho-
tosynthesis. We also breathe in each other’s exhalations, notably CO2, but also air-
borne viruses. Our remains return to the air and the soil, our molecules shared by the
bacterial, plant, and animal kingdoms.
We humans are an integral part of the “biosphere,” a term coined near the end of
the 19th century by the Viennese geologist Eduard Suess to describe the space on
Earth that contains life. In the early 1920s, the brilliant Russian geochemist Vladimir
Vernadsky deduced that the actions of life on the planet, in the biosphere, constituted
a geological force that had transformed Earth’s surface and climate.28 To enable us to
understand how life did that, and what its effects were, he said we needed a new field of
science, which he termed “biogeochemistry.” This would provide a multidisciplinary
approach to analyzing the biosphere, in which the cycles of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen,
sulfur, and phosphorus should be regarded as biogeochemical cycles involving the bi-
osphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
Jacques Grinevald alerted me to the fact that Vernadsky’s call for biogeochem-
ical analyses of the biosphere and its influence were published English at the time (in
1924), but in an extremely obscure journal.29 For the most part Vernadsky’s thoughts
on biogeochemistry and the biosphere were hidden away in the Russian scientific
literature. To cut a long story short, Vernadsky’s thinking failed to influence the
English-​speaking scientific world until his articles came to light in the late 1970s, long
after his death.
Vernadsky revolutionized our view of Earth by teaching that life has been a trans-
forming geological force on our planet. He did for life in Earth-​space what Darwin
did for life in time. Given that we humans now dominate Earth’s animal life with
our numbers and those of our cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, and pets, and that
we further influence the biosphere through forestry, fishing, and farming, it should
not be surprising that we have become a special case of the geological force of life
on the planet, a realization that underpins the development of the Anthropocene
concept.
Perhaps because Vernadsky’s work was overlooked, the sciences of the natural en-
vironment tended to work long into the late 1980s, as they had for a century or more,
in single discipline silos between which there was rather little interaction. By the late
1980s, however, scientists studying the natural environment began to realize that eve-
rything is connected, and that understanding how the world works demands an inter-
disciplinary approach. There are intimate links for example between nature’s carbon
cycle (as represented by the growth and decay of plants) and the hydrological cycle
(which governs the balance between floods and droughts). To understand the climate
system, one has to integrate knowledge about ocean currents, winds, ocean and at-
mospheric fronts, and their relation to geography, ice, snow, and albedo, and the op-
erations of the natural biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and
sulfur. Biogeochemistry has become the glue that binds together research on Earth’s
biosphere.
22 The Icy Planet

The push for an interdisciplinary approach to environmental science was stim-

ulated by James Lovelock, whose Gaia concept—​that the Earth operates as a self-​
regulating system—​developed in the early 1970s. It is a sign of the extent to which
Vernadsky’s work was poorly known in the “west” at the time, that Lovelock was ini-
tially unaware of it.
In 1986 the International Council for Science recognized the growing need to
integrate the sciences of the environment by creating the International Geosphere-​
Biosphere Program (IGBP). This was set up to examine connections between the
rocks beneath our feet (the lithosphere); the air around us (the atmosphere); oceans,
rivers, and lakes (the hydrosphere); snow, ice, and frozen ground (the cryosphere);
and ecology (the biosphere).
Taking an integrative approach to the study of the natural world demanded the
bringing together of biology, chemistry, physics, glaciology, and geology under the
heading of “Earth System Science.” It starts from the perspective that the Earth works
as a single integrated system in which a number of interlocking cycles such as the
carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the hydrological cycle cannot be disentangled.
Each cycle affects the others through positive or negative feedbacks that produce
emergent properties that might never have been realized through the study of such
cycles by themselves.
The Earth System is complex and has to be studied as an integrated whole, it cannot
easily be understood by breaking it into its constituent parts and studying them sep-
arately in the usual reductionist way of science. In a way, Earth System Science grew
out of the first space missions, which gave us our view of Earth as a small blue dot in
space. We could no longer conceive of ourselves as living on an infinite land surface. It
became necessary to think of the Earth as our space ship, a vessel whose workings we
would need to understand if we were to survive as a species.
As pointed out in an e-​mail in 2021 by my colleague Jacques Grinevald,

despite this push for modern scientific research on the natural environment to be
a collective, multidisciplinary, transnational and cross-​cultural enterprise (a shift
that is something of a scientific revolution), this change is still largely invisible or
incomprehensible to many of our contemporaries, including some powerful scien-
tific and technological silos, big business, the military, and religious and govern-
mental circles.

Sticking to the single discipline silo approach to the natural sciences tends to
keep people focused on the single discipline policy issues that were defined at the
end of the 1980s. For instance, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (1992)
involves largely biology. The UN’s Montreal Protocol (of the Vienna Convention for
the Protection of the Ozone Layer) (1987) involves largely chemistry. And the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) involves largely atmospheric
physics and the greenhouse effect. Hence the policy advice developed under these
headings tends to remain “single issue.” That ignores the essentially integrative nature
 Introduction 23

of the global-​scale problems that we face. It should be obvious to all of us that cli-
mate change, ozone, and biodiversity are intimately linked, and that we should all be
thinking that way. I’m happy to report that this effort has recently begun with a 2021
international workshop, “Biodiversity and Climate Change.”30
One of the precursors having a bearing on the world of ice in this push to integrate
different strands of science was the Climate Long-​Range Investigation and Mapping
Project (CLIMAP), pioneered in the 1970s by John Imbrie of Brown University.
Before CLIMAP, climate research tended to be largely single-​discipline. Imbrie’s
CLIMAP was multidisciplinary. It integrated disciplines to see what Earth’s climate
was like at the peak of the last Ice Age (18,000 years BP).
Oceanographers worked with glaciologists, soil scientists, paleontologists, and
computer modelers in an early Earth Systems approach to past climate change.
CLIMAP scientists produced reconstructions of winter sea surface temperatures
across the North Atlantic at a time of the last major glacial advance of the Northern
Hemisphere ice sheets. These showed that the winter sea ice extended south
roughly to a line joining Boston and Lisbon. In 1976 members of the CLIMAP team
used long sediment cores to prove that the fluctuations in sea surface temperature
through time during the Ice Age matched the Milankovitch Cycles of the Earth’s
orbit.31 This was a discovery as momentous as the discovery of plate tectonic theory
in the late 1960s in demonstrating how our planet works, and, incidentally that
our climate experiences extraterrestrial controls other than those provided by var-
iations in the Sun’s output. For all its mundane sounding title, CLIMAP was ex-
citing stuff.
That brings me back to our interconnectedness with the world of ice. Ice affects
us, and we affect it. I’ll start with a personal reflection. I grew up in the southeast of
England, where, back in the early 1950s the climate was cold enough in winter for the
snowy sidewalks that I took to school to turn into ice rinks, which was wonderful for
me and my schoolmates. We took great delight in sliding along the sidewalks between
school and the bus station. There were slides in the playground too—​back then no-
body was as concerned as they are now with “health and safety,” so our teachers let
us get on with it. Later, in the early 1960s, our climate was still cold enough in winter
for sheep to be stranded on the English moors. Helicopters had to bring them hay
(manna from heaven).
By the late 1960s, when I was first married, things had started to warm up a bit,
but my new mother-​in-​law would often tell me that “things were much warmer
when I was a girl”—​meaning back in the 1930s. Being an arrogant young scientist,
I thought she was talking rubbish. It would be some years before I appreciated that she
had been right all along. Our climate had changed. Consulting the Central England
Temperature record, which dates back to the 1650s, and can be found on the Internet,
shows that the English summers of the 1930s and 1940s were warmer on average by
about 1°C (1.8°F) than those of the 1960s. I was the victim of the changing baseline
phenomenon. Each generation thinks its climate is the norm. But we tend to pay
greater attention to weather than to climate.
24 The Icy Planet

It now seems highly unlikely that the southeast of England, where I live, will see
much ice again in winter, except occasionally. We will get cold snaps from time to
time, the product of relatively uncommon meteorological conditions, in which a re-
gion of atmospheric high-​pressure stalls for a while over Scandinavia, bringing cold
Arctic air whistling south and east across my home. Much the same kind of story will
be familiar to the residents of eastern Asia and the central and eastern states of the
United States and Canada, where such “blocking highs” locally develop and stick for
a while, bringing cold air south. It seems wholly counterintuitive that these cold air
outbreaks are a response to global warming, but—​as the Stoics would say—​“it is what
it is.” And there is a reason.
Global warming has weakened the temperature gradient between the tropics and
the poles that keeps in place the northern jet stream—​that high-​speed and high-​
altitude zone of westerly winds that makes the flight from New York to London so
much quicker than the return journey. This weakening has allowed the jet stream to
meander more, bringing more cold air south over North America and Scandinavia
and taking more warm air north over Greenland. Winter snow in southeastern
England or Florida can tie in with wearing shorts in southern Greenland. This of
course, is weather, not climate, but my underlying point is that as the climate warms,
the weather changes.
There is another reason too why we see much less snow or ice in the southeast of
England. Global average temperatures have risen by on average 1.2°C (2.2°F) since
1900. The United Kingdom’s Central England Temperature data confirm that global
warming is active at the local level, where our local UK temperatures over that pe-
riod have risen by on average 1°C (1.8°F) in all seasons.32 Similar stories are evident
for just about every region in mid-​latitudes (e.g., western Europe),33 with the rise in
temperature steepening from about 1970 onward, as is clear from the annual reports
on the State of the Climate from the World Meteorological Organization based in
Geneva.34 The baseline has shifted. Nevertheless, that the 1.2°C (2.2°F) figure is an
average global rise. Some places will have warmed less, others much more. And that
matters when it comes to ice, because the Arctic has warmed at least twice as fast as
the global average, as we shall see in Chapter 6.

Why Should We Care?

Why does melting ice matter? It may seem far-​fetched to consider what our world
will be like in 2100 if we continue with business as usual, oblivious to what is hap-
pening to Earth’s permanent ice cover. But if you were, say, 25 years old in 2020
and starting a family, your kids would be close to 25 years old and just having their
own kids in about 2050. In turn, your grandchildren might start having their own
kids by 2075, and by 2100, given our rising longevity, many of you would see your
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Bergen-op-Zoom in 1814, when lying wounded there, after the
unfortunate failure of that well-planned attack.’

RUMINANTIA.
The ruminants furnish, as is well known, the largest portion of our
animal food, being consumed by man alike in civilized or unsettled
countries. The domestic animals require little notice at our hands.
There are, however, some whose flesh is eaten in different countries
that are less familiar. Thus the bison and musk-ox of North America,
the reindeer of Greenland and Northern Europe—the various
antelopes, the gnu, the giraffe, and the camel of Africa, and the
alpaca tribe of South America, supply much of the animal food of the
people in the districts where they are common.
The flesh of the camel is dry and hard, but not unpalatable.
Heliogabalus had camels’ flesh and camels’ feet served up at his
banquets. In Barbary, the tongues are salted and smoked for
exportation to Italy and other countries, and they form a very good
dish. The flesh is little esteemed by the Tartars, but they use the
hump cut into slices, which, dissolved in tea, serves the purpose of
butter.
The flesh of the Axis deer (Cervus axis, or Axis maculata) is not
much esteemed in Ceylon, having little fat upon it, and being very
dry. The India samver, or musk deer, is eaten there.
The flesh of the great moose deer or elk, of North America, the
carcase of which weighs 1,000 or 1,200 lbs., is as valuable for food
as beef, but from its immense size, much of the flesh is usually left in
the forest.
It is more relished by the Indians and persons resident in the fur
countries, than that of any other animal, and bears a greater
resemblance in its flavour to beef than to venison. It is said that the
external fat is soft like that of a breast of mutton, and when put into a
bladder is as fine as marrow.
The flesh of the caribboo, a smaller animal, rarely exceeding 400
lbs., is less palatable than moose venison. Nor is the flesh of the red
or Virginian deer much better, although the venison dried is very
good.
Venison is not ‘meat’ in the parlance of the backwoodsman; that
term, as Sam Slick tells us, is reserved par excellence for pork; and
he is frequently too indolent or too much occupied otherwise, to hunt,
although deer tracks may be seen in every direction around the
scene of his daily rail-splitting operations. He considers it cheaper to
buy venison of the Indians, when there are any Indians in the locality.
But venison has some solid value even in those parts, and if salted
and smoked, would be entitled to a place among the articles of
household thrift.
Of the Arctic quadrupeds, the reindeer (Cervus tarandus) is most
valuable, its flesh being juicy, nutritious, and well-flavoured, and easy
of digestion. They abound in Greenland, and are tolerably numerous
in Melville Island.
In Sweden, roast reindeer steaks and game are dressed in a manner
preferable to that which prevails with us. The flesh is first perforated,
and little bits of lard inserted; and, after being baked in an oven, it is
served in a quantity of white sauce.
The flesh of the young giraffe is said to be good eating. The
Hottentots hunt the animal principally on account of its marrow,
which, as a delicacy, they set a high value on.
The Hottentots have a curious mode of cooking their antelope
venison, which renders it, however, exceedingly palatable. After
stewing the meat in a very small quantity of water, they take it out of
the pot and pound it between two stones until reduced to the
consistency of pap, when they mix it with a considerable quantity of
sheep’s fat, and then stew it for a short time longer. This is an
excellent way of preparing dry flesh of any kind.
‘On one occasion’ (says Lieut. Moodie), ‘after I had taken out my
share of this mess, the Hottentots added a larger quantity of fat to it
to please their own palates; and one of them ate so heartily of the
greasy mixture, that he became seriously unwell, but recovered by
chewing dry roots of the sweet-scented flag (Calamus aromaticus).
This plant is very much used by the Dutch for stomach complaints,
and they generally cultivate some of it in wet places in their gardens.’
The eland of Africa (Boselaphus Oreas) is the largest of the antelope
tribe, its size being indicated by its generic name. The bulls attain to
the height of nineteen hands at the shoulder, and frequently exceed
1,000 lbs. in weight. It fattens readily on the most meagre herbage of
the desert, and to the delicious, tender, juicy, and wholesome nature
of its flesh every hunter will bear witness, who has regaled himself
on the steaks broiled in the homely style of South African cookery,
with some of the usual condiments or spices to give them an
unnatural relish. The flesh has a peculiar sweetness, and is tender
and fit for use the moment the animal is killed.
It is hunted with avidity, on account of the delicacy of its flesh, but is
very rarely found within the limits of the Cape Colony, having been
driven beyond the Orange River by the progress of colonization.
The hartebeest, an antelope of the size of the Scotch red deer,
though now rather rare, is much prized by the African sportsman. It is
also called caama by the Dutch farmers, and is a favourite object of
pursuit with both natives and colonists. The flesh is rather dry, but of
a fine grain, more nearly resembling the beef of the ox than that of
any other antelope, except, perhaps, the so-called eland or elk of the
colonists (A. oreas, Pallas), and it has a high game flavour which
makes it universally esteemed.
The meat of the sassaby (A. lunata, Burchell), a rare species, is
tender and well tasted. The flesh of the ourebi of Southern Africa (A.
scoparia, Schreber), though dry and destitute of fat, is esteemed one
of the best venisons of the country.
The flesh of the bosh-bok, or bush goat, as its colonial name implies
(A. sylvatica, Sparrman), makes good venison, that of the breast
being particularly esteemed. The flesh of the rheebok (A. capreolus,
Lichstenstein) is dry and insipid, and relished less than that of any
other of the numerous Cape antelopes. The bush antelope (A.
silvicultrix, Afzelius) affords excellent venison, and is much sought
after on that account. The flesh of the ahu (A. subgutturosa,
Guldenstaedt) is excellent, and of an agreeable taste. That of the
gnu of South Africa is in great repute both among the natives and
Dutch settlers. Though the meat has a wildish flavour, it is more juicy
than that of most of the antelope tribe, and very much like beef.
The flesh of the alpaca and guanaco is sold in the public shambles
of Peru, Chili, &c.
Sheep’s milk is a common beverage in Toorkistan, where the sheep
are milked regularly three times a day. Goats are very scarce; cows
not to be seen; but the sheep’s milk affords nourishment in various
forms, of which the most common is a kind of sour cheese, being
little better than curdled milk and salt.
If we think ox tails a delicacy, Australians (as we have seen) like
kangaroo tails, and the Cape colonists have fat sheep’s tails
requiring a barrow or a cart on which to support them. The broad fat
tail, which often composes one-third of the weight of the animal, is
entirely composed of a substance betwixt marrow and fat, which
serves very often for culinary purposes instead of butter; and being
cut into small pieces, makes an ingredient in various dishes.
The dried flesh of the argali, or wild sheep, is in Kamtschatka an
article of commerce.
The domestic goat’s flesh is not in much favour anywhere, although
that of a young kid, three or four months old, is very tender and
delicate. Some of the goats are eaten in the Cape Colony, but the
flesh is generally lean and tough. The Malabar goat is a delicate
animal, that browzes on the rocks. It is more sought after than any
game in Ceylon, for, contrary to the general nature of the goat, its
flesh is tender and excellent when broiled.
Bison beef, especially that of the female, is rather coarser grained
than that of the domestic ox, but is considered by hunters and
travellers as superior in tenderness and flavour. The hump, which is
highly celebrated for its richness and delicacy, is said, when properly
cooked, to resemble marrow. The flesh of the buffalo, as it is
misnamed, is the principal, sometimes the only, food of numerous
tribes of North American Indians. It is eaten fresh on the prairies
during the hunt, and dried in their winter villages.
The musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) is of much importance from its
size and palatable rich meat. It has occasionally furnished a rich
meal to arctic explorers. When they are fat, the flesh is well
flavoured, but smells strongly of musk.

CETACEA.
The flesh of the manatus is white and delicate, and tastes like young
pork eaten fresh or salted, while the fat forms excellent lard. The
cured flesh keeps long without corruption, and it will continue good
several weeks, even in the hot climate of which it is a native, when
other meat would not resist putrefaction for as many days. The fibres
and the lean part of the flesh are like beef, but more red; it takes a
very long time boiling. The fat of the young one is like pork, and can
scarcely be distinguished from it, while the lean eats like veal. The
fat, which lies between the entrails and skin has a pleasant smell,
and tastes like the oil of sweet almonds. It makes an admirable
substitute for butter, and does not turn rancid in the sun. The fat of
the tail is of a firmer consistence, and when boiled is more delicate
than the other.
Manatees, or sea calves, are found in certain parts of British
Honduras in great numbers. They are, according to my friend, Chief
Justice Temple, frequently caught and brought to the market of
Belize, where they are snapped up with the greatest avidity. He
states the flesh to be white and delicate, something between pork
and veal. The tail, which is very fat, is most esteemed. This caudal
luxury is generally soused or pickled. I do not, myself, fancy the flesh
of this brute, for it is so inhumanly human—it reminds one so much
of a mermaid, or of one of the fifty daughters of Nereus, that to eat it
seems to me to be an approximation to cannibalism. It appears
horrible to chew and swallow the flesh of an animal which holds its
young (it has never more than one at a litter) to its breast, which is
formed exactly like that of a woman, with paws resembling human
hands. But these notions would be considered highly fantastic by
those who masticate a monkey with the greatest relish, partake with
gusto of rattlesnake soup, and voraciously devour an alligator stew.
The manatus is commonly found in shallow water, at the mouths of
rivers, where it feeds upon the marine herbage which there grows in
great luxuriance. It has no teeth, but two thick, smooth, hard,
unserrated bones run from one side of the mouth to the other. I am
inclined to think that these bones might be used as a substitute for
ivory.[11]
Mr. P. H. Gosse, in his interesting little manual on the Natural History
of the Mammalia, remarks:—
‘From personal experience we can confirm Hernandez’s statement of
the excellence of the flesh of the manatee; he truly compares it to
well fatted pork, of pleasant flavour. The pursuit of it, on this account,
has rendered it scarce in many localities, where it was formerly
numerous; in the vicinity of Cayenne, it was at one time so common,
that a large boat might be filled with them in a day, and the flesh was
sold at 3d. per pound. About the middle of the last century it fetched,
at Port Royal in Jamaica, 15d. currency per pound.’
The tongue of the sea-lion (Phoca jubata) is very good eating, and
some seamen prefer it to that of an ox or calf. Thus Dr. Pernetty
(Voyage to the Falkland Islands) says,—‘For a trial we cut off the tip
of the tongue hanging out of the mouth of one of these lions which
was just killed. About sixteen or eighteen of us ate each a pretty
large piece, and we all thought it so good that we regretted we could
not eat more of it.
‘It is said that their flesh is not absolutely disagreeable. I have not
tasted it, but the oil which is extracted from their grease is of great
use. This oil is extracted in two ways; either by cutting the fat in
pieces and melting it in large caldrons upon the fire, or by cutting it in
the same manner upon hurdles or pieces of board, and exposing
them to the sun, or only to the air. This grease dissolves of itself and
runs into vessels placed underneath to receive it. Some of our
seamen pretended that this last sort of oil, when it is fresh, is very
good for kitchen uses. It is preferred to that of the whale; is always
clear, and leaves no sediment.’
Walrus meat is strong, coarse, and of a game-like flavour. Seal flesh
is exceedingly oily, and not very palatable; but by practice, residents
in the northern regions learn to relish both exceedingly.
The large tongue, the heart, and liver of the walrus (Trichecus
rosmarus), are often eaten by whalers for want of better fresh
provisions, and are passably good.
Commodore Anson’s party killed many sea-lions for food, using,
particularly, the hearts and tongues, which they thought excellent
eating, and preferable even to those of bullocks. The flesh of the
female sea-bear (Phoca ursina, Lin.) they found very delicate, having
the taste of lamb; while that of the cub could scarcely be
distinguished from roasted pig.
Sir Edward Parry was once asked, at a dinner where Lord Erskine
was present, what he and his crew had lived upon when they were
frozen in in the Polar Seas. Parry said they lived upon seals. ‘A very
good living, too,’ exclaimed the Chancellor, ‘if you keep them long
enough.’
One of the ordinary acts of hospitality and civility on the part of the
Esquimaux ladies, is to take a bird, or piece of seal-flesh, chew it up
very nicely, and hand it to the visitor, who is expected to be
overcome with gratitude, and finish the operation of chewing and
digesting the delicate morsel.
The carcase and blubber of the whale at Bahia, in Brazil, are
reduced to food by the poor.
To most of the rude littoral tribes of Northern Asia and America, the
whale and seal furnish, not only food and clothing, but many other
useful materials. The Esquimaux will eat the raw flesh of the whale
with the same apparent relish, when newly killed, or after it has been
buried in the ground for several months.
The whales on the coasts of Japan not only afford oil in great
abundance, but their flesh, which is there considered very
wholesome and nutritious, is largely consumed. No part of them,
indeed, is thrown away; all is made available to some useful purpose
or another. The skin, which is generally black, the flesh, which is red
and looks like coarse beef, the intestines and all the inward parts,
besides the fat or blubber, which is boiled into oil, and the bone,
which is converted into innumerable uses,—all is made available to
purposes of profit.
Both sperm and black whales abound on the coast of Western
Australia. Sometimes a dead whale is thrown on the shore, and
affords luxurious living to the natives. They do not, however, eat the
shark.
The natives of New Zealand, when short of food, will not scruple to
eat the flesh of the whale, when caught in their vicinity.
The deep has many food dainties as well as the land, as we shall
shortly have to notice, and among these is the porpoise, which the
reader may probably have seen dashing up our rivers, or, during a
long voyage, disporting itself amid the briny waves, and rolling
gracefully near the sides of the ship. This sea pig sometimes serves
for a feast. When caught, it is cut into steaks, dried, and put into the
ship’s coppers, with a quantum suf. of spices and condiments which
nearly overpower the oily taste. The steaks turn blackish on being
exposed to the air, but this is ‘a matter of nothing’ to those whose
daily diet is usually limited to hard biscuits and salt junk. Landsmen
may question the niceness of the palate which partakes of this
dainty, but the old adage holds true everywhere, ‘de gustibus non
disputandum.’ There is no disputing about tastes.
According to ancient records, salted porpoises were formerly used
for food in this country.
In the olden times, when glass windows were considered an
effeminate luxury, and rushes supplied the place of carpets, the flesh
of the porpoise constituted one of the standard delicacies of a public
feast. It was occasionally served up at the tables of the old English
nobility as a sumptuous article of food, and eaten with a sauce
composed of sugar, vinegar, and crumbs of fine bread. But tastes
have altered, and even sailors will scarcely touch the flesh now. M.
de Bouganville, in his voyage to the Falkland Islands, writes—‘We
had some of the porpoise served up at dinner the day it was taken,
which several others at the table besides myself thought by no
means so ill-tasted as it is generally said to be.’
Porpoises are rather dangerous enemies to the shoals of fish. A
porpoise, before taking in a barrel of herrings for its dinner, will often
whet its appetite with a cod’s head and shoulders, leaving the tail
part for some poor fisherman.
 BIRDS.
Leaving now our passing survey of the food supplies derived from
animals, we come next to birds, and, in the first order, we do not find
that any are eaten, at least, as far as my knowledge extends; indeed,
these carnivorous birds, from their habits and their food, would not
be very tempting. This, however, as we have seen in the case of
predatory animals, is no safe criterion to judge from. Probably, the
man who would feast on the flesh of a lion, or a polecat, would have
a stomach strong enough to digest slices of a John Crow carrion
vulture, an eagle, or a hawk.
In the order of Insessores, or perching birds, I may mention first—
The becafico, or fig-eater (Sylvia hortensis), a bird about the size of
a linnet, which is highly prized by the Italians for the delicacy of its
flesh, particularly in autumn, when it is in excellent condition for the
table.
There is a curious food product obtained, (not exactly, however, from
the bird,) which is in high repute in China; and that is the edible nest
of a species of swallow extensively obtained in some of the islands
of the Eastern Archipelago.
These nests are attached to the sides of rocks like those of our
martin and swallow to walls, and look like so many watch-pockets.
The eggs are white, with a slight pinkish tinge, and are generally two
in number. The nests are either white, red, or black, and the natives
maintain that these are built by three distinct species, with a white,
red, and black breast, but this is erroneous. The Malays assert
frequently, moreover, that the nests are formed from the bodies of
certain sea snakes, but the food is, without doubt, insects. The
subjoined accounts furnish the most detailed information known
respecting the collection and trade in these birdsnests.
The following description of the birdsnests’ rocks, in the district of
Karang Bollong, on the southerly sea-coast of Java, is given in the
first volume of the Journal of the Indian Archipelago, published at
Singapore.
‘The gathering of these nests takes place three times a year—in the
end of April, the middle of August, and in December. The yearly
produce is commonly between 50 and 60 piculs of 133⅓ lbs. The
business of collection is opened with great ceremony by the natives.
By the assistance of ladders and stages made of rattan, the
collectors descend the rocks and cliffs, provided with the requisite
bags to contain the nests, which are taken from the wall by the hand,
and those which are on the roof by an iron hook made fast to a long
bamboo. The birds feed upon different kinds of bloodless insects,
hovering above the stagnant waters, for which their wide open beak
is very useful. They form their nests by vomiting the strongest and
best fragments of the food which they have eaten. The nests are
weighed and packed in hampers (of 25 catties each), and labelled
with the net weight, mark of the overseer, &c., and then further
preserved and secured with strips of bark, leaves, and matting.
‘The edible birdsnests, which owe their celebrity only to the
whimsical luxury of the Chinese, are brought principally from Java
and Sumatra, though they are found on most of the rocky islets of
the Indian Archipelago. The nest is the habitation of a small swallow,
named (from the circumstance of having an edible house) Hirundo
esculenta. They are composed of a mucilaginous substance, but as
yet they have never been analyzed with sufficient accuracy to show
the constituents. Externally, they resemble ill-concocted, fibrous
isinglass, and are of a white colour, inclining to red. Their thickness
is little more than that of a silver spoon, and the weight from a
quarter to half an ounce. When dry they are brittle and wrinkled; the
size is nearly that of a goose’s egg. Those that are dry, white, and
clean, are the most valuable. They are packed in bundles, with split
rattans run through them to preserve the shape. Those procured
after the young are fledged, are not saleable in China. The quality of
the nest varies according to the situation and extent of the caves,
and the time at which they are taken. If procured before the young
are fledged, the nests are of the best kind; if they contain eggs only,
they are still valuable; but if the young are in the nests, or have left
them, the whole are then nearly worthless, being dark-coloured,
streaked with blood, and intermixed with feathers and dirt. These
nests are procurable twice every year; the best are found in deep,
damp caves, which, if not injured, will continue to produce
indefinitely. It was once thought that the caves near the sea-coast
were the most productive; but some of the most profitable yet found
are situated 50 miles in the interior. This fact seems to be against the
opinion that the nests are composed of the spawn of fish, or of
bêche-de-mer. The method of procuring these nests is not
unattended with danger. Some of the caves are so precipitous, that
no one but those accustomed to the employment from their youth
can obtain the nests, being only approachable by a perpendicular
descent of many hundred feet, by ladders of bamboo and rattan,
over a sea rolling violently against the rocks. When the mouth of the
cave is attained, the perilous task of taking the nests must often be
performed by torchlight, by penetrating into recesses of the rock;
where the slightest slip would be instantly fatal to the adventurers,
who see nothing below them but the turbulent surf, making its way
into the chasms of the rock—such is the price paid to gratify luxury.
After the nests are obtained, they are separated from feathers and
dirt, are carefully dried and packed, and are then fit for the market.
The Chinese, who are the only people that purchase them for their
own use, bring them in junks to this market, where they command
extravagant prices; the best, or white kind, often being worth four
thousand dollars per picul (a Chinese weight, equal to 133⅓ lbs.
avoirdupois), which is nearly twice their weight in silver. The middling
kind is worth from twelve to eighteen hundred, and the worst, or
those procured after fledging, one hundred and fifty to two hundred
dollars per picul. The majority of the best kind are sent to Pekin, for
the use of the court. It appears, therefore, that this curious dish is
only an article of expensive luxury amongst the Chinese; the
Japanese do not use it at all, and how the former people acquired
the habit of indulging in it, is only less singular than their persevering
in it. They consider the edible birdsnest as a great stimulant, tonic,
and aphrodisiac, but its best quality, perhaps, is its being perfectly
harmless. The labour bestowed to render it fit for the table is
enormous; every feather, stick, or impurity of any kind is carefully
removed; and then, after undergoing many washings and
preparations, it is made into a soft, delicious jelly. The sale of
birdsnests is a monopoly with all the governments in whose
dominions they are found. About two hundred and fifty thousand
piculs, of the value of one million four hundred thousand dollars, are
annually brought to Canton. These come from the islands of Java,
Sumatra, Macassar, and those of the Sooloo group. Java alone
sends about thirty thousand pounds, mostly of the first quality,
estimated at seventy thousand dollars.’[12]
Mr. J. H. Moor, in his notices of the Indian Archipelago, published at
Singapore some years ago, states, that ‘one of the principal and
most valuable articles of exportation is the edible birdsnests, white
and black. These are found in much greater abundance in and about
the Coti, more than any other part of Borneo, or from what we at
present know on the subject, all parts put together. On the western
coast they are scarcely known to exist; about Banjermassin and
Bagottan there are none; at Bataliching and Passier they are found
in considerable quantities. At Browe there is abundance of the black
kind of a very superior quality, but little of the white. At Seboo, and all
the parts to the north of Borneo, we know there is none, as I have
seen many letters from different Rajahs of those countries averring
the fact, and begging the Sultan of Coti to exchange his edible nests
for their most valuable commodities, and at his own price. Nor ought
this to create surprise, when we consider, not only the large
consumption of this article by the Cambojans, who almost
exclusively inhabit some of the largest Sooloo Islands, and the
northern parts of Borneo, but the amazing demand on the whole
coast of Cambodia, particularly of Cochin China, the principal
inhabitants of which countries are as partial to this luxury as their
more northern neighbours—the Chinese. There are in Coti and
adjacent Dyak countries perhaps eighty known places, or what the
natives term holes, which produce the white nests. I have seen the
names of forty-three. There can, however, be no doubt there are
many more likewise known to the Dyaks, who keep the knowledge to
themselves, lest the Bugis should dispossess them, which they know
from experience is invariably the case.
‘According to the accounts of the Sultan, rendered by Saib Abdulla,
the bandarree in 1834 yielded 134 piculs. The usual price in money
to the Coti traders is 23 reals per catty from the Dyaks, and 25 in
barter. The black nests may be procured in great abundance. The
best kinds come from Cinculeram and Baley Papang. The latter
mountain alone yields 230 piculs (of 113⅓ lbs.). Cinculeram gives
nearly as much. There are several other parts of Coti which produce
them, besides the quantity brought down by the Dyaks. Last year,
130 piculs paid duty to the Sultan; these left the large Coti river.
Those from Cinculeram and Bongan were taken to Browe and
Seboo. The bandarree’s book averages the annual weight of those
collected in the lower part of Coti at 820 piculs (about 1,025 cwts.)
‘The Pangeran Sierpa and the Sultan say they could collect 2,700
piculs of black nests, if the bandarree and capella-campong would
behave honestly. The Sultan, however, seldom gets any account of
what is sent to Browe, Seboo, and the Sooloo Islands, the quality of
which is far superior to any sent to European ports.’
The exports of birdsnests from Java, between 1823 and 1832,
averaged about 250 piculs a year; in 1832, 322 piculs; but of late
years the exports have not averaged half that amount; and in 1853
and 1854 there were only about 35 or 40 piculs shipped.
In the third order, Scansores, there are very few edible birds.
In the mountain of Tumeriquiri, in the government of Cumana, is the
immense cavern of Guacharo, famous among the Indians. It serves
as a habitation for millions of nocturnal birds (Steatornis caripensis, a
new species of the Caprimulgis, of Linnæus), whose fat yields the oil
of Guacharo.
Once a year, near midsummer, this cavern is entered by the Indians.
Armed with poles, they ransack the greater part of the nests, while
the old birds hover over the heads of the robbers as if to defend their
brood, uttering horrible cries. The young which fall down are opened
on the spot. The peritoneum is found loaded with fat, and a layer of
the same substance reaches from the abdomen to the vent, forming
a kind of cushion between the hind legs. Humboldt remarks that this
quantity of fat in frugivorous animals, not exposed to the light, and
exerting but little muscular motion, brings to mind what has been
long observed in the fattening of geese and oxen. ‘It is well known,’
he adds, ‘how favourable darkness and repose are to this process.’
At the period above mentioned, which is generally known at Carissa
by the designation of ‘the oil harvest,’ huts are built by the Indians,
with palm leaves, near the entrance and even in the very porch of
the cavern. There the fat of the young birds just killed is melted in
clay pots, over a brushwood fire, and this fat is named butter or oil of
the Guacharo. It is half liquid, transparent, inodorous, and so pure
that it will keep above a year without turning rancid.[13]
There is a curious bird met with in caves in the West India Islands—
as at Dominica, and the gulf of Paria, the diablotin or goat-sucker,
which, if eaten when taken from the nest, is pronounced by epicures
unrivalled; and the flesh is also considered a delicacy when salted.
It has received its popular cognomen from its ugliness, but I have not
been able to trace its scientific name.
The bird is nearly the size of a duck, and web-footed, with a big
round head and crooked bill like a hawk, and large full eyes like an
owl; the head, part of the neck, and chief feathers of the wing and
tail, are black, while the other parts of its body are covered with a
fine milk-white down; the whole appearance being very singular. The
diablotin only leaves its haunts at night time, flying with hideous
screams like the owl, which it resembles in its dislike to day-light.
The nests are made in holes in the mountains. When the palms are
in fruit, the bird becomes one lump of fat. The hideous appearance
of the bird and the strong scent once got over, it is said to be a
delicious morsel.
We have our delicate tit-bits in spitted larks, and as many as four
thousand dozen have been known to be taken in the neighbourhood
of Dunstable between September and February. What the number
sold in our metropolitan markets is annually, it is impossible to say.
But larks are taken in much larger numbers in Germany, where there
is an excise upon them, which has yielded as much as £1,000 a year
in Leipsic—the larks of which place are famous all over Germany as
being of a most delicate flavour.
In the Italian markets, besides carrion crows, strings of thrushes,
larks, and even robin redbreasts are sold.
Young rooks, when skinned and made into pies are much esteemed
by some persons, but they are very coarse eating.
One of the most delicious birds is the rice-bunting of South Carolina
(Dolichonyx oryzivorus).
The rice-bunting migrates over the continent of America, from
Labrador to Mexico, and over the great Antilles, appearing in the
southern extremity of the United States about the end of March.
Towards the middle and close of August, they enter New York, and
Pennsylvania on their way to the south. There, along the shores of
the large rivers lined with floating fields of wild rice, they find
abundant subsistence, grow fat, and their flesh becomes little inferior
in flavour to that of the European ortolan, on which account the reed,
or rice birds, as they are then called, are shot in great numbers.
When the cool nights in October commence, they move still farther
south, till they reach the islands of Jamaica and Cuba in prodigious
numbers to feed on the seeds of the guinea grass. Epicures
compare the plump and juicy flesh of this delicacy to the ortolan.
On the shores of the Mediterranean there are feathered delicacies in
the shape of the quail and the ortolan. Thousands of ortolans used to
be shipped from the island of Cyprus, packed in casks of 300 or 400,
prepared with spice and vinegar. When specially fattened for the
table, they are regarded as most delicious; but, being merely lumps
of fat, are so rich as soon to satiate the appetite of even a professed
gourmand. In the West India Islands and the Southern States of
America, the rice-bunting, as we have seen, takes its place, and is,
occasionally, found in prodigious numbers, and greatly esteemed.
The bluish flesh of the toucan, notwithstanding its enormous and
unsightly beak, is a wholesome and delicate meat; and there are no
birds that give the Trinidad epicure a more delicious morsel. It is one
of the most omnivorous of birds, and its powers of digestion and
impunity to poisons are remarkable.
Parrot pie is said to be pretty good; at least, it may be so when other
animal food is scarce.
Among the gallinaceous fowls, large numbers contribute to the
food delicacies of man. Some, like the turkey, peacock, &c., of
considerable size; others, as the pigeon tribe, form smaller tit-bits.
The game birds, the pheasant, partridge, grouse, &c., and the quail,
guinea fowl, and jungle fowl, are bagged whenever they can be
obtained by the sportsman.
The peacock enkakyll ‘was one of the famous dishes at the costly
royal banquets of old, and the receipt for dressing it is thus given:—
‘Take and flay off the skin with the feathers, tail, and the neck and
head thereon; then take the skin and all the feathers and lay it on the
table abroad, and strew thereon ground cumin; then take the
peacock and roast him, and baste him with raw yolks of eggs; and
when he is roasted, take him off and let him cool awhile, then take
him and sew him in his skin, and gild his comb, and so serve him
forth with the last course.’
As far as my own experience goes, with all the basting and sauces,
the peacock is, at best, a dry and tough eating bird.
The domestic fowls and the tame turkey require no notice here, there
being nothing curious about them, however delicate eating they may
be when properly fattened and brought to table; but there is a
species of wild turkey found in New Granada, weighing from 12 to 16
lbs., and called the iowanen, which is described by Mr. W. Purdie of
Trinidad as the most delicate article of food he ever tasted.
Dear as fowls, ducks, and eggs comparatively are, they meet, as
every one knows, with a ready sale. When we find our imports of
eggs, chiefly from France, amount to about 130,000,000 a year,
besides our nominal ‘new laid,’ or home produce,—when we learn
that the foreign poultry we receive (mixed up with not a few Ostend
rabbits) is valued at 39,000l., and that Ireland supplies us with about
150,000,000 of eggs, we begin to perceive that fowls, ducks, geese,
and turkeys must be a profitable investment to some persons, and
the capital of about 4,000,000l. we lay out on these various products
serves to gladden the heart of many a poultry breeder.
There are sent to market about nine or ten million head of poultry in
a year to supply the whole population of the United Kingdom,
shipping and all, which is not more than one-third of a fowl to each
person annually. Now, were every one to have a fowl as part food
once a month, it would require 330,000,000 more fowls or other
poultry than are at present sold.
I copy the following from what I believe to be the first fixed tariff of
provisions, in the City of London, about the second year of Edward I.
(1272.) The people had at that time great cause to complain of the
exorbitant prices demanded of them for provisions, by hucksters and
dealers, and a fixed price was found necessary by the Mayor:—
The best hen three half-pence
Pullet three half-pence
Capon two pence
Goose five pence
Wild goose four pence
Pigeons, three for one penny
Mallard, three for a half-penny
Plover one penny
Partridge three half-pence
Larks, per dozen one penny half-penny
Pheasant four pence
Heron six pence
Swan three shillings
Crane three shillings, and by
a subsequent Act one shilling
The best peacock one penny
The best coney, with skin four pence
Ditto, without skin three pence
 The best hare, with skin three pence half-penny
The best lamb, from
Christmas to Lent six pence
At other times of the year four pence.
In the time of Edward II., 1313, eggs were 20 a penny, and pigeons
sold at three for a penny.
It is curious, even to notice the London prices of poultry, two or three
centuries ago, although regard must of course be had to the
difference in the value of money now and then.
Sir James Hawes, during his mayoralty, in the year 1575, fixed the
following prices within the City of London:—
s. d.
Blackbirds, per dozen 0 10
The best capon, large and fat 1 8
Ditto, second best, being fat 1 4
The best green goose, until Whitsuntide 0 8
Ditto ditto, after Whitsuntide 0 10
Ditto, in winter, being fat 1 2
Pigeons, per dozen 1 4
Chickens, the largest, each 0 4
Ditto, second sort 0 3
The best coney rabbit, from and after the
summer 0 5
Eggs, four 0 1
Cygnets, fat until Allhalloweentide, each 6 0
Ditto, from then to Shrovetide 7 0
Cranes, the best, each 6 0
The best heron, pheasant, shoveller (duck),
and bittern, each 2 6
Turkey-cock, fat and large 3 0
Turkey chicken, fat and large 1 4
Woodcocks, each 0 6
 Snipes, each 0 2½
Hens, being fat and the best, each 0 9
Ditto, second sort 0 7
Green plovers, fat 0 4
The best wild mallard 0 6
Teals, each 0 3
At a feast given at Ely House, by the serjeants-at-law, November,
1531, (23rd of Henry VIII.) on the occasion of making eleven new
serjeants, open house was kept for five successive days. On the
fourth day, King Henry, his Queen, the Foreign Ambassadors, the
Judges, and Lord Mayor and Aldermen, were feasted, as also
numerous guests, knights, and gentlemen. Stow particularizes the
following articles and prices, in order to furnish data for computing
the relative value of money at different periods:—
s. d.
Great beeves, from the shambles
(twenty-four) each 26 8
One carcase of an ox 24 0
Fat muttons (one hundred), each 2 10
Great veals (fifty-one), each 4 8
Porks (thirty-four), each 3 8
Pigs (ninety-one), each 0 6
Capons of Greece (of one poulterer, for they
had three) ten dozen, each capon 1 8
Capons of Kent (nine dozen and six), each 1 0
Capons, coarse (nineteen dozen), each 1 0
Cocks of grouse (seven dozen and nine), each
cock 0 8
Cocks, coarse (fourteen dozen and eight) 0 3
Pullets, the best, each 0 2½
Other pullets, each 0 2
Pigeons (thirty-seven dozen), at per dozen 0 10