Ice surprise prompts study cash

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

An American clothing billionaire who was surprised to find he could sail through Canada's normally icebound Northwest Passage has given $500,000 to scientists at Waikato University to study abrupt changes in the climate.

Gary Comer, the founder of America's biggest seller of clothing on the internet, Lands' End, sold his company to Sears Roebuck for US$1.9 billion last year.

Waikato University chemistry professor Chris Hendy said the sale gave the businessman from Dodgeville, Wisconsin, time to indulge his passion - yachting.

"About three years ago he was sailing the yacht around northern Canada and instructed his captain to point it into the Northwest Passage and see how far they could go," Professor Hendy said.

"To everyone's surprise, he sailed out the other end. That set him thinking about climate change."

The fabled passage, a 1500km water route over the top of Canada from west of Greenland to the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, is normally blocked by ice and only navigable by icebreakers.

But an article in the US journal Science last year predicted that the route could be ice-free within 10 years because of rapid warming of the Arctic. Last week Auckland-born scientist Warwick Vincent said the region was warming by 0.4C a decade.

Professor Hendy said history showed that warming, once started, could happen very quickly.

"Abrupt climate changes have occurred about five times in the last 65,000 years and have resulted in a very rapid warming of the Earth, typically 3-4C in a space as little as 10 years," he said.

A warming about 15,000 years ago brought a sudden end to the last ice age. Later Earth cooled again for about 3000 years, then warmed dramatically again about 12,000 years ago and held at the new temperatures.

This long warm period has allowed human civilisation to flourish.

Professor Hendy said the abruptness of the past warming events had become known only in the past few years when scientists drilled deep "cores" into the ice in Greenland and into sediment under the North Atlantic.

He has seen signs of similar events in a core drilled 100km east of the South Island, where rocky fragments from the Southern Alps seem to have been washed into the sea in "pulses".

During ice ages, glaciers advanced and carved out valleys, depositing rocky debris where they finally come to rest. Much of the debris was washed out to sea.

But in warm periods, such as the present, the glaciers retreated and lakes formed behind the piles of debris that marked the furthest extent of the ice-age glaciers.

Most of the material being eroded off the Alps is now trapped in lakes such as Pukaki, Hawea and Wanaka.

Professor Hendy said more evidence was available in a core taken 300km west of New Zealand by a French research ship five years ago. But this country could not afford to buy the core, and it was being held in Germany.

When he heard that Mr Comer wanted to fund climate change research, he sent him a proposal to study the core. "He accepted."

A post-doctoral fellow at Waikato, Dr Penny Cooke, 38, will go to Germany next month to collect about a teaspoon-full of material at 2cm intervals in the 35m core, a total of about 2kg.

"It's amazing what you can get out of 2kg," she said.

Warming up

* The Northwest Passage region is warming by 0.4C a decade.

* Warming can happen very quickly, typically 3-4C in as little as 10 years, says a chemistry professor.

* American billionaire's gift will be used to study climate change in a core sample taken 300km west of New Zealand.