Re: [geo] A Heat Shield for the Most Important Ice on Earth (from April 2023)

[Ronal Larson]

Renaud and list:

Thanks for this short squib, presumably from a New Yorker site I 
couldn’t find.

Dr. Seitz was a regular on this list (maybe a predecessor list - around 
2010).  Googling shows him today associated with a small DC firm supplying 
micro-bubble equipment.  

It would be great if a list member who knows him could encourage him to 
give a little more of his and others current activities on this bubble and 
reflectivity topic.

Ron


> On Jun 17, 2023, at 4:34 AM, Renaud de RICHTER  
> wrote:
> 
> Comment
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> www.newyorker.com 
> /news/the-control-of-nature/a-heat-shield-for-the-most-important-ice-on-earth 
> 
>  
> 
> A Heat Shield for the Most Important Ice on Earth
> 
> Rachel Riederer 25/04/2023
> On a clear morning in late March, in rural Lake Elmo, Minnesota, I followed 
> two materials scientists, Tony Manzara and Doug Johnson, as they tromped down 
> a wintry hill behind Manzara’s house. The temperature was in the high 
> thirties; a foot of snow covered the ground and sparkled almost unbearably in 
> the sunlight. Both men wore dark shades. “You don’t need a parka,” Johnson 
> told me. “But you need sunglasses—snow blindness, you know?” At the bottom of 
> the hill, after passing some turkey tracks, we reached a round, frozen pond, 
> about a hundred feet across. Manzara, a gregarious man with bushy eyebrows, 
> and Johnson, a wiry cross-country skier with a quiet voice, stepped 
> confidently onto the ice.
> 
> Manzara and Johnson wanted me to see the place where, in a series of 
> experiments, they had shown that it was possible to slow the pond’s yearly 
> thaw. Starting in the winter of 2012, working with a colleague named Leslie 
> Field, they had covered some of the ice with glass microspheres, or tiny, 
> hollow bubbles. Through the course of several winters, they demonstrated that 
> the coated ice melted much more slowly than bare ice. An array of scientific 
> instruments explained why: the spheres increase the ice’s albedo, or the 
> portion of the sun’s light that the ice bounces back toward the sky. (Bright 
> surfaces tend to reflect light; we take advantage of albedo, which is Latin 
> for “whiteness,” when we wear white clothes in summer.)
> 
> 
> At the edge of the pond, Manzara and Johnson started to reminisce. 
> Originally, they had applied glass bubbles to a few square sections of the 
> frozen pond, expecting that the brightest ice would last longest. But they 
> found that, beneath the pond’s frozen surface, water was still circulating, 
> erasing any temperature differences between the test and control sections. In 
> subsequent years, they sank walls of plastic sheeting beneath the pond’s 
> surface, and the coated ice started to last longer. At first, Johnson 
> manually measured the ice thickness by donning a wetsuit and snowshoes, tying 
> a rope around his waist, and walking onto the frozen surface with a drill and 
> a measuring rod; he was relieved when they figured out how to take sonar 
> measurements instead. Manzara directed my gaze to two trees on opposite 
> shores. “This is where we set up the flying albedometer,” he said. An 
> albedometer measures reflected radiation; theirs “flew” over the lake by way 
> of a rope strung between two pulleys. By this point, I had been staring at 
> the ice and snow for almost an hour, and my vision started to turn 
> purple-pink. I blinked hard as we headed inside.
> 
> Manzara, Johnson, and Field want to prove that a thin coating of reflective 
> materials, in the right places, could help to save some of the world’s most 
> important ice. Climate scientists report that polar ice is shrinking, 
> thinning, and weakening year by year. Models predict that the Arctic Ocean 
> could be ice-free in summer by the year 2035. The melting ice wouldn’t just 
> be a victim of climate change—it would drive further warming. The physics 
> seem almost sinister: compared with bright ice, which serves as a cool 
> topcoat that insulates the ocean from solar radiation, a dark, ice-free ocean 
> would absorb far more heat. All of this happens underneath the Arctic 
> summer’s twenty-four-hour sun. But the fragility of the Arctic cuts both 
> ways: as much as the region needs help, its ecosystems are sensitive enough 
> that large-scale interventions could have unintended consequences.
> 
> That afternoon, Field arrived at Manzara’s house from California, where she 
> runs a microtechnology-consulting company and teaches a Stanford course on 
> climate change, engineering, and entrepreneurship. Like an old friend, she 
> let herself in and called out hello. Field has let her 

[geo] A Heat Shield for the Most Important Ice on Earth (from April 2023)

[Renaud de RICHTER]

 Comment
[image: image.png]



www.newyorker.com
/news/the-control-of-nature/a-heat-shield-for-the-most-important-ice-on-earth


A
Heat Shield for the Most Important Ice on Earth Rachel Riederer 25/04/2023
--

On a clear morning in late March, in rural Lake Elmo, Minnesota, I followed
two materials scientists, Tony Manzara and Doug Johnson, as they tromped
down a wintry hill behind Manzara’s house. The temperature was in the high
thirties; a foot of snow covered the ground and sparkled almost unbearably
in the sunlight. Both men wore dark shades. “You don’t need a parka,”
Johnson told me. “But you need sunglasses—snow blindness, you know?” At the
bottom of the hill, after passing some turkey tracks, we reached a round,
frozen pond, about a hundred feet across. Manzara, a gregarious man with
bushy eyebrows, and Johnson, a wiry cross-country skier with a quiet voice,
stepped confidently onto the ice.

Manzara and Johnson wanted me to see the place where, in a series of
experiments, they had shown that it was possible to slow the pond’s yearly
thaw. Starting in the winter of 2012, working with a colleague named Leslie
Field, they had covered some of the ice with glass microspheres, or tiny,
hollow bubbles. Through the course of several winters, they demonstrated
that the coated ice melted much more slowly than bare ice. An array of
scientific instruments explained why: the spheres increase the ice’s
albedo, or the portion of the sun’s light that the ice bounces back toward
the sky. (Bright surfaces tend to reflect light; we take advantage of
albedo, which is Latin for “whiteness,” when we wear white clothes in
summer.)

At the edge of the pond, Manzara and Johnson started to reminisce.
Originally, they had applied glass bubbles to a few square sections of the
frozen pond, expecting that the brightest ice would last longest. But they
found that, beneath the pond’s frozen surface, water was still circulating,
erasing any temperature differences between the test and control sections.
In subsequent years, they sank walls of plastic sheeting beneath the pond’s
surface, and the coated ice started to last longer. At first, Johnson
manually measured the ice thickness by donning a wetsuit and snowshoes,
tying a rope around his waist, and walking onto the frozen surface with a
drill and a measuring rod; he was relieved when they figured out how to
take sonar measurements instead. Manzara directed my gaze to two trees on
opposite shores. “This is where we set up the flying albedometer,” he said.
An albedometer measures reflected radiation; theirs “flew” over the lake by
way of a rope strung between two pulleys. By this point, I had been staring
at the ice and snow for almost an hour, and my vision started to turn
purple-pink. I blinked hard as we headed inside.

Manzara, Johnson, and Field want to prove that a thin coating of reflective
materials, in the right places, could help to save some of the world’s most
important ice. Climate scientists report that polar ice is shrinking,
thinning, and weakening year by year. Models predict that the Arctic Ocean
could be ice-free in summer by the year 2035. The melting ice wouldn’t just
be a victim of climate change—it would drive further warming. The physics
seem almost sinister: compared with bright ice, which serves as a cool
topcoat that insulates the ocean from solar radiation, a dark, ice-free
ocean would absorb far more heat. All of this happens underneath the Arctic
summer’s twenty-four-hour sun. But the fragility of the Arctic cuts both
ways: as much as the region needs help, its ecosystems are sensitive enough
that large-scale interventions could have unintended consequences.

That afternoon, Field arrived at Manzara’s house from California, where she
runs a microtechnology-consulting company and teaches a Stanford course on
climate change, engineering, and entrepreneurship. Like an old friend, she
let herself in and called out hello. Field has let her shoulder-length hair
go completely silver, “in solidarity with the Arctic,” she joked; when we
sat down together, it was obvious that all three scientists relished
engineering challenges, from applying the glass bubbles (shake them out of
giant cannisters? spray them from a pressure pot?) to measuring their
effects. They are an inventive bunch. Both Johnson and Manzara were senior
scientists at 3M: Johnson, a physicist, worked on advanced materials such
as a high-capacity transmission cable, to stabilize electrical grids;
Manzara, an organic chemist, focussed on energetic materials, making
ingredients for flares and rocket propellants. Field holds more than sixty
patents; Johnson around