(Right: Click play to view promotional video for Polar-Palooza.)
Two of the leading scientists studying climate change are in San Diego this weekend. They're part of a group of global warming researchers touring the country. KPBS Environmental Reporter Ed Joyce tells us more about Polar Palooza.
If you want to question some of the leading polar scientists and climate change experts about global warming, this weekend is your chance.
Dr. Helen Fricker from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography is one of those scientists.
Fricker : I think the public like everybody they want answers how much is sea level going to rise in the next 10, 20, you know in my lifetime. And we actually don't know the answer to that right now. And what we're trying to do is communicate to the public what we do know. Why we don't know the answer to that. Try to get across to them why it is very complicated to do that. And just give them an assessment of where we are with the research.
Fricker's work has focused on the floating portions of the Antarctic ice sheet or ice shelves. She uses a combination of satellite radar and other remote sensing data, to study the shelves.
Another scientist giving people a first hand look at the effects of global warming is USC Biologist Donal Manahan. He's been studying climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic for more than 20 years. Manahan says skeptics about global warming are melting away, just like the glaciers at the Pole.
Manahan : One of my favorite stories in that regard is an 80-year-old granny next door to me. Who has always said 'oh, you're going to Antarctica that's nice dear, did you get to see any penguins?' Now she asks me 'what's going on about global warming.' So there's been a big perception change even just in my local neighborhood. I don't think that the whole debate has ever been that the world isn't getting warmer. That's a fairly simple thing to do, you just put a thermometer out there over years and you see it going up a little bit. No the debate is what's causing it.
He says the rate of climate change is so rapid he's trying to see how animals and other organisms will adapt to rising temperatures in the Antarctic and Arctic. Manahan and other scientists will help explain how changes at the Polar regions will affect Southern California. The events are Saturday and Sunday at the Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park and the Birch Aquarium at Scripps on the UCSD campus.
Ed Joyce, KPBS News.
