Dr Laurie Padman presented a seminar to the Oregon Science Teachers Association (OSTA) Annual Meeting at La Salle High School, Milwaukie, Oregon, on October 12, 2007. This conference provides Oregon K-12 science educators with opportunities to develop their teaching skills through exposure to different teaching techniques and materials, and through presentations of science topics that are of interest to science students at different grade levels.

Dr Padman’s seminar was attended by about 50 educators, and focused on the potential contribution of polar sea ice, ice shelves and ice sheets to global sea level rise during the 21st century. The seminar explored the large differences in sea level rise predictions, which range from 1-2 feet in the 4th IPCC report released in 2007, to the much more alarming rise of 20-25 feet suggested in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and by scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen. Dr Padman introduced the topic by summarizing climate change theory and terminology, and the rationale behind the IPCC assessment of sea level rise. He then reviewed recently acquired data, from Antarctica and Greenland, which demonstrate that polar ice can respond much more rapidly to atmospheric and oceanic variability then was previously supposed. The seminar ended with an explanation of some critical positive feedbacks between the ice, ocean and atmosphere. The last section was intended to provide educators and their students with an understanding of how ice dramatically alters the coupling between the ocean and the atmosphere, a key factor in the current uncertainties in climate change prediction.

More information can be found on the PDF handout distributed at the OSTA conference.