The riddle of the ice

“The present day climate is too hot for Greenland,” says Dr Ernst Schrama, a remote sensing veteran with a track record at Nasa who recently gave a lecture at the faculty of Civil Engineering Geosciences. Schrama showed results of the Grace satellites orbiting the Earth, mapping variations in gravity and thus in mass. The data required advanced filtering techniques and educated interpretation, but ultimately Schrama presented a mass loss of 200 gigatonnes per year for Greenland. And worse: the ice loss accelerates by 10 percent each year. Together with colleagues from the University of Utrecht and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, Schrama published these results last year November in Science.

His colleague, Dr Bert Vermeersen (AE), however presented a much lower estimate in a recent article in Nature Geoscience (September 2010). Vermeersen explains that he and Schrama agree on the total mass loss of about 230 gigatonnes per year for the region, but they disagree in their estimate of what share of the total mass loss comes from the present day melting land ice.

“In West-Greenland you can see churches standing in the water,” says Vermeersen, which illustrates the postglacial rebound (PGR), also known as glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). As the land ice over Canada disappeared after the last ice age, the ground there, liberated from the heavy load, has been rising by about a centimetre per year. And like with an air mattress, if you push down at one point, a bump will appear elsewhere. The postglacial isostatic uplifting in Canada therefore coincides with a sinking in Greenland. Vermeersen and colleagues, including Frank Wu from Nasa/JPL, have developed a new model describing the uplift. This new model yields a land ice loss of ‘only’ 130 gigatonnes per year.

Schrama however thinks that ice loss dominates the figure and that the effect of rebound is relatively small for Greenland. Schrama adds that mass loss is seen to move to the northwest of Greenland, which corresponds well with increased local run-off and other remote sensing data, but the pattern is harder to explain with glacial isostatic adjustment.

How to tease these contributions apart? GPS measurements are used to monitor the movement of the bedrock, but only at the perimeter. A perhaps futuristic approach could be to deploy GPS receivers on top of 3-kilometre long poles resting on the rock under the ice. Odd as it may sound, these pole-rigged GPS receivers might actually be installed, since the Greenland mass loss, with all its implications for the climate debate, is a hot topic at conferences.

Satisfactory English
Dutch minister of Education, Ronald Plasterk, has stated that the English-language proficiency of teachers at the country’s universities and polytechnics is now satisfactory and will continue to improve. Plasterk added that while there was still some room for improvement in the English-language abilities of instructors in some academic programmes, there is no ‘consistent pattern of complaints’ from students about this issue. In a National Student Survey completed last year, the nation’s university students gave their teachers an average grade of 7.0 out of 10 in English proficiency. At TU Delft, however, students graded the teachers of the BSc industrial design engineering program well below the national average: a grade of 5.2 for their English abilities. Nationally, however, an increasing number of academic programmes now require their teachers to follow English courses.

D66
Heading into the Delft city council elections, the candidate list of Dutch political party, D66, is dominated by aspiring politicians with TU Delft backgrounds. Topping the list is Pauljan Kuijper, D66’s current council party chairman, who studied civil engineering at TU Delft. He is followed by D66 member Huub Halsema, who studied aerospace engineering in Delft. Number six on the D66’s candidate list is Kim Huijpen, a psychologist who is currently a management trainee at TU Delft. Then, at number seven, comes a student, Laura Wytema, who studies technology policy management, and she is followed at number eight by Jan Wouter Langenberg, who graduated from the TPM faculty last year. Ninth on the list is André Jongeling, who graduated from the TU’s EEMCS faculty in 1987, while number ten on the list is Stephan Hannot, a PhD student at the 3mE faculty.

Prodigy
Arran Fernandez, a 14-year-old math prodigy who was home-schooled in England’s Surrey county, has been offered a place at Britain’s prestigious Cambridge University – if he can pass just one more exam, his physics A-level exam. British media quoted the boy’s father, Neil Fernandez, as saying that Arran would be the youngest Cambridge undergraduate since William Pitt the Younger – who later became prime minister – attended the university at the same age in 1773.

Fokkema exits
During last week’s 168th dies natalis anniversary celebrations, TU Delft’s rector Jacob Fokkema ceremoniously stepped down from his position as rector of TU Delft. The new TU Delft rector is Karel Luyben. During his resignation speech, Fokkema thanked “everyone I had the pleasure of working with as rector”, while also adding that he was delighted to now be returning his former position of university professor.

SG moving 
TU Delft would like to relocate Studium Generale (SG) to the building on the Burgwal where Speakers is currently located. SG, which provides TU Delft students and staff with general knowledge, cultural, technological and social activities and events must soon vacate its current offices in the TPM faulty, as that faculty faces space shortages. The TU’s Executive Board believes Speakers is an ideal location for SG’s activities, because the building has meeting rooms as well as a café and office spaces.

BK City
The faculty of Architecture will permanently remain in former main university administration building on Julianalaan, which has since been transformed into BK City. TU Delft’s Executive Board has asked ASR Fortis to dissolve the contract the university has to the sell the building to ASR Fortis. But if the faculty can remain in this building is up to Fortis. “ASR is the driver’s seat”, says Hans Krul, the Executive Board secretary. “It’s now a question of negotiation with ASR.”