ENHS Nature Trails October 2004 Article 1

This month's speaker: Willy Weeks

Once in awhile our speakers are such adventurers that they don't get back in time for a Nature Trails' interview. That's O.K. ’Äòcuz then I find out all the skinny about them on the Web. I had no trouble at all Googling <"Willie Weeks" Oregon>. (You see, I wanted a broader spectrum of information than what I'd get just typing in "glaciologist" after his name.) Now let me tell you about Willie Weeks: He jammed with Jimmy Hendrix; grooved for a year playing bass for the Doobie Brothers; played R&B and soulful sounds with big commercial names, and made records right up until 1995. How'd he have time to be a scientist too? Hmmmm, Reida and Chuck Kimmel said he was a professional musician, a bass player no less, as is my Googled Willie Weeks. Well, thank goodness I read an old email correcting my spelling or I'd look like the bird on page 5. The scientist and professional musician we are fortunate to have speaking Friday night is Willy Weeks, a fine bass (double bass) player with the Newport Symphony, the Mittleman Jewish Community Center Orchestra and the Beaverton Chamber Symphony. He too has considerable biographical information on the Web, and I suspect can play soul.

I'm going to offer you here a few of the most interesting blurbs I could find about Dr. Willy Weeks, perhaps more fascinating than one of our interviews, as well as give you a glimpse into ideas he might discuss.

From an article provided by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community, the author, Carla Helfferich writes in August 1994:
"The last time I saw Willy Weeks, he was at the airport heading to a batch of meetings and an eventual vacation on the Turkish coast. This itinerary indicates that Weeks is remarkably level-headed for a glaciologist, because ice experts often seem to become ice addicts. They can go for years catching mere glimpses of the snow-free season we ordinary folks call "summer," spending June on Greenland's ice cap and December on Antarctica's ice shelves. Professor of Geophysics, Weeks' willingness to spend time enjoying warmer places speaks well for his mental health.

"As former chief scientist for the Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility at the Geophysical Institute, Weeks studies ice mostly at a distance, but he still gets into the chilly stuff, now and then, as indicated by the most recent issue [As of August 1994] of the journal Arctic Research of the United States. Among a collection of articles devoted to arctic contamination, Weeks provided ’ÄòPossible Roles of Sea Ice in the Transport of Hazardous Material.'

"As soon as I read the title, my mental video played scenes of . . . the radioactive trefoil, the skull and crossbones, the frowning disk-like face of Mr. Yuk being rolled onto voyaging ice floes. . . . the pack ice does swirl slowly around the Arctic, and the surface of sea ice has been the handy repository for all kinds of human-dumped wastes . . . . But Weeks wrote at greater length about other, more subtle possibilities.

"One concern is that ice could sop up liquid nuclear wastes or other dissolved toxins from sea water. This worry gets short shrift in the article, because sea ice is almost self-purifying. When it first freezes, an ice floe is only about half as salty as the sea water in which it forms. Over the course of one winter, the ice will lose half to two-thirds of its initial salt burden. (Old-timers appreciate this feature of the Arctic, and melt the oldest sea ice they can find for drinking water.)

"Solids are a different matter--even tiny specks of solids. Frazil ice, the ice crystals that form within the water rather than merely at its surface, can trap sediment particles. Just as a pearl grows around a grain of sand trapped in an oyster, frazil crystals form around particles in extremely cold, turbulent water. As they gather together, the disk-like frazil crystals behave like sticky gum, grabbing onto particles on the bottom if they encounter it, or scavenging other bits floating in the water. By the time the frazil crystals form a layer of slushy grease floating at the surface, they behave like a sieve, straining out more debris from the water. As the ice solidifies and thickens, the trapped solids get built right into its structure.

"This suspension freezing process requires particular conditions, very cold temperatures and well-stirred water, that are not found everywhere in the Arctic. Most of the Arctic Ocean is sealed under an insulating windshield of ice floes during the deepest chill of winter. The sea water can't be stirred up by winds nor cooled down enough by the frigid atmosphere for frazils to form unless the ice has a good-sized opening--a polynya.

"Weeks' article [1994] offers a . . . worst-case scenario in which deep ice keels could gouge up the sea floor, rupturing drums of contaminants buried in the bottom and spreading their contents. If a polynya formed at the right spot, the suspension freezing processes could trap those contaminants, carrying them halfway around the top of the world before melting and releasing them."

ON the Web from the GEOTIMES, 1996: "W.F. "WILLY" WEEKS, a glaciologist and professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, was awarded the Emil Usibelli Prize by the university. Weeks, who specializes in the study of sea ice, was recognized for excellence in research. A former president of the International Glaciological Society, he is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a member of the National Academy of Engineering."

Found on the web page of Dr. Jim Reynolds of Brevard College, North Carolina: Jim Reynolds, a former student of Dr. Weeks, remembers learning, many years earlier, about the paradox of global warming effecting a shift from an interglacial period to an Ice Age, and in a rather short period of time. Previously Reynolds had thought of an Ice Age as coming on slowly, in geologic time, and certainly not as a result of global warming. Jim writes:
"My first exposure to this problem actually occurred in the Physical Geology course I took as a Dartmouth freshmen, in the winter of 1972, which was taught by Geophysicist Bob Decker and Glaciologist Willie [sic] Weeks." Who led Jim Reynolds to the conclusion that "in order to have an ice age, the Arctic Ocean had to melt. . . . . I couldn't fathom how the Arctic Ocean could possibly melt. Now, 32 years later, there is substantial evidence that the Arctic Ocean sea ice is melting at a surprisingly fast rate due to the rise in global temperatures.

Chuck and I met Willie on our trip to Iceland and Greenland. He was the group leader for our tour of south west Iceland, and then a lecturer and guide aboard the Professor Molchanov, a Russian polar research vessel converted to a small and somewhat Spartan tourist vessel, operated by Worldwide Expeditions. It was totally clear from the first that he knew a whole lot about almost anything connected to the Arctic, and that he was a fascinating speaker, making all sorts of scientific details clear and easy to understand. The geology of Iceland, plate tectonics, and increasingly, as our ship drew slowly northward, the nature of sea ice and its dynamic role in the Arctic, were topics of shipboard lectures and conversations. Late in our cruise of the vast Scorseby Sund the weather turned wintry. We were greeted by snow in the mornings which precluded hikes on the icy trackless shore. Instead we enjoyed two zodiac cruises amongst the huge icebergs. Dressed in many layers, we were toasty warm. Willie was the leader in our zodiac both times, and his oft repeated remark was "We really shouldn't be doing this" as we silently drifted under the huge bergs. (Our cook Micheal nearly froze his hands breaking off huge icicles to cool our evening beverages.) Closer and closer, we silently drifted to get just one more perfect picture. We really could have gotten lost in the fog, but Willie had set his sights on a small mountain peak.

We went off in the zodiac the next morning in a world utterly changed, bright sun, steely blue sea, and a cold wind. Even the icebergs looked different. A huge chunk fell off one of the distant ice giants while we were on the water. Willie was right, hugging icebergs is very dangerous. Maybe we really should not have been doing it, but one thing you really should do, is come to Friday's lecture and learn about the mysteries, beauties, facts and future of ice from a fascinating speaker."

[ Back ]

Page last modified: 1 November 2004
Location: http://biology.uoregon.edu/enhs/archive/oct04/oct041.html
E-mail the WebSpinner: cpapke@gmail.com