British Antarctic Territory: 1 pound 2020 Climate change

[eurocoin]

The British Antarctic Territory is planning to soon release a commemorative new 12-sided 1 pound coin to commemorate climate change. 2,750 pieces will be made in base-metal and 475 in precious metals. The coins will be produced by the Pobjoy Mint.

[<k>]

Is this the first non-UK coin to follow the example of the UK 12-sided bimetallic pound coin? Will it possess all of the patented 'secret' technology of the UK coin? If I put it in a vending machine in England, would the machine accept it?

[eurocoin]

Is this the first non-UK coin to follow the example of the UK 12-sided bimetallic pound coin? Will it possess all of the patented 'secret' technology of the UK coin? If I put it in a vending machine in England, would the machine accept it?

It is indeed the first non-UK coin to follow the UK example of the 12-sided bimetallic pound coin. As we have seen earlier the Falkland Islands is also working hard on the introduction of their new 12-sided 1 pound coin, as is Gibraltar, but the one of the British Antarctic Territory is expected to be released first.

It is only the overt and covert security features of which can be seen on the images that they will be the same. Whether the forensic one, the luminescent particles, will also be included, I do not know. I do know that the Royal Mint provides the blanks to Pobjoy Mint. Whether these blanks have specifically been taken out of the normal production process before the step in which the particles are being added, I do not know.

As far as I know, no vending machines in the UK check the luminescent particles. From what I understand only coin sorting machines at the cash centres are able to check this security feature.

[<k>]

Thank you, eurocoin.

[Deeman]

I enquired about the availability from Pobjoy mint and this is their reply:

"This coin was not supposed to be seen on the website and was not searchable nor was it in the catalogue as this was not for general purchase and this is why the product was at this price with no image. We are aware that a customer pressed reorder through their account which then took them to this page and then posted this online which is how this became such common knowledge."

[Figleaf]

You can't blame the customer if you haven't protected the page from access. I don't quite understand the wording of their reaction. Does it mean "only dealers can order"?

Peter

[Deeman]

With the design depicting an iceberg formed by breaking off from an ice shelf, an event happening with increased regularity, I found some interesting information on icebergs.

The icy waters surrounding Antarctica are home to a vast majority of the icebergs that navigate Earth's oceans.
Iceberg names are derived from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted (e.g. B-09). The quadrants are divided counter-clockwise in the following manner:

A = 0 - 90W (Bellingshausen/Weddell Sea)
B = 90W - 180 (Amundsen/Eastern Ross Sea)
C = 180 - 90E (Western Ross Sea/Wilkesland)
D = 90E - 0 (Amery/Eastern Weddell Sea)

A freshly calved iceberg usually begins by moving westward, along with the Antarctic Coastal Current, with the coastline on being on its left-hand side. The Coriolis force owing to Earth's rotation also turns its trajectory to the left, which cause the icebergs to run aground and remain stationary for years before continuing on their journey. If a 'berg can break away from the coastal current, it then enters the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
Once the iceberg is in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, its path is generally eastward, driven by both the current and the wind. Also, the Coriolis force pushes the 'berg slightly northward. The 'berg will then move crabwise in a north-easterly direction, finishing its days at relatively low latitudes and in relatively warm waters before disintegrating.

[Jostein]

Very interesting design...I really like it. But it is very strange what has happened with Pobjoy, hopefully they sell directly to customers and not only through distributors. Let's see 

[Figleaf]

Thank you, Deeman. As a certified climate change worrier, I appreciate the picture on this piece. There is a huge under-awareness of how serious climate change is to people everywhere. As the icebergs melt, the global water level increases. Combine that with freak weather and you end up with real, coin-issuing countries threatened with disappearance. There is no comfort for those living inland either. Whole coastal areas given up will cause throngs of climate fugitives to seek higher land, just when the food supply is disrupted.

I wish this theme would figure on mainstream coins, though. People need to receive such pictures and legends like OUR GREATEST THREAT in their change.

Peter

[eurocoin]

The coin is now available.

[Deeman]

Thanks for the update eurocoin. Order placed.

Pobjoy state that the coin includes all the security features of the new UK £1 coin.

[Big_M]

Pobjoy has claimed the base metal version sold out, but looks to be back in stock now.

[Deeman]

An interesting NASA study "Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses" dated 30 Oct 2015:

A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed   to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

"We're essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica," said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. "Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas."  Zwally added that his team "measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas."

Scientists calculate how much the ice sheet is growing or shrinking from the changes in surface height that are measured by the satellite altimeters. In locations where the amount of new snowfall accumulating on an ice sheet is not equal to the ice flow downward and outward to the ocean, the surface height changes and the ice-sheet mass grows or shrinks.

But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica's growth to reverse, according to Zwally. "If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they've been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I don't think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses."

The study analysed changes in the surface height of the Antarctic ice sheet measured by radar altimeters on two European Space Agency European Remote Sensing (ERS) satellites, spanning from 1992 to 2001, and by the laser altimeter on NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) from 2003 to 2008.

Zwally said that while other scientists have assumed that the gains in elevation seen in East Antarctica are due to recent increases in snow accumulation, his team used meteorological data beginning in 1979 to show that the snowfall in East Antarctica actually decreased by 11 billion tons per year during both the ERS and ICESat periods. They also used information on snow accumulation for tens of thousands of years, derived by other scientists from ice cores, to conclude that East Antarctica has been thickening for a very long time.

"At the end of the last Ice Age, the air became warmer and carried more moisture across the continent, doubling the amount of snow dropped on the ice sheet," Zwally said.

The extra snowfall that began 10,000 years ago has been slowly accumulating on the ice sheet and compacting into solid ice over millennia, thickening the ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7 centimetres) per year. This small thickening, sustained over thousands of years and spread over the vast expanse of these sectors of Antarctica, corresponds to a very large gain of ice – enough to outweigh the losses from fast-flowing glaciers in other parts of the continent and reduce global sea level rise. 

Zwally's team calculated that the mass gain from the thickening of East Antarctica remained steady from 1992 to 2008 at 200 billion tons per year, while the ice losses from the coastal regions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula increased by 65 billion tons per year.

"The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimetres per year away," Zwally said. "But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimetres per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for."

"The new study highlights the difficulties of measuring the small changes in ice height happening in East Antarctica," said Ben Smith, a glaciologist with the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved in Zwally's study.

"Doing altimetry accurately for very large areas is extraordinarily difficult, and there are measurements of snow accumulation that need to be done independently to understand what's happening in these places," Smith said.

To help accurately measure changes in Antarctica, NASA is developing the successor to the ICESat mission, ICESat-2, which is scheduled to launch in 2018. "ICESat-2 will measure changes in the ice sheet within the thickness of a No. 2 pencil," said Tom Neumann, a glaciologist at Goddard and deputy project scientist for ICESat-2. "It will contribute to solving the problem of Antarctica's mass balance by providing a long-term record of elevation changes."

[Figleaf]

Very interesting. TFP. Two remarks, though.

First, it is not clear to me if this is a temporary phenomenon or a trend break. I would very much like to believe it is a trend break, but the time series is too short, especially for slow moving and unstable meteorological data.

Second, ice cap melting is not the source of the climate change problem. It is a phenomenon. If that particular phenomenon falls away, the problem is mitigated, but not solved. It's like your car drawing to one side on its own. Finding out that one tyre is under-inflated is nice, but will not solve the problem when the wheels are badly aligned.

The big issue in climate change is carbon emissions. Still, even in that area, snowfall turning to ice is good news: precipitation encapsulates carbon and ice locks it up. I am not sure if this effect is significant, but I do hope so.

I am pretty sure that a new UK coal mine at Whitehaven is an extremely bad idea. The mine is projected to increase UK emissions by 0.4mt of CO₂ a year - a figure greater than the annual emissions from all open UK coal mines combined to 2050*. The difference between that project and the snow-ice cycle is that humans have an immediate and direct influence on the coal mine project. Climate change is like COVID-19. The longer you wait actually doing something, the higher the damage to the economy - and there's no vaccine against climate change.

Peter

* source