Past Events

Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Ohio State
Friday, January 26, 2018, 03:00pm - 04:15pm
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Past and Contemporary Climate Change: Evidence from Earth’s Cryosphere

Ellen Mosley-Thompson
Distinguished University Professor, Department of Geography (Atmospheric Science)
Director, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center
The Ohio State University

 

Room 101 Institute of Food Nutrition and Health, 61 Dudley Rd, New Brunswick, NJ 08901

 

This seminar is part of two-seminar event that starts at 1:30pm with a seminar by Syukuro Manabe, GFDL Princeton, see more here: http://envsci.rutgers.edu/seminar/abstracts/syukuro_manabe.html

Sponsors: SAS Social and Behavioral Sciences Dean's distinguished lecture series, Dept of Geography, Rutgers Climate Institute, Institute of Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.

 

Brief Abstract: Glaciers are among the best recorders of, and first responders to, natural and anthropogenic climate change. Ice cores from the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, as well as from glaciers and ice caps at high elevations in lower latitudes, provide unique insights on Earth’s climate history and the long term context critical for assessing contemporary climate variability. Current widespread glacier retreat suggests large and rapid changes in the climatic regimes that sustain them and some lower latitude glaciers no longer retain the unique paleoclimate records they once archived.

Brief Bio:  Ellen Mosley-Thompson is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geography (Atmospheric Science Program) and the Director of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University.  She uses the chemical and physical properties preserved in cores collected from both polar ice sheets and high mountain glaciers to reconstruct Earth’s complex climate history.  These records indicate that Earth’s climate has moved outside the range of natural variability experienced over at least the last 2000 years.  She has led nine expeditions to Antarctica and six to Greenland to retrieve ice cores.  In 2010 she led the field team for the ice core drilling project on Bruce Plateau (Antarctic Peninsula), a U.S. contribution to the International Polar Year, where the team collected a 448-meter core to bedrock.  She has published 133 peer-reviewed papers and is the recipient of 51 research grants. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society and is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She recently served on the NRC-NAS Committee that produced the 2014 report “The Arctic in the Anthropocene: Emerging Research Questions.”