Date/Time
Date(s) - Wed 28 October
12:00 - 13:00
ERI Seminar Series
Abstract:
The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) contains the equivalent of ~7 metres of sea level. It is already a major contributor to current sea-level rise and may be vulnerable to unstable retreat under sustained ocean and atmospheric warming. Geological records provide a long-term perspective to contextualize contemporary and projected ice sheet changes, and reconstructing the magnitude, rate, and spatial pattern of Holocene retreat, therefore, provides an important analog for evaluating the sensitivity of the GrIS to prolonged warming. In many marine-based sectors of eastern and northern Greenland, however, the lack of geological constraints since the Last Glacial Maximum hinders reconstruction of the pattern and timing of GrIS retreat. This limits our ability to identify the drivers of ice-sheet change and to assess the performance of ice-sheet models benchmarked against the paleo-record. In this talk Dr Jacob Anderson presents a suite of in situ cosmogenic nuclide and radiocarbon measurements from samples collected in East and North Greenland to reconstruct ice-margin change during the last deglaciation and through the Holocene. These data are used to calculate rates of ice-margin retreat, reconstruct the pattern of deglaciation, and evaluate the potential mechanisms driving these changes.
Biography:
Jacob Anderson is a glacial geologist, paleoclimatologist, and geochemist with expertise using cosmogenic isotopes to investigate ice dynamics, earth surface processes and climate variability. His research focuses on Antarctic and Greenland ice sheet and glacier responses to changing climate, permafrost processes and landscape evolution. Prior to working at the University of Waikato, Jacob worked as a postdoctoral research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.