Greenland ice cores tell tales on past sea level contributions

Event Date:
2022-01-13T16:00:00
2022-01-13T17:00:00
Event Location:
Connect via zoom
Speaker:
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen (U Manitoba)
Related Upcoming Events:
Intended Audience:
Undergraduate
Local Contact:

Douglas Scott

Event Information:

The Greenland Ice Sheet is reacting to climate change, and is losing progressively more mass every year. One of our challenges in the future is to adapt to rising sea level. Looking into the past provides knowledge on how the ice sheets react to changing climate, and this can be used to improve future predictions of sea level rise. The deep ice cores from Greenland contain information on past climate that goes back more than 130,000 years, telling tales about past abrupt climate and sea level changes. 

The last interglacial, 130,000 to 115,000 years before present, is a key analogue for future climate. At this time, climate was 5 oC warmer over Greenland, and global sea level was 6-9 m higher than present.  All the ice cores from Greenland show that the ice sheet survived, making only a modest contribution to global sea level rise of approximately 2 m at this time. 

In addition, investigations of basal material from the Greenland ice cores show that there might have been an ice cover over Greenland for 1 million years. This shows a rather resilient ice sheet surviving several warm interglacials. The perspectives of this is discussed in relation to the future climate warming.

Add to Calendar 2022-01-13T16:00:00 2022-01-13T17:00:00 Greenland ice cores tell tales on past sea level contributions Event Information: The Greenland Ice Sheet is reacting to climate change, and is losing progressively more mass every year. One of our challenges in the future is to adapt to rising sea level. Looking into the past provides knowledge on how the ice sheets react to changing climate, and this can be used to improve future predictions of sea level rise. The deep ice cores from Greenland contain information on past climate that goes back more than 130,000 years, telling tales about past abrupt climate and sea level changes.  The last interglacial, 130,000 to 115,000 years before present, is a key analogue for future climate. At this time, climate was 5 oC warmer over Greenland, and global sea level was 6-9 m higher than present.  All the ice cores from Greenland show that the ice sheet survived, making only a modest contribution to global sea level rise of approximately 2 m at this time.  In addition, investigations of basal material from the Greenland ice cores show that there might have been an ice cover over Greenland for 1 million years. This shows a rather resilient ice sheet surviving several warm interglacials. The perspectives of this is discussed in relation to the future climate warming. Event Location: Connect via zoom