The lecture is free to attend and open to all, but registration is required in advance.
Abstract
The Antarctic continent covers ~60 times the area of the UK and is covered by up to four kilometres of ice. The survival of this ice under warming temperatures will largely determine future global sea level and life in coastal regions around the globe. But what will the scale of sea level rise be and how quickly will it happen? These are difficult questions to answer.
However, work by Tina van de Flierdt, Professor of Isotope Geochemistry at Imperial College London, has provided some important clues. Examining the chemical fingerprint of sediments deposited in the ocean around Antarctica provides a window into time periods where temperatures were one, two or even three degrees warmer than today.
In Tina’s inaugural lecture she will highlight some of the complex relationships between global temperature and sea level rise and discuss the need for more sophisticated geological records of the ice sheet history in order to create more complete models of our future.
Biography
Tina van de Flierdt is a Professor of Isotope Geochemistry at Imperial College London. She is a geologist by training, whose academic background includes a PhD in Natural Science from the ETH Zurich, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship and Associate Research Scientist position at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, where she is still holds an affiliate position.
She co-leads the MAGIC isotope facility at Imperial College London. Her research spans a variety of fields from understanding chemical cycles of trace elements and pollutants in the ocean, over reconstructions of past ocean circulation patterns, to the history of continental ice sheets and their vulnerability to future climate change.
It is the latter subject area which has taken her on multiple drilling expeditions to the waters around Antarctica, which she will talk about in her presentation.
