Carlson Lecture — Greenland Ice Cores Tell Tales of Past Sea Level Change

The Lorenz Center is pleased to present the 2024 John H. Carlson Lecture, in partnership with the New England Aquarium and the Lowell Institute.

FEATURING
Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
Centre for Earth Observation Sciences, University of Manitoba
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen

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. By looking into the past we provide knowledge on how the ice sheets react to changing climate, and this can be used to improve future predictions of sea level rise.  The last period between glaciations, 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, is a key analogue for future climate. Professor Dahl-Jensen summarizes research that shows that the Greenland climate at that time was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than today.  Yet all ice cores from Greenland show that the ice sheet survived, making only a modest contribution to global sea level rise of approximately 2 meters.  Come and learn from Professor Dahl-Jensen as she presents new results on the flow of ice sheets from deep ice core drilling in Northeast Greenland.

In person at the Simons Theatre, Central Wharf, Boston, or via live stream with pre-registration.

• Free and open to the public. Students and families welcome.
• Doors open at 5:30 with exhibits from MIT students and climate scientists in the Simons Theatre lobby.

Please Register by October 21

Questions? Please contact Allison Drovairos  |  provaire@mit.edu

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER

Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen has made major scientific contributions leading ice core drilling and subsequent analysis of ice core data in conjunction with models to determine past climate and how it affected the Greenland ice sheet. She has led several international deep drilling projects like NGRIP, NEEM and EGRIP.

In addition, she has led large research projects funded by grants by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), European Research Council (ERC), EU FP7, Villum Investigator and Canada Excellence Research Chair. The research has led to numerous achievements impacting our understanding of how past climatic shifts can illuminate potential future abrupt climate changes:

• During the Last Interglacial where Greenland temperatures were 5 degrees C warmer than the present, the Greenland ice sheet thinned and contributed to the global sea level rise by about 2 m.
• Dated Greenland ice cores through the last 2000 years show impact on the atmosphere from human activities, such as forest burning and industrialization, and from volcanic eruptions producing aerosols that cool the earth surface for about ten summers following the event.
• Synchronized ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show 25 very abrupt climate changes during the last glacial and modeling shows that the events represent internal movement of energy through ocean and atmosphere between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

The John H. Carlson Lecture communicates exciting new results in climate science. Free of charge and open to the general public, this annual lecture series is made possible by a generous gift from MIT alumnus John H. Carlson to the Lorenz Center in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.