Global warming lecturer kicks off International Polar Year celebration

Grand Valley State University kicks off a celebration of International Polar Year with an expert in glacial geology and paleoclimatology who will compare past and current observations of melting ice sheets in response to climate warming.

Anders Carlson, from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at University of Wisconsin – Madison, will speak on "Changing Ice & Snow: What the Past Can Tell Us About the Future." The free public lecture, on Thursday, October 11, is at 7 p.m., in 101 Loutit Lecture Hall, Padnos Hall, Allendale Campus.

Less than a decade ago, most climate scientists thought such a rapid response to climate change by ice sheets was highly unlikely. While the number of observations of Arctic and Antarctic ice retreat is growing, their time span is limited to the last decade or so, hindering scientists’ ability to predict the future.

Carlson will focus on the behavior and retreat of ice sheets under past "natural" global warming experiments, specifically the last deglaciation of the Northern Hemisphere 21,000 to 6,000 years ago when ice sheets retreated from North America and Northern Europe forced by a warming climate.

Sponsored by: the Regional Math and Science Center at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), GVSU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Michigan Space Grant Consortium. Refreshments to follow lecture.

For more information on additional International Polar Year activities at Grand Valley, visit www.gvsu.edu/ipy or call Karen Meyers in the Regional Math & Science Center at (616) 331-2515.