Thursday, February 4 at 11:00AM (MDT): Dr. Benjamin Keisling
Abstract:
The Greenland ice sheet is losing mass at a rate that is unprecedented in the observational record, threatening accelerated sea-level rise in coastal areas around the globe. To understand the processes and mechanisms driving present day ice-loss, I look to the past by employing cosmogenic isotopes as an archive of ice-sheet change and use them to evaluate numerical ice-sheet model experiments. This demonstrates how critical archives are to contextualizing change and building a roadmap toward addressing ongoing crises like climate change. Then, to underscore this principle, I analyze conference reports and professional correspondence from the 1970s to problematize the popular understanding of why geoscience lacks diversity and offer archive-informed ways forward.
