You are invited to an upcoming Geoscience seminar to take place in the Geoscience Auditorium on Mar 12 @ 15:00. The seminar will be given by Benjamin Keisling, a glaciologist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. Below is the title, abstract and brief bio. There will be cake and coffee.

Using numerical models and subglacial archives to fingerprint past ice-sheet retreat

Abstract: Accurately predicting where the first few feet of sea level rise will come from is critical for mitigating the impacts of ice-sheet melt. Finding evidence of past ice-sheet retreat helps determine which ice-sheet sectors are most vulnerable to climate change, but the absence of direct evidence from areas that are presently glaciated has long hindered such efforts. Here, I present new approaches to overcoming this challenge through both ice-sheet modeling and subglacial access drilling. I demonstrate that the tools and samples we already have, coupled with ongoing efforts, provide a way forward for robustly assessing spatial patterns of ice-sheet vulnerability directly relevant to predicting future sea-level hazards.

Bio: Benjamin Keisling is a glaciologist and paleoclimatologist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). His research asks: what can archives of the past teach us about the future? He focuses on how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets responded to past climate changes, integrating numerical ice-sheet and climate models with marine and terrestrial geologic records to understand the mechanisms of ice-sheet change and their implications for future sea level.