Columbus, OH The Ohio State University Climate Change Outreach Team will present “Climate Change: Glaciers, People and Options”? on Wednesday, October 3. Lonnie G. Thompson, Distinguished University Professor in the School of Earth Sciences and Senior Research Scientist at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, will provide an introduction to climate change, a brief look at how past climate changes have impacted Peruvian cultures, and the latest evidence for the recent acceleration of the rate of glacier loss world-wide.
Dr. Thompson will also discuss evidence that some glaciers are now smaller than they have been in over 6,000 years, along with some basic belief systems that relate to how humans respond to climate change issues, and what he sees as our options and the greatest challenges of the 21st Century.
The webinar, which continues the third year of the Global Change, Local Impact webinar series, will be held on October 3 from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Attendance is free, but registration is required to receive log-in information — visit changingclimate.osu.edu to sign up. A Q&A session will follow the presentation.
Lonnie G. Thompson is one of the world’s foremost authorities on paleoclimatology and glaciology. He has led 58 expeditions, conducting ice-core drilling programs in the Polar Regions as well as on tropical and subtropical ice fields in 16 countries. Thompson and his team were the first to develop lightweight solar-powered drilling equipment for work in ice fields in the high Andes of Peru and on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The results from these ice-core-derived climate histories, published in more than 200 articles, have contributed greatly toward improved understanding of Earth’s climate system. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and has been awarded the National Medal of Science (the highest honor the U.S. awards to American scientists), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science, and the Friendship Award from the People’s Republic of China.
The OSU Climate Change Outreach Team is a partnership among multiple departments within The Ohio State University, including OSU Extension, Ohio Sea Grant, the Department of Agricultural, Environmental & Development Economics, and the School of Environment & Natural Resources, to help localize the climate change issue by bringing research and resources to Ohioans and Great Lakes residents. More information about the team’s work is available at changingclimate.osu.edu.
Contact
Jill Jentes Banicki, Assistant Director, Ohio Sea Grant, 614-292-8949, jentes.1@osu.edu.