Arranged date for the seminar talk: 29 April 2024, 14:15-15:00
Place: BCCR lecture room 4020, Jahnebakken 5
Short biography
I am mainly a glaciologist, with an interest in both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. I also work on Southern Ocean paleoclimate, and before coming to Bergen I was working for several years as an arborist in Scotland & New Zealand.
Abstract
This talk focuses on the question of whether tipping points in Antarctica could lead to rapid and irreversible sea-level rise in the near future. We have explored this possibility using modelling experiments based on the ice sheet's current state, and using simulations through glacial-interglacial cycles of the past 800,000 years. Our results suggest that the present-day climate, with a little or perhaps no additional ocean warming, is sufficient to trigger tipping points in West Antarctica that will contribute 4 m sea-level rise. Reversal of this ice loss would need over 1C ocean cooling below present.
These experiments were part of the Tipping Points in Antarctic Climate Components (TiPACCs) project, which has recently finished.