Tucked away at the Glencanisp Lodge (Lochinver, Scotland) at the base of the Suilven mountain, the recent PALSEA2 meeting focused on databases of sea-level indicators. The meeting brought together experts from the ‘data’ and ‘modelling’ communities. iGlass was well represented (the meeting was organised by iGlass members Natasha Barlow and Anthony Long) with presentations from … Continue reading
Wondering what we do? Why not have a look at our new short videos from the iGlass researchers explaining what they do… salt marsh sediments (and a video of Durham and York teams on fieldwork) climate modelling glacio-isostatic adjustment modelling the former extent of the Antarctic ice sheets Find the films under the … Continue reading
Research being undertaken by several members of the iGlass community was presented at the recent EGU 2014 conference in Vienna and picked up by the BBC. With the title “Scientists Probe Earth’s Last Warm phase” the article describes how the most comprehensive data record for the Last interglacial has been compiled and provides new insights … Continue reading
The older the sediments, the more macho the equipment. Do you want to core a thousand years of salt marsh sediments? Just bring your hand auger and a gouge. And some muscle power, and a willingness to get really close to the muddy side of science. Do you want to core through interglacial sediments? That … Continue reading
Prof. Tony Payne (Bristol University) contributing author on recent study (Favier et al., 2014. Nature Climate Change doi:10.1038/nclimate2094) showing that Pine Island Glacier’s grounding line is probably engaged in an unstable 40 km retreat. Using ‘state-of-the-art’ ice-sheet modelling, the team demonstrated that the dynamic contribution to sea level rise will remain at a significantly higher level … Continue reading
A new paper by iGlass members suggest modern sea level changes is rapid by past interglacial standards (Rohling et al., 2013 Scientific Reports). “During ice-age cycles, continental ice volume kept pace with slow, multi-millennial scale, changes in climate forcing. Today, rapid greenhouse gas (GHG) increases have outpaced ice-volume responses, likely committing us to > 9 m … Continue reading
Metres of sea-level change. Hundreds of thousands of years. The entire globe. The scale of the iGlass research project is rather large. But some of the research is based on the humblest of creatures: benthic foraminifera. If you have a really big one it might be an entire millimetre. Benthic foraminifera are unicellular protists who … Continue reading
Rising sea levels and subsidence due to ground water pumping, coupled with increasing populations and economic growth in coastal cities, is expected to lead to a greater proportion of people living in low lying regions which will result in higher annual losses from flooding. A Nature Climate Change article, published recently, has estimated the average annual losses from … Continue reading