free public lecture: Tuesday 2 October 2001, 8:00 pm
Physics theatre, University of Tasmania
Antarctica and global
warming - estimating the long-term response
Dr Roland Warner
Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre and Australian
Antarctic Division, Hobart
Abstract:
Antarctica is renowned as the coldest, highest, windiest and
driest continent on Earth. Giant icebergs and collapsing ice shelves regularly
attract media attention - cited as possible harbingers of global climate
change. The long-term behaviour of the Antarctic ice sheet in a warmer future
climate is one of the major uncertainties in predicting how the world will
react to global warming from the enhanced greenhouse effect.
The likely magnitudes of global warming effects in the
Antarctic region will be outlined, with a glance at some of the physics
involved. The response predicted by ice sheet-ice shelf modelling, suggesting
the collapse of the marine based West Antarctic ice sheet on a millennial
time-scale, will be discussed.
About the Speaker:
Roland Warner gained his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the
University of Melbourne investigating the forces between quarks. He carried out research
in theoretical physics at the Universities of Glasgow, Durham, Melbourne,
Florida and Tasmania. A sea change in 1993 saw him move slightly northwards
from the Theoretical Physics group in Hobart, to join the Antarctic
Cooperative Research Centre, where his research focuses on the dynamics and
mass budget of the Antarctic ice sheet and ice shelves. In 1999 he became a
research scientist with the Glaciology section of the Australian Antarctic
Division, one of the partner agencies of the Antarctic CRC.
To AIP Tasmanian programme.