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Relative sea-level changes and the history of the Greenland ice sheet

Date
Date
Friday 2 June 2017, 15:00
Venue
School of Earth and Environment Seminar rooms, 8.119
Speaker
Sarah Woodroffe (Durham University)

Abstract

Over millennial timescales isolation basins provide critical reconstructions of relative sea-level (RSL) changes around the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet that can further our understanding of how the ice sheet responded to climate changes during the lateglacial and Holocene periods.  More recently we have started to investigate saltmarshes in SW and SE Greenland that yield precise RSL data over the past few decades to hundreds of years that can help constrain Greenland Ice Sheet mass changes during and since the Little Ice Age.  In this talk I will reflect on advances in our understanding of ice sheet changes over different timescales driven by RSL data and how precise reconstructions from saltmarshes, together with modelling data are now improving our understanding of 20th century ice sheet changes around Greenland.