Group
Members
"The present is the key to the past"
Uniformitarianism; James Hutton
..can the past also be the key to the future?
Aisling Dolan (Ph.D. Student)
Sensitivity of the Pliocene ice sheets to orbital cycles
My current project is investigating the ‘Sensitivity of Pliocene Ice Sheets to Orbital Cycles’. The mid-Pliocene (c. 3 million years ago) is an accessible interval in Earth history, where conditions were similar to those predicted by climate models for the end of the 21st Century (IPCC AR4). The climate of the mid-Pliocene was on average 3°C warmer than present and there was a significant reduction in the extent of the cryosphere. I use a state-of-the-art global circulation model (HadCM3) and an Ice Sheet Model (BASISM) in order to reconstruct possible equilibrium-states for the East Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, based on various orbital configurations. A greater understanding of past changes in Antarctica and Greenland is crucial for appreciating the role these ice sheets will play in the future climate change and sea level rise.
Background
I did a BSc (Hons) at Aberystwyth University in Physical Geography. It was there I developed a passion for Glaciology. I worked at Glace de Tsanfleuron, Switzerland for my undergraduate dissertation. I went on to do an MRes in Science of the Environment at Lancaster University where I got the chance to combine two of my interests; glaciology and volcanology. I undertook fieldwork at Mt. Etna, Sicily and my Masters thesis was about the glacio-volcanic interactions at an ice capped caldera in Chile (Volcan Sollipulli). I am now at Leeds and thoroughly enjoying the way that the climate modelling and ice sheet modelling of a past epoch constantly challenges your understanding of the way the world works and how the cryosphere interacts with the rest of the globe.
email: a.m.dolan08@leeds.ac.uk
web: http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~eeamd/
