Richard Alley

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Richard Alley
Professor Richard Alley ForMemRS.jpg
Richard Alley in 2014, portrait via the Royal Society
Born
Richard Blane Alley

(1957-08-18) 18 August 1957 (age 66)
Alma mater
Known for
Awards ForMemRS [3] 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
Heinz Award with special focus on the Environment (2011)
Roger Revelle Medal (2007)
AGU Fellow (2000) [4]
Scientific career
Institutions Pennsylvania State University
Thesis Transformations in polar firn  (1987)
Doctoral advisor Charles R. Bentley [5]
Website www.geosc.psu.edu/academic-faculty/alley-richard

Richard Blane Alley (born 18 August 1957) [6] is an American geologist and Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. [7] He has authored more than 240 refereed scientific publications about the relationships between Earth's cryosphere and global climate change, [5] and is recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as a "highly cited researcher." [8] [9] [10] [11]

Contents

Education

Alley was educated at Ohio State University and University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was awarded a PhD in 1987. [12]

Research and career

In 1999, Alley was invited to testify about climate change by Vice President Al Gore [13] after his research with Greenland ice cores indicated that the last Ice Age ended abruptly and violently rather than as a result of gradual change. [14] He appeared again before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 2003; before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology in 2007; [15] and in 2010. [16] [17]

Alley's 2007 testimony was due to his role as a lead author of "Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground" for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has participated in the joint UN/WMO panel since 1992, having been a contributing author to both the second and third IPCC assessment reports.

Alley has written several papers in the journals Nature and Science , [7] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] and chaired the National Research Council on Abrupt Climate Change. In 2000, he published the book The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future. He has appeared in numerous climate change-related television documentaries and has given many public presentations and media interviews about the subject. [23] [24] [25] [26]

Alley gave the Bjerknes lecture to the 2009 American Geophysical Union meeting titled "The biggest control knob- Carbon Dioxide in Earth's climate history". A video of the presentation [27] is available (also available on YouTube).

His more recent work has examined ice sheets and the factors that affect "calving", the process by which ice sheets break up. [14] [28]

Awards and honors

Alley was awarded the Seligman Crystal in 2005 "for his prodigious contribution to our understanding of the stability of the ice sheets and glaciers of Antarctica and Greenland, and of erosion and sedimentation by this moving ice." [5] Alley is one of several Penn State earth scientists who are contributors to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

In 2005 he was also the first recipient of the Louis Agassiz Medal for his "outstanding and sustained contribution to glaciology and for his effective communication of important scientific issues in the public policy arena". [29] His award citation stated "He is imaginative, sharp and humorous, and remains a thorn in the backside of the Bush administration." [29]

In 2008 Alley was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. [30]

In 2011, he received the 17th Annual Heinz Award with a special focus on the environment. [31] [32]

On 28 April 2014 the National Center for Science Education announced that its first annual Friend of the Planet award had been presented to Alley and Michael E. Mann. [33] He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in the same year, his nomination reads:

Richard Alley has made outstanding contributions to the study of ice, its interactions with the landscape and its link to climate. He has made important advances in topics as diverse as grain-scale physics controlling ice deformation, the role and nature of ice streams, and processes at the bed of the ice sheet. His work synthesised the evidence that abrupt climate changes occurred in the past, and drove hypotheses about their cause and the role of ice on ocean circulation. Alley is also an outstanding science communicator, whose skill and enthusiasm has influenced both policymakers and large public audiences. [3]

He won the 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change category for his “pioneering research” into the “mechanics of ice and its implications for abrupt climate change,” in the words of the jury's citation. He is the 2017 recipient of the Wollaston Medal, which is the highest award given by the Geological Society of London. It is reserved for geologists who have made a significant impact on the field through a substantial body of impactful research.

In 2018, Alley was named the recipient of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society Distinguished Explorer Award. [34] Alley was chosen primarily because of his discoveries advancing the understanding of rapid climate change and the stability of polar climates.

Television series

In addition to his research, Alley has made several appearances on television. On Sunday, April 10, 2011, PBS debuted a special program on climate change, entitled EARTH: The Operators’ Manual, [35] hosted by Alley. [36] The program's aim was to present an objective, accessible assessment of the Earth's problems and possible solutions, with the stated intention of leaving viewers informed, energized and optimistic. The series continued through 2012 on PBS and affiliates. The series is accompanied by a book of the same name, also by Richard Alley. [37] It was published on April 18, 2011. He has also appeared in episodes of the History Channel series Mega Disasters .[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

The Younger Dryas, which occurred circa 12,900 to 11,700 years BP, was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum, which lasted from circa 27,000 to 20,000 years BP. The Younger Dryas was the last stage of the Pleistocene epoch that spanned from 2,580,000 to 11,700 years BP and it preceded the current, warmer Holocene epoch. The Younger Dryas was the most severe and longest lasting of several interruptions to the warming of the Earth's climate, and it was preceded by the Late Glacial Interstadial, an interval of relative warmth that lasted from 14,670 to 12,900 BP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ice sheet</span> Large mass of glacial ice

In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi). The only current ice sheets are the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers. Masses of ice covering less than 50,000 km2 are termed an ice cap. An ice cap will typically feed a series of glaciers around its periphery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eemian</span> Interglacial period which began 130,000 years ago

The Eemian was the interglacial period which began about 130,000 years ago at the end of the Penultimate Glacial Period and ended about 115,000 years ago at the beginning of the Last Glacial Period. It corresponds to Marine Isotope Stage 5e. Although sometimes referred to as the "last interglacial", it was the second-to-latest interglacial period of the current Ice Age, the most recent being the Holocene which extends to the present day. The prevailing Eemian climate was, on average, around 1 to 2 degrees Celsius warmer than that of the Holocene. During the Eemian, the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dansgaard–Oeschger event</span> Rapid climate fluctuation in the last glacial period

Dansgaard–Oeschger events, named after palaeoclimatologists Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger, are rapid climate fluctuations that occurred 25 times during the last glacial period. Some scientists say that the events occur quasi-periodically with a recurrence time being a multiple of 1,470 years, but this is debated. The comparable climate cyclicity during the Holocene is referred to as Bond events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Antarctic Ice Sheet</span> Segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West (or Lesser) Antarctica

The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies well below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice shelves. The WAIS is bounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the Ronne Ice Shelf, and outlet glaciers that drain into the Amundsen Sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antarctic ice sheet</span> Earths southern polar ice cap

The Antarctic ice sheet is one of two ice sheets on Earth and covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent. It is the largest single mass of ice on Earth, with an average thickness of over 2 kilometres (1.2 mi). It is distinct from the Antarctic sea ice. The Antarctic ice sheet covers an area of almost 14 million square kilometres and contains 26.5 million cubic kilometres of ice. The other ice sheet on Earth is the Greenland ice sheet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greenland ice sheet</span> Vast body of ice in Greenland, Northern Hemisphere

The Greenland ice sheet is an ice sheet about 1.67 km (1.0 mi) thick on average, and almost 3.5 km (2.2 mi) at its thickest point. It is almost 2,900 kilometres (1,800 mi) long in a north–south direction, with the greatest width of 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) at a latitude of 77°N, near its northern margin. It covers 1,710,000 square kilometres (660,000 sq mi), around 80% of the surface of Greenland, and is the second largest body of ice in the world, after the East Antarctic ice sheet. It is sometimes referred to as an ice cap, or inland ice or its Danish equivalent, indlandsis. The acronyms GIS or GrIS are also frequently used in the scientific literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global temperature record</span> Fluctuations of the Earths temperature over time

The global temperature record shows the fluctuations of the temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans through various spans of time. There are numerous estimates of temperatures since the end of the Pleistocene glaciation, particularly during the current Holocene epoch. Some temperature information is available through geologic evidence, going back millions of years. More recently, information from ice cores covers the period from 800,000 years before the present time until now. A study of the paleoclimate covers the time period from 12,000 years ago to the present. Tree rings and measurements from ice cores can give evidence about the global temperature from 1,000-2,000 years before the present until now. The most detailed information exists since 1850, when methodical thermometer-based records began. Modifications on the Stevenson-type screen were made for uniform instrument measurements around 1880.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greenland ice core project</span> Project to drill through Greenland ice sheet

The Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) was a research project organized through the European Science Foundation (ESF). The project ran from 1989 to 1995, with drilling seasons from 1990 to 1992. In 1988, the project was accepted as an ESF-associated program, and the fieldwork was started in Greenland in the summer of 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heinrich event</span> Large groups of icebergs traverse the North Atlantic.

A Heinrich event is a natural phenomenon in which large groups of icebergs break off from the Laurentide Ice Sheet and traverse the Hudson Strait into the North Atlantic. First described by marine geologist Hartmut Heinrich, they occurred during five of the last seven glacial periods over the past 640,000 years. Heinrich events are particularly well documented for the last glacial period but notably absent from the penultimate glaciation. The icebergs contained rock mass that had been eroded by the glaciers, and as they melted, this material was dropped to the sea floor as ice rafted debris forming deposits called Heinrich layers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abrupt climate change</span> Form of climate change

An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to transition at a rate that is determined by the climate system energy-balance. The transition rate is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing, though it may include sudden forcing events such as meteorite impacts. Abrupt climate change therefore is a variation beyond the variability of a climate. Past events include the end of the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, Younger Dryas, Dansgaard–Oeschger events, Heinrich events and possibly also the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. The term is also used within the context of climate change to describe sudden climate change that is detectable over the time-scale of a human lifetime, possibly as the result of feedback loops within the climate system or tipping points.

This timeline lists events in the external environment that have influenced events in human history. This timeline is for use with the article on environmental determinism. For the history of humanity's influence on the environment, and humanity's perspective on this influence, see timeline of history of environmentalism. See List of periods and events in climate history for a timeline list focused on climate.

Radioglaciology is the study of glaciers, ice sheets, ice caps and icy moons using ice penetrating radar. It employs a geophysical method similar to ground-penetrating radar and typically operates at frequencies in the MF, HF, VHF and UHF portions of the radio spectrum. This technique is also commonly referred to as "Ice Penetrating Radar (IPR)" or "Radio Echo Sounding (RES)".

William Richard Peltier, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), is university professor of physics at the University of Toronto. He is director of the Centre for Global Change Science, past principal investigator of the Polar Climate Stability Network, and the scientific director of Canada's largest supercomputer centre, SciNet. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, of the American Geophysical Union, of the American Meteorological Society, and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">8.2-kiloyear event</span> Rapid global cooling around 8,200 years ago

In climatology, the 8.2-kiloyear event was a sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred approximately 8,200 years before the present, or c. 6,200 BC, and which lasted for the next two to four centuries. It defines the start of the Northgrippian age in the Holocene epoch. The cooling was significantly less pronounced than during the Younger Dryas cold period that preceded the beginning of the Holocene. During the event, atmospheric methane concentration decreased by 80 ppb, an emission reduction of 15%, by cooling and drying at a hemispheric scale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WAIS Divide</span> Camp

The WAIS Divide is the ice flow divide on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) which is a linear boundary that separates the region where the ice flows to the Ross Sea, from the region where the ice flows to the Weddell Sea. It is similar to a continental hydrographic divide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tipping points in the climate system</span> Large and possibly irreversible changes in the climate system

In climate science, a tipping point is a critical threshold that, when crossed, leads to large, accelerating and often irreversible changes in the climate system. If tipping points are crossed, they are likely to have severe impacts on human society and may accelerate global warming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ice-sheet dynamics</span> Technical explanation of ice motion within large bodies of ice

Ice sheet dynamics describe the motion within large bodies of ice such as those currently on Greenland and Antarctica. Ice motion is dominated by the movement of glaciers, whose gravity-driven activity is controlled by two main variable factors: the temperature and the strength of their bases. A number of processes alter these two factors, resulting in cyclic surges of activity interspersed with longer periods of inactivity, on both hourly and centennial time scales. Ice-sheet dynamics are of interest in modelling future sea level rise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siple Dome</span> Camp

Siple Dome is an ice dome approximately 100 km wide and 100 km long, located 130 km east of Siple Coast in Antarctica. Charles Bentley and Robert Thomas established a "strain rosette" on this feature to determine ice movement in 1973–74. They referred to the feature as Siple Dome because of its proximity to Siple Coast.

Bette Otto-Bliesner is an earth scientist known for her modeling of Earth's past climate and its changes over different geological eras.

References

  1. ↑ Severinghaus, J. P.; Sowers, T.; Brook, E. J.; Alley, R. B.; Bender, M. L. (1998). "Timing of abrupt climate change at the end of the Younger Dryas interval from thermally fractionated gases in polar ice". Nature. 391 (6663): 141. Bibcode:1998Natur.391..141S. doi:10.1038/34346. S2CID   4426618.
  2. ↑ "NASA People". NASA . Retrieved 2008-10-01.
  3. 1 2 "Professor Richard Alley ForMemRS". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2014-05-02.
  4. ↑ "Newly elected fellows of AGU for 2000". Eos Transactions. 81 (8): 79. 2000. Bibcode:2000EOSTr..81...79.. doi: 10.1029/00EO00055 .
  5. 1 2 3 "Citation for Richard Alley" (PDF). Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-17. Retrieved 2008-09-30.
  6. ↑ Alexander E. Gates: Earth Scientists from A to Z, Facts on File, 2003
  7. 1 2 "Dan and Carole Burack President's Distinguished Lecture Series". University of Vermont. Archived from the original on 2011-04-19. Retrieved 2008-09-30.
  8. ↑ "Alley, Richard B." Institute for Scientific Information. Archived from the original on 19 May 2007. Retrieved 2008-09-30.
  9. ↑ Richard Alley publications, in Google Scholar
  10. ↑ Alley, R. B.; Mayewski, P. A.; Sowers, T.; Stuiver, M.; Taylor, K. C.; Clark, P. U. (1997). "Holocene climatic instability: A prominent, widespread event 8200 yr ago". Geology . 25 (6): 483. Bibcode:1997Geo....25..483A. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(1997)025<0483:HCIAPW>2.3.CO;2. S2CID   55608759.
  11. ↑ Alley, R. B.; Marotzke, J.; Nordhaus, W. D.; Overpeck, J. T.; Peteet, D. M.; Pielke Jr, R. A.; Pierrehumbert, R. T.; Rhines, P. B.; Stocker, T. F.; Talley, L. D.; Wallace, J. M. (Mar 2003). "Abrupt Climate Change" (PDF). Science . 299 (5615): 2005–2010. Bibcode:2003Sci...299.2005A. doi:10.1126/science.1081056. PMID   12663908. S2CID   19455675. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-03-12.
  12. ↑ Richard Alley
  13. ↑ "Guest Speakers". Ursinus College. Archived from the original on 2012-07-26. Retrieved 2008-09-30.
  14. 1 2 Roberts, Leslie Carol (15 November 2023). "The race to understand polar ice sheets". Knowable Magazine. doi: 10.1146/knowable-111423-3 . Retrieved 19 December 2023.
  15. ↑ "Changes in Ice: The 2007 IPCC Assessment" (PDF). United States House of Representatives. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-09-24. Retrieved 2008-09-30.
  16. ↑ "The Role of Warming in Melting Ice and Sea-Level Rise, and the Possibility of Abrupt Climate Changes" (PDF). United States House of Representatives. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-12-05. Retrieved 2010-12-18.
  17. ↑ Alley, R. B.; Clark, P. U.; Huybrechts, P; Joughin, I (2005). "Ice-Sheet and Sea-Level Changes" (PDF). Science. 310 (5747): 456–60. Bibcode:2005Sci...310..456A. doi:10.1126/science.1114613. PMID   16239468. S2CID   37599421.
  18. ↑ Clark, P. U. (1999). "Northern Hemisphere Ice-Sheet Influences on Global Climate Change". Science. 286 (5442): 1104–1111. doi:10.1126/science.286.5442.1104.
  19. ↑ Meese, D. A.; Gow, A. J.; Alley, R. B.; Zielinski, G. A.; Grootes, P. M.; Ram, M.; Taylor, K. C.; Mayewski, P. A.; Bolzan, J. F. (1997). "The Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 depth-age scale: Methods and results". Journal of Geophysical Research. 102 (C12): 26411–26423. Bibcode:1997JGR...10226411M. doi: 10.1029/97JC00269 .
  20. ↑ Jouzel, J.; Alley, R. B.; Cuffey, K. M.; Dansgaard, W.; Grootes, P.; Hoffmann, G.; Johnsen, S. J.; Koster, R. D.; Peel, D.; Shuman, C. A.; Stievenard, M.; Stuiver, M.; White, J. (1997). "Validity of the temperature reconstruction from water isotopes in ice cores". Journal of Geophysical Research. 102 (C12): 26471–26487. Bibcode:1997JGR...10226471J. doi: 10.1029/97JC01283 .
  21. ↑ Cuffey, K. M.; Clow, G. D.; Alley, R. B.; Stuiver, M.; Waddington, E. D.; Saltus, R. W. (1995). "Large Arctic Temperature Change at the Wisconsin-Holocene Glacial Transition". Science. 270 (5235): 455. Bibcode:1995Sci...270..455C. doi:10.1126/science.270.5235.455. S2CID   176515556.
  22. ↑ Mayewski, P. A.; Meeker, L. D.; Whitlow, S.; Twickler, M. S.; Morrison, M. C.; Bloomfield, P.; Bond, G. C.; Alley, R. B.; Gow, A. J.; Meese, D. A.; Grootes, P. M.; Ram, M.; Taylor, K. C.; Wumkes, W. (1994). "Changes in Atmospheric Circulation and Ocean Ice Cover over the North Atlantic During the Last 41,000 Years". Science. 263 (5154): 1747–51. Bibcode:1994Sci...263.1747M. doi:10.1126/science.263.5154.1747. PMID   17795382. S2CID   25037993.
  23. ↑ Richard Alley (April 18, 2011). EARTH: The Operators' Manual . W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN   978-0-393-08109-1.
  24. ↑ Richard Alley (July 1, 2002). The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future. Princeton University Press. ISBN   978-0-691-10296-2.
  25. ↑ Richard Alley (September 2000). Robert Bindschadler (ed.). The West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Behavior and Environment (Antarctic Research Series). American Geophysical Union. ISBN   978-0-87590-957-8.
  26. ↑ Richard Alley (1999). Rocking the parks: Geological stories of the national parks. Kendall/Hunt Pub. Co. ISBN   978-0-7872-5706-4.
  27. ↑ "Richard Alley lecture to the 2009 AGU "The biggest control knob- Carbon Dioxide in Earth's climate history"". American Geophysical Union . Retrieved 2010-12-28.
  28. ↑ Alley, R.B.; Cuffey, K.M.; Bassis, J.N.; Alley, K.E.; Wang, S.; Parizek, B.R.; Anandakrishnan, S.; Christianson, K.; DeConto, R.M. (30 May 2023). "Iceberg Calving: Regimes and Transitions". Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. 51 (1). doi: 10.1146/annurev-earth-032320-110916 . ISSN   0084-6597.
  29. 1 2 "EGU Louis Agassiz Medallist 2006". European Geosciences Union . Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  30. ↑ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Retrieved 15 April 2011.
  31. ↑ "The Heinz Awards: Richard Alley". The Heinz Awards. Retrieved August 26, 2016.
  32. ↑ Kalson, Sally (2011-09-13). "PSU professor's climate work wins 1 of 9 Heinz Awards". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Retrieved 2013-05-17.
  33. ↑ "Friend of Darwin and Friend of the Planet awards for 2014". National Center for Science Education. 28 April 2014. Retrieved 28 April 2014.
  34. ↑ "2018 Roy Chapman Andrews Society Distinguished Explorer Award". Roy Chapman Andrews Society.
  35. ↑ "EARTH: The Operators' Manual : PBS". PBS . Archived from the original on 2011-04-13.
  36. ↑ "Host Richard Alley | Earth: The Operators' Manual".
  37. ↑ "Products | Earth: The Operators' Manual".
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