Annual Norma Wilkinson Lecture

Annual Norma Wilkinson Lecture –29th April 5pm G11, Henley Business School

Into the treasures of the snow: field measurements of snow density in Greenland and Antarctica.

This year the speaker is Dr Elizabeth Morris OBE. Dr Morris was the first woman to work deep field in the Antarctic with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and for 13 years was Head of the Ice and Climate Division at BAS (1986-1999). She is currently a Senior Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. Her research is concerned with the mass balance of polar ice sheets, and their response to climate change and is based upon field observations, remote sensing techniques and modelling.

Abstract – Greenland and Antarctica are the great storehouses of snow on this earth. In the high, cold, central areas of the two great polar ice sheets, snow accumulates year after year, each layer gradually becoming denser as it is covered by further snowfall. We need to understand this densification process in order tackle two important questions in climate change science. How do we link satellite observations of changes in ice sheet elevation to changes in ice mass and hence changes in sea level? And how do we assign a date to information on past climate derived from air bubbles trapped in ice cores? This talk will be about field measurements of snow density made over many years in Greenland and Antarctica and how they have been used to improve the densification models used to answer these questions.

To book a place please email: events@reading.ac.uk or via http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/Events/about-events.aspx or telephone 0118 3786718

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One thought on “Annual Norma Wilkinson Lecture

  1. I have always been interested in Liz Morris as she is a relative and would love to meet up.She is my mother’s cousin.My mother was Pauline Knights ne Mcquid.
    Please pass on my best wishes.
    Nicola Roberts

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