The Fingerprints of Sea Level Change

Jerry Mitrovica, Harvard University talks March 31-April 2, 2011 at […]

Post Author:

Climate State

Date Posted:

February 14, 2014

Jerry Mitrovica, Harvard University talks March 31-April 2, 2011 at the AAAS Auditorium, in Washington, D.C. and was organized by Rita Colwell, Christopher Field, Jeffrey Shaman, and Susan Solomon.

Meeting Overview
Climate science is addressing issues that require an increasingly interdisciplinary perspective, posing new challenges to scientists and to the organization and support of this science. Like other interdisciplinary activities, recognition and support of interdisciplinary climate science by the broader scientific community—including university and government administrators, journal editors and reviewers, and funding agencies—is advancing slowly. Often it is easier to recognize ideas that would represent major advances within a discipline, than ideas that would provide major advances but cut across multiple disciplinary foundations. This circumstance poses a challenge to interdisciplinary research and may slow interdisciplinary scientific advances. Such issues are of particular significance for studies of climate impacts, which may, for example,represent linkages between physical and social science, as well as feedbacks among physical, chemical and biological systems.

This Sackler Colloquium will provide a forum for addressing these issues. Specifically: How are high-quality interdisciplinary scientific ideas best recognized and nurtured in their nascent phase? How can we improve this recognition process so as to better support interdisciplinary climate science advances? The colloquium will examine the history of successful, innovative interdisciplinary scientific advances, drawing on experience not only in climate science but also in other fields. The purpose of the colloquium is to identify patterns in the evolutions of research in these areas. Are there common characteristics and/or principles that allowed critical efforts to succeed, thereby leading to significant advances? Did they begin as small concepts or as big, break-out ideas? How were these efforts nurtured, supported, or hindered? At what career stages were the primary researchers? How might future, novel interdisciplinary ideas in climate science be better identified?

See also  Konrad Steffen: The Melting of Greenland (March 2017)

Teaser image by: Christine Zenino (2009)

About the Author: Climate State

Profile photo ofadmin
Climate State covers the broad spectrum of climate change, and the solutions, since around 2011 with the focus on the sciences. Views expressed on this site or on social media are not necessarily the views by Climate State – we endorse data, facts, empirical evidence.

8 Comments

  1. TheAgim1 December 24, 2011 at 10:33 pm - Reply

    Who is this gentleman? Where is he from? His last name is the same as the
    city of Mitrovica in Kosovo, one of Europe’s naturally richest cities.

  2. mphello June 30, 2012 at 6:11 pm - Reply

    Fantastic disturbing talk. All nations must devote their full military
    resources to destroying the coal industry.

  3. Alteredstory July 10, 2012 at 7:26 pm - Reply

    My mind, it is blown. The bit about the gravitational effects of ice sheets is insane. I would never in a million years have thought to even LOOK at that.

  4. Peter5930 July 20, 2012 at 5:52 pm - Reply

    I’m in Scotland, and I’d wondered what might happen to Glasgow and the Clyde valley as sea level rises (I live 76 metres up the side of the Clyde valley, so I wouldn’t have had the sea coming in through my door, but having the Clyde back up and flood the city centre at high tide wouldn’t have been a good thing).

  5. Neil Rieck July 30, 2012 at 12:39 pm - Reply

    As I understand it, water at the poles is abnormally high due to the
    gravitational attraction of ice. As ice melts, the water level closer to
    the poles will drop while water levels closer to the equator will rise.
    Scotland will be better off than Florida.

  6. K Avocet October 12, 2012 at 8:07 pm - Reply

    Great talk, but certainly distressing in its content.

  7. HowToMakeFriends July 31, 2013 at 7:04 am - Reply

    Pretty interesting talk about changes occurring in sea levels.

  8. Dave Burton May 14, 2016 at 5:36 am - Reply

    Parts of Prof. Mitrovica’s talk were very interesting, particularly his discussion of how melting ice sheets affect the Earth’s mass distribution, and hence its gravity field, which, in turn, causes non-intuitive effects on sea-level.

    However, he also got some things badly wrong. I have a detailed critique here:
    http://www.sealevel.info/mitrovica_cmts01.html

See also  It's the Dark Snow Project

Leave a Reply

Views: 210(2023)
post contents

The Climate State Newsletter