Ice Age Expert to Open Climate Change Workshop Series Oct. 6
Contact: Aaron Putnam; Peter Koons, 581-2158, peter.koons@maine.edu
The first installment of the 2010 Climate Change Institute INT500 workshop series Wednesday, Oct. 6, at 4-5:30 p.m. at UMaine is a workshop and keynote lecture by Columbia University Professor of Earth and environmental sciences James D. Hays, an internationally recognized expert on the role of polar oceans in the timing of global ice ages.
The lecture, to be held in Room 57 of Stodder Hall, is free and open to the public. His talk will be followed by dinner and informal lectures on related topics by George Denton, Fei Chai, Dan Dixon, Bess Koffman, Charlie Porter and Aaron Putnam of the University of Maine. Posters will be presented by faculty and students associated with the CCI. The workshop will conclude at 9 p.m., or when discussion is over.
Hays is known for making one of the most important discoveries in climate sciences, the fact that Earth’s ice ages followed changes in Earth’s orbit. His finding was published in one of the most famous papers of Earth Sciences in Science Magazine in 1976. Since then, Hays has been working to discover how the polar oceans control cycles in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which might be the fundamental underlying driver of Earth’s ice ages. This is important for understanding how climate responds to changes in CO2.
Hays’ talk is titled “Biological consequences of a cold, stratified, high-latitude, glacial ocean.”