The Ohio State University’s Dr. Lonnie Thompson to speak at UC concerning global warming

• Release Date:Friday, October 10, 2008
• Dateline:Charleston, WV
• Contact:Andy Spradling 304-357-4717

The University of Charleston is pleased to announce that Dr. Lonnie G. Thompson, one of the world’s foremost authorities on paleoclimatology and glaciology, will speak as part of the University of Charleston’s Speaker Series sponsored by DOW concerning global warming. The event will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 23, in Riggleman Hall Auditorium on UC’s campus. A Question and Answer session, moderated by UC President, Dr. Edwin H. Welch, will follow. The event is free and open to the public. No reservations are necessary.

Dr. Thompson, who is a professor at The Ohio State University and a native of Gassaway, W.Va., was just named one of the International Heroes of the Environment by Time Magazine. He has led more than 50 expeditions during the last 30 years, conducting ice-core drilling programs in the world’s polar regions as well as in tropical and subtropical ice fields. Recently, Thompson and his team developed lightweight solar-powered drilling equipment for the acquisition of histories from ice fields in the high Andes of Peru and on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The results of these histories, published in more that 200 articles, have contributed greatly toward the understanding of the Earth’s past, present and future climate system.

Other Thompson-led expeditions have recovered a 460-meter-long ice core, the world’s longest from a mountain range (Alaska, 2002); the first tropic ice core (Peru, 1983); and cores containing the entire sequence of the Last Glacial Stage as well as cores dating over 750,000 years in age, the oldest outside the polar regions (Tibet, 1992).  Thompson’s research has resulted in major revisions in the field of paleoclimatology, in particular, by demonstrating how tropical regions have undergone significant climate variability, countering an earlier view that higher latitudes dominate climate change. 

Thompson has received numerous honors and awards.  In 2005, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the John and Alice Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.  He has been selected by Time magazine and CNN as one of “America’s Best” in science and medicine.  His research has been featured in hundreds of publications, including National Geographic and the National Geographic Adventure magazines. He and his team are the subject of a new book entitled: Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest Mountains by Mark Bowen published in late 2005.  In 2006, he became an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, Alumni member of Phi Beta Kappa and chosen to receive the Roy Chapman Andrews Society, 2007 Distinguished Explorer Award.   He served as Contributing Author on Chapter 6: Paleoclimate IPCC AR4 WG, 2007 volume.  In 2008 he has received both the Dan David Prize and the Seligman Crystal award.
For more information, call 304-357-4717.

« Back