Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Collaborative Research: Timing And Structure Of The Last Glacial Maximum And Termination In Southern Peru: Implications For The Role Of The Tropics In Climate Change, Brenda L. Hall

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The role of the tropics in climate change has important implications for understanding both orbital-scale and abrupt climate variations. Yet our ability to assess tropical behavior during major climate events, such as the last glacial maximum (LGM), is limited by poor spatial coverage and insufficient control on sample ages. This project will address this problem by developing well-dated records of glacial fluctuations from the LGM through the termination and late-glacial period at Nevados Coropuna and Allinccapac in southern Peru and use these data in numerical simulations of glacier mass balance and local climate. These sites allow an examination of glacier …

Sensitivity Of The Antarctic Ice Sheet To Climate Change Over The Last Two Glacial/Interglacial Cycles, Brenda Hall, George H. Denton

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This project was designed to develop knowledge of the extent of the Ross Sea ice sheet during the last two glaciations and to develop a chronology for the last glacial maximum and penultimate glaciation. To this end, we had the following goals:

1) Map the extent of the Ross Sea ice sheet along the western coast of McMurdo Sound from Taylor Valley to the southern Royal Society Range.
2) Develop a radiocarbon chronology for the last glacial maximum from dates of algal mats within moraines.
3) Produce a uranium-thorium chronology to gain information on the timing of the penultimate glaciation. …

Sensitivity Of The Antarctic Ice Sheet To Climate Change Over The Last Two Glacial/Interglacial Cycles, Brenda L. Hall, George H. Denton

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award supports a project to investigate the sensitivity of the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) to global climate change over the last two Glacial/Interglacial cycles. The intellectual merit of the project is that despite its importance to Earth's climate system, we currently lack a full understanding of AIS sensitivity to global climate change. This project will reconstruct and precisely date the history of marine-based ice in the Ross Sea sector over the last two glacial/interglacial cycles, which will enable a better understanding of the potential driving mechanisms (i.e., sea-level rise, ice dynamics, ocean temperature variations) for ice fluctuations. This will …

Collaborative Research: St. Elias Erosion And Tectonics Project (Steep), Peter O. Koons, Phaedra Upton

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

1) Refinement of a regional scale model to include an approximation of the true 3D geometry of the orogen.

2) Develop a new local-scale model that incorporates topography, GPS data, and glacial erosion processes to refine the initial results.

3) Develop a modeling experiment to test the hypothesis that the rise and fall of ice masses during glacial cycles might influence where deformation is focused at any given time.

Colle Gnifetti Ice Core (Kcc) Progress Report (Year One)—Arcadia Ice Core Proposal: Initiatives On The Science Of The Human Past, Paul Mayewski

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The Colle Gnifetti glacier of the Monta Rosa Massif on the Swiss-Italian border is perfectly situated to offer insight into the intersection of environment (climate) and culture (history of the economy, political stability, pollution, disease) in medieval Europe. While ice cores previously collected at Colle Gnifetti were sampled at state-of-the-art resolution for the time, it was nevertheless impossible to differentiate annual or finer layering in the period older than 1500 A.D. The 2013 Colle Gnifetti expedition thus sought to collect a new ice core that could be analyzed using the ultra-high-resolution laser based technology developed in the Climate Change Institute’s …