Ellen S. Mosley-Thompson
The Ohio State University
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Primary Section: 64, Human Environmental Sciences Secondary Section: 15, Geology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2009)
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Research Interests
As an atmospheric scientist and paleoclimatologist my interests focus on reconstructing Earth's climate history using the chemical constituents and physical properties preserved in its glaciers and ice sheets. I am the Co-Founder of Ohio State's Ice Core Paleoclimate Research Group that has collected ice cores in both Polar Regions and from the highest mountain glaciers with the goal of extracting highly resolved (annual to decadal scale) proxy climate histories. We have emphasized the last two thousand years, the period most relevant to modern human activities. These proxy histories provide a critical backdrop against which the recent warming of the Earth System can be assessed. Our cores from low latitude, high elevation ice fields point to the last 50 years as the warmest in the last two millennia. Our high resolution ice core histories provide evidence for past abrupt climate changes on both regional and near-global scales and help illuminate potential drivers. My team members are particularly interested in quantifying the magnitude and rate of climate changes (e.g., temperature and precipitation) to which human systems are highly vulnerable.
