Peter U. Clark

Biosketch

Peter Clark is University Distinguished Professor of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. His research centers on glaciers, ice sheets, sea level, and ice sheet-climate interactions. He was born in Waterbury, CT, and grew up there and in southern CA. He graduated with a B.S. in Geology from St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY, then completed graduate school at the University of Waterloo (M.Sc.) and University of Colorado (Ph.D.). He joined the faculty at Oregon State University in 1988. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the Geological Society of America, and is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Milutin Milanković Medal from the European Geosciences Union.

Research Interests

Peter Clark is broadly interested in reconstructing and understanding climate change and sea level over the past few million years. He has led field programs in North America, Europe, and Antarctica to establish the chronology of former mountain and continental glaciation using cosmogenic nuclides. He has also worked extensively on ice sheet-ocean interactions, including how these may have contributed to past sea-level change and abrupt climate change. Most recently, he has reconstructed global changes in mean surface temperature, mean ocean temperature, and sea level over the past 4.5 million years. He has also been involved in examining how, for various scenarios of carbon emissions, global temperature and sea level might change in the future and the impacts these changes might have on society. This included being involved as the Coordinating Lead Author of the Sea Level chapter for the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.