Earth and Planetary Sciences Events

Students abroad

Events Calendar

Unless noted, all listed events are open to the general public.

Wednesday Seminar in Geology: GEL 190/290
Seminars are scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at 4:00 PM. Additional optional seminars that may be included as part of the Geology 190 series may be scheduled at other times.

Friday Lunch Talk"A Geology tradition since the Phanerozoic!"
Fridays at noon. Students and faculty give informal lectures on research, travel, or other interests.

submit an event to the department calendar (restricted access)


Wednesday, March 13th, 2024, Wednesday Seminar

3:10 PM, 55 Roessler
Tea and cookies at 2:45 in the aviary - (2110 EPS)

“TBD”

      – by Anna Barth, UC Berkeley


Thursday, March 14th, 2024, CIG Webinar

12:00 PM, zoom

“Modelling interactions between the solid-Earth, cryosphere, and oceans to better predict future sea-level change”

      – by Matthew Hoffman, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Changes in global mean sea level are caused by changes in ocean mass (changes in water stored in land ice and in terrestrial reservoirs) and ocean density (thermosteric changes). Sea level changes vary around the Earth as changes in surface loading induce solid Earth deformation and perturbations to gravitational equipotentials and the Earth’s axis of rotation. In addition to coastal impacts, these relative sea-level changes impact the larger Earth system by modifying marine ice sheet dynamics, ocean dynamics, and crustal stresses. I’ll be presenting an overview of projects in our group exploring these interactions. By coupling ice-sheet and sea-level models, we demonstrate how the low mantle viscosities of West Antarctica lead to relative sea-level fall regionally and a substantial delay in retreat of marine-based glaciers there, but that this negative feedback to glacier retreat is most effective when climate changes slowly. From here, we explore how changes in relative sea level and ocean bathymetry may impact the access of warm ocean masses to the margins of the ice sheet and its subsequent melting. Looking further afield, we investigate the impact of relative sea level changes on ocean tides and ocean dynamic sea level (local variations in sea surface height caused by ocean dynamics) globally under future climate. Finally, we consider how the perturbations to crustal stress induced by changing ice and water loading on the Earth’s crust may affect earthquake occurrence in the Arctic under present and future climate. The larger goal of these investigations is developing a unified framework for representing sea-level in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) developed by the US Department of Energy.

Friday, March 15th, 2024, Friday Lunch Talk

12:10 PM, 1348 Earth and Physical Sciences

“[1]Paleontological Field techniques and outreach in the Hell Creek Formation, Montana [2]Title to be announced”

      – by [1] Nick Thurber, Ben Faulkner [2] Kesego Letshele