Seminar by Dr. Evan Gowan from KIKAI Institute for Coral Reef Sciences, Japan
25 March 2026
KST 10:00
The Seminar is being held in Room 1010 (Jasmin) – Integrated mechanical engineering building. Click here for the campus map.
In this presentation, I will discuss some of the work I have been doing to reconstruct the history of the last glacial cycle (120-6 kyr BP). First, I will introduce the Global Archive of Paleo Sea Level Indicators and Proxies (GAPSLIP). One of the most direct ways to infer the volume and distribution of ice on the Earth’s surface is by modelling spatial and temporal evolution of sea level. Geological proxies of past sea level can be used to estimate global ice volume, especially in regions far from the ice sheets, since the ocean volume will decrease as the ice sheets grew. Closer to where the ice sheets grew, sea level changes will also include components of vertical land motion due to the weight of the ice sheets, and gravitational effects due to the additional mass of the ice pulling ocean water towards the ice sheets. The sum of these effects is known as glacial isostatic adjustment. The GAPSLIP database offers one of the most complete collections of paleo sea level data for the last glacial period. Second, I will introduce my methodology of reconstructing past ice sheets and topography through the PaleoMIST reconstruction. Using a simple ice sheet model, I create a time series of ice sheet reconstructions through the past glacial cycle, which is then used to compute sea level changes with a glacial isostatic adjustment model. By comparing the calculated sea level with the data in the GAPSLIP database, I refine the PaleoMIST reconstruction to provide a data-constrained reconstruction of the ice sheets through last glacial cycle. Finally, I will go over some of my dynamic ice sheet modelling work of the last glacial cycle in North America. Geological evidence from the central part of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (the largest ice sheet in the last glacial cycle) indicates that the inception of the ice sheet was in eastern Canada, rather than from a northern location. My modelling indicates that a combination of an extremely low temperature anomaly in eastern Canada (likely a result of albedo effects), and a relatively strong mantle viscosity in central Canada are responsible for this pattern of ice sheet growth. I also will discuss my results in terms of how the characteristics of climate models will affect the trajectory of glacial cycle model simulations.