PhD Candidate is sought for a fully funded PhD program at Durham University (UK) in the Departments of Earth Sciences and Geography to research the climatic change on the Greenland Ice Sheet over the Late Cenozoic to establish lineages to future climate change.
Recent studies have highlighted the sensitivity of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) to future climate warming with significant implications for global sea-level rise and impacts on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Understanding the past evolution of the GrIS and the interaction with broader climate changes is key to improving our understanding of the potential future response of the GrIS to ongoing climate change. Yet, there are significant gaps in our knowledge in respect to the evolution of the GrIS associated with past climate changes. For example, the detailed evolution and cycles of growth and decay of the GrIS during the time period covering the Pliocene through the Pleistocene (the last 4 – 5 million years) that encompasses numerous fluctuations between warmer and cooler climates. To address these questions the project will build on ongoing research develop-ing and applying a novel technique, osmium-isotopes, to reconstructing ice sheet dynamics associat-ed with development and growth of a Northern GrIS onto and across the continental shelf into the marine environment. Utilising seafloor sediment cores our recent research shows osmium-isotopes can be used to track periods of increased delivery of continental material due to glacial erosion out to the Greenland continental margin and into Baffin Bay (Ownsworth et al., 2023). The osmium-isotope signal in marine cores is, therefore, sensitive to the growth and expansion of the GrIS onto and across the continental shelf during colder intervals and subsequent retreat from the shelf during warmer intervals.