The East African Institute for Fundamental Research (EAIFR) and the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) wish to inform those who may be interested of a GEO@EAIFR webinar. This seminar will take place on November 27, 2023 and will be broadcast live on ZOOM. It will also be recorded and later posted on the ICTP-EAIFR YouTube channel, where one can find the previous recorded GEO@EAIFR webinars. Below all the details:

Speaker:  Professor Clint Conrad, Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED), University of Oslo, Norway

Title: Sea Level and the Solid Earth

When: November 27, 2023 at 16:30  (Kigali time).

Register in advance for this meeting by clicking here.

All are very welcome.

Abstract: Sea level presents a fundamental boundary on our planet, for geological processes, biological species, and human society. It is therefore important to understand how this boundary changes with time. Since the ice ages, and even recently, major changes in sea level have been driven by changes to the volume of seawater (e.g., via exchange with continental ice). However, this mass transfer from land storage to the oceans also deforms both the land and sea surfaces, inducing large regional variations in sea level that affect projections of sea level change on coastlines. On longer geological timescales, spanning many millions of years, a variety of solid earth deformation processes drive most of the observed sea level change. These processes include ridge volume change, sediment accumulation, seafloor volcanism, dynamic topography, and continental orogeny, and they affect sea level by changing the volume of the ocean basins. One the longest timescales, changes to the volume of seawater are again the most important factor, but it is water exchange with Earth’s deep interior, rather than exchange with the continental reservoirs, that controls the sea level. In this seminar I will discuss sea level changes occurring throughout Earth’s history, across timescales ranging from billions of years to decades, and the role that different solid earth deformation processes play in determining the level of the sea.

Scientific focus areas: My research is directed toward gaining a better understanding of interactions between Earth's dynamic interior and its varied surface environment. For this, my research group develops 3D time-dependent models of mantle dynamics to understand processes that affect Earth’s topography, sediment cover, plate motions, mountain ranges, volcanism, sea level, and climate state. My overall research goal is to understand how Earth’s deforming and outgassing interior alters the surface environment in which we live. Recently, my research activity has turned toward the Arctic, to understand processes that affect heat flow, mantle structure, sea level, and glacial isostatic adjustment, especially for Scandinavia and Greenland. 

Education
16/02/2000 PhD: Geophysics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
1994 B.A.: Geophysics & Physics (double major), University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Current position
2016 – Professor Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Norway

Previous positions
2012 – 2016 Associate Professor Dept. Geology & Geophysics, University of Hawaii, Manoa, USA
2010 – 2011 Visiting Scholar Centre for Advanced Study, Oslo, Norway
2008 – 2012 Assistant Professor Dept. Geology & Geophysics, University of Hawaii, Manoa, USA
2007 (3 month) Visiting Scholar University of Montpellier II, Montpellier, France
2005 – 2008 Assistant Professor Earth & Planetary Science, Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, USA
2004 – 2005 Research Scientist Dept. Geological Sciences, Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
2003 (9 month) Visiting Scholar Danish Lithosphere Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
2001 – 2004 Postdoctoral Scholar Dept. Geological Sciences, Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
2000 – 2001 Research Scientist Geophysics Group, Mission Research Corp., Virginia, USA
1999 – 2000 Postdoctoral Scholar Seismological Lab., California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena, USA