The Penn State Department of Geography will continue its spring 2025 Coffee Hour lecture series with a talk by Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh University Professor in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State. Alley's talk, "Sea-Level Rise from Ice Sheets: How Bad Could It Be?" will examine the uncertainties surrounding sea-level rise and the scientific challenges of predicting future ice-sheet behavior.
The event will take place at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, April 4, in 112 Walker Building at Penn State University Park and will also be accessible via Zoom.
Alley's research focuses on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, which are among the largest sources of uncertainty in projections of future sea-level rise. He will discuss the limitations of current ice-sheet models, including their difficulty in accounting for processes such as tidewater intrusions and the collapse of ice cliffs. These uncertainties have major implications for costly coastal defense projects, which may be based on over-or underestimates of future sea-level changes.
Alley is a leading expert on ice-sheet dynamics and climate, with more than 400 scholarly publications. He has served as a contributor to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has provided scientific advice to policymakers across political lines. His science communication efforts include hosting the PBS series "Earth: The Operators' Manual" and authoring "The Two-Mile Time Machine," named science book of the year by Phi Beta Kappa.
He earned his doctorate in geology from the University of Wisconsin in 1987 and has been recognized for excellence in research, teaching and public service, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society and receipt of the U.S. National Medal of Science.
