Teaching material and science education links

Sea level and ice changes over the last four glacial cycles

The video below shows a simulation of ice sheet variations and the resulting sea level changes over the last four glacial cycles. This calculation takes glacial isostatic adjustment into account and was produced as part of our paper: Sensitivity of Last Interglacial Sea Level High Stands to Ice Sheet Configuration During Marine Isotope Stage 6. Please refer to this paper for details of the viscoelastic structure and ice model used in this specific run (the ice history is termed IWAE in the paper).
If you'd like to use the video in talks or lectures feel free to do so but please acknowledge it with: Video courtesy of J. Austermann; Dendy et al., 2017.


Note that the length of the last interglacial is set to a duration of 13 kyr (lasting from 129 ka - 116 ka) and that there is no excess melt during past interglacials.

GeoContext modules

I'm excited to be part of the GeoContext group, which aims to create short story telling teaching modules about the complicated social and political backgdrop that often accompanies geologic discovery. Check out the GeoContext website for more information and the teaching modules.

Public talks


Other fun science links

  • I came across this video from the AGU Student Video Contest on postglacial rebound and think it's really well done: Rebound: An Earth Story by Margaret Rosenburg
  • Very cool interactive demonstration of mantle convection and Earth quake propagation: Interactive Earth by Ian Rose


SciSound: A science and art collaboration

In 2020 mezzo-soprano Lea-Luka Sikau and composer Eve O'Donnell worked with me to compose and record a music piece on my sea level research! As the world moved online, we shifted from disseminating this work in a concert to putting together a music video and doing a virtula concert and lecture. You can find the final produce below and also here. We presented this work at two occasions hosted by the Columbia Earth Institute and sponsored by the German Embassy in NY:
(1) Sea Level Change: a SciArt Concert and Lecture
(2) Exploring SciArt: Between Climatology and Composition
The work further let to the website SciSound.com, which describes the process and general science - art collaborations.

 
 
Jacky Austermann
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Columbia University
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

email: jackya [at] ldeo [dot] columbia [dot] edu