Lonnie G. Thompson
Distinguished University Professor, School of Earth Sciences Senior Research Scientist, Byrd Polar Research Center
Climate Change: The evidence and our options
Host: Joe Williams / EEOB
Lonnie G. Thompson is one of the world’s foremost authorities on paleoclimatology and glaciology. He has led 58 expeditions during the last 35 years, conducting ice-core drilling programs in the Polar Regions as well as on tropical and subtropical ice fields in 16 countries including China, Peru, Russia, Tanzania and Papua, Indonesia (New Guinea). Thompson and his team were the first to developed lightweight solar-powered drilling equipment for the acquisition of histories from ice fields in the high Andes of Peru and on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The results from these ice-core-derived climate histories, published in more than 200 articles, have contributed greatly toward improved understanding of Earth’s climate system, both past and present. This is a prerequisite for efforts to predict future changes. Thompson’s research has resulted in major revisions in the field of paleoclimatology, in particular, by demonstrating how tropical regions have undergone significant climate variability, countering an earlier view that higher latitudes dominate climate change. Lonnie is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in 2007 he was awarded the National Medal of Science, the highest honor the U.S. awards to American scientists. In April of 2012 he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science and in September, 2012
the Friendship Award from the People’s Republic of China.
He has received numerous other honors and awards. In 2005, he received the John and Alice Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and he was selected by Time magazine and CNN as one of Americas Best in science and medicine. His team’s research has been featured in hundreds of publications for the general public, including National Geographic and the National Geographic Adventure magazines. The accomplishments by Lonnie and the OSU ice core team are highlighted in a 2005 book entitled: Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest Mountains by Mark Bowen. In 2006, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society and received the Roy Chapman Andrews Society, 2007 Distinguished Explorer Award (jointly with Ellen Mosley-Thompson). In 2008 he received the Dan David Prize (jointly with Ellen Mosley-Thompson) and the Seligman Crystal award, the highest professional award given in Glaciology. In 2009, Lonnie Thompson and Ellen Mosley-Thompson received the David R. Brower Conservation Award from the American Alpine Club for outstanding service in mountain conservation. In 2009, Professor Thompson received Honorary Doctor of Science degrees from both Colgate and Northwestern Universities in the U.S and in 2011 from Lancaster University in the U.K. In 2009 Lonnie was elected as a foreign member of the Chinese National Academy of Sciences and received the ‘Mountain Hero’ award from The Mountain Institute in Washington D.C.
