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.