Grant to investigate the role of tropics in driving global climate change

Edge Hill University has been awarded a prestigious grant for its challenging overseas work to investigate the role of the tropics in driving global climate change.

Professor Ann Worsley, from the Natural, Geographical and Applied Sciences Department at the University, together with Professor Chris Turney and Dr Richard Jones from the University of Exeter, have won the Royal Geographical Society's Gilchrist Fieldwork Award to carry out this original fieldwork project.

The trio, who are recognised research leaders in past climate and environmental change, will travel to Mount Giluwe in Papau New Guinea to look in detail at this relatively unexplored area of land which had a proven history of past glacial activity. They will collect samples and map landscape features in order to understand the sensitivity of tropical glaciers to climate change.

Ice in the tropics is particularly vulnerable to global warming. Although preliminary work carried out in the 1970s identified the presence of ice, the precise scale, timing and rate of retreat remains unknown. Therefore, the fieldwork in the Togo Valley at Mount Giluwe will provide a unique opportunity to quantify the impact of changing climate conditions on ice extent in tropical Papua New Guinea.

Professor Worsley explained: "Understanding the climate history of the tropical Pacific has global implications. For example, changes in the sea surface temperatures have recently been interpreted to have led Northern Hemisphere ice melting, casting doubt on the idea that the North Atlantic was driving global climate change. Determining past glacial activity at Mount Giluwe provides the opportunity to develop a comprehensive reconstruction from the region against which to compare records from the Pacific and further afield. Importantly, small glacier retreat appears likely to dominate sea level rise during the 21^st century. It is therefore critical we gain a better understanding of the sensitivity of tropical ice to future change. Separating climate and human induced impacts on the environment is also a long-term objective of this project, especially since Westerners arrived on the island in the late 1070s so it will be interesting to see how this has affected the environment."

The trip has personal meaning for Professor Worsley, who visited in 1979 as a post graduate student to study the environment. She said: "It is such interesting country where the mountains are more than 4,500 metres above sea level, where volcanoes and earthquakes are common and where tribal communities live in remote jungle landscapes. When I first went there were no phones or contact with the outside world, it was very isolated and I lived with a tribal community. I was probably one of the first white women they had seen but I built up their trust and familiarised myself with their culture. I was made a tribal warrior and even learnt how to use a bow and arrow. It was an amazing time. Now though, with the arrivals of Westerners, there is a medical centre, school and even roads. The increase in its population, the use of metal machinery, the clearing of woodlands and soil erosion will have all played a part in climate change, which will be interesting to investigate. I plan to revisit the tribal communities I lived with many years ago because it will be fascinating to see what has happened in the last 30 years or so."

The fieldwork will start in summer 2011 for a period of two months. Samples will be brought back for analysis and the findings will inform the topical global climate debate.