Climate expert Richard Alley to keynote joint Arctic, glaciology conference at UB

Renowned climate expert and National Medal of Science recipient Richard Alley will speak at UB as part of a joint event exploring how Earth’s poles shape our climate, landscapes and future.

Alley is the keynote speaker for the International Arctic Workshop and the Northeast Glaciology Meeting, which are running in parallel March 18-21 at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Alley’s keynote address, open to the entire university community, will be held at 6 p.m. March 19 and can be registered for separately.

Alley, the Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University, will speak about accelerating sea level rise caused mostly by warming-induced ice melt, including how sea level rise will vary by region and the large uncertainties surrounding future trends.

“Dr. Alley’s talk will underscore how this variability and uncertainty should motivate ever greater efforts to reduce warming,” says Sophie Nowicki, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences. “He will address how sustainable energy can provide more energy at less cost, helping society economically as well as environmentally and ethically.”

In the 1990s, Alley led a team that provided clear evidence that Earth experienced abrupt changes in climate in the past — and likely will again — by studying two miles of ice cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

A member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society, Alley was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2025, he was awarded the National Medal of Science, the highest recognition the nation can bestow on scientists and engineers.

In addition to authoring more than 300 scientific papers, he is the author of “The Two-Mile Time Machine,” named Phi Beta Kappa’s 2001 science book of the year, and hosted the PBS series “Earth: The Operators’ Manual.”

“Reading Richard Alley’s ‘The Two-Mile Time Machine’ was inspiring to me earlier in my career and is a big reason why I went into geophysics and climate science,” says Kristin Poinar, associate professor of earth sciences.

Alley’s address, offered as part of the UB RENEW Institute’s “Catalyzing Conversations” series, will be a highlight of both the International Arctic Workshop and the Northeast Glaciology Meeting. The two conferences will offer separate, concurrent sessions in adjoining halls but share Alley’s address, as well as poster sessions.

Now in its 53rd year, the Arctic Workshop brings together researchers from Arctic nations and beyond to present research from both poles, spanning climate, permafrost, geology, ecology and more. The workshop’s location alternates between the University of Colorado Boulder, where it was founded, and other locations. 

The Northeast Glaciology Meeting is the annual meeting of the International Glaciological Society’s Northeastern North American Branch, the society’s oldest branch. A student-friendly event, it aims to foster collaboration and discussion among scientists at all career stages in a relaxed, interactive setting.

“Holding these two events jointly will offer rich opportunities to connect across disciplines while keeping the small-group feel these gatherings are known for,” says one of the conference organizers, Jason Briner, professor and associate chair of the Department of Earth Sciences.

For registrants, the event will include a March 20 screening of “The Memory of Darkness, Light, and Ice,” a documentary about ancient sediment pulled from nearly a mile below the Greenland ice sheet that was stored at UB for roughly two decades and is still being studied by UB researchers today. 

The sediment sample was collected in 1966 by a team of U.S. Army scientists led by Chester “Chet” Langway, who brought the sediment with him when he became chair of the geology department at UB in 1975. 

A team including Elizabeth Thomas, associate professor of earth sciences, who appears in the film, has since used the sediment to determine that the Greenland ice sheet was much smaller about 400,000 years ago.

“The film pairs remarkable visuals with an important scientific story about Greenland’s past,” Thomas says. “I hope it helps people see why the research matters and encourages support for policies that reduce heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.”

A panel discussion will immediately follow the screening featuring early-career researchers whose work explores climate, ice and Earth systems. The event is being sponsored across UB by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the Department of Earth Sciences, the RENEW Institute, and the Center for Geological and Climate Hazards. Other sponsors include the International Glaciological Society and Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.