Expert on Earth climate changes named to receive Nevada Medal

Thursday, Feb. 25, 1999 | 10:53 a.m.

Geochemist Wallace Broecker, famous for establishing the link between the ocean currents carrying heat across the globe and abrupt shifts in the Earth's climate, will receive the 12th Nevada Medal sponsored by the Desert Research Institute.

A geology professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Broecker will receive a minted silver medallion and $10,000, underwritten by shareholders of Nevada Bell, from Gov. Kenny Guinn at awards dinners in Reno and Las Vegas on March 23 and 25, respectively.

Before each dinner Broecker will present a lecture "Surprises in the Greenhouse?" about increasing greenhouse gases and the influence on the global ocean currents, which act like giant conveyor belts.

"The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it," Broecker said, noting that human behavior aggravates global warming. Using evidence from ice cores and rapidly accumulating sediments, he points to brief but dramatic changes in global temperature that could plunge the Earth's climate into another Ice Age.

A global climate switch could come within a century, turning London and Dublin into an icy island like Spitsbergen, 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle, he said.

While earning his doctorate at Columbia University, Broecker researched the age of the shoreline of ancient Lake Lahontan in north-central Nevada for clues to climate patterns.

The Desert Research Institute, a research arm of the University of Nevada System, conducts studies in climate, environmental pollution and earth sciences at both ends of the state.