Lonnie Thompson, distinguished professor of earth sciences at Ohio State has been elected as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Thompson, a scientist of the Byrd Polar Research Center at OSU, is being recognized for his extensive research on glaciers and polar ice caps around the world. Only a small number of foreign scientists are elected into the academy annually.
“It’s certainly an honor,” Thompson said. “You know, we’ve been working now in China for over 45 years. We’ve seen how the country’s developed, particularly the science part of it.”
Thompson has spent many years working on projects with Chinese scientists, including research on the Chinese Guliya ice cap in 1992. Thompson said that he will be working with the academy alongside Chinese and Indian scientists to discover what is happening to the nearly 4,600 glaciers in that part of the world.
He will be traveling to Beijing in June for the award ceremony.
“This is just the latest indication of the international respect that Thompson and his colleagues have earned during the last three decades of their research,” said Earle Holland, assistant vice president for research communications at OSU. “Few institutions can claim the level of expertise and personal knowledge these scientists have gained. Their expeditions have scoured the globe and documented some of the strongest evidence to date of serious climate change worldwide.”
In the meantime, Thompson’s group of researchers will be heading to Antarctica Dec. 14, where they will perform research for two-and-a-half months. Once finished with that assignment, the research team will be heading to Papua New Guinea to drill an ice cap that has been off limits for 20 years because of a large gold reserve located underneath.
Understanding why and how glaciers and polar ice caps are disappearing is critical to understanding what is happening to the world we live in, Thompson said.
“We’ve spent years working on the climate issues and what we need to do about it,” Thompson said. “What is very clear is that the whole world needs to work together to accomplish solving these problems.”
