Willie Dansgaard pioneered ice core climate research using oxygen isotopes. Willie Dansgaard (1922-2011) was a Danish paleoclimatologist and professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Copenhagen He was the first to recognize that Earth's climate history was stored in the Greenland ice cap Dansgaard used mass spectroscopy to analyze oxygen isotopes (O-16 and O-18) in ice cores to determine past temperatures
Danish paleoclimatologist Willi Dansgaard (1922-2011) revolutionized our understanding of Earth's climate by proving it was stored in the Greenland ice cap. He developed a method using mass spectroscopy to analyze oxygen isotopes in ice cores, even collecting rainfall in beer bottles to test his theory. Working with Chester C. Langway Jr. from the US Army, he discovered that Greenland warmed by 16°F over just 50 years around 14,600 years ago. His work with Lorius and Oeschger transformed our knowledge of atmospheric change over 150,000 years.
Key Facts
- Willie Dansgaard (1922-2011) was a Danish paleoclimatologist and professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Copenhagen
- He was the first to recognize that Earth's climate history was stored in the Greenland ice cap
- Dansgaard used mass spectroscopy to analyze oxygen isotopes (O-16 and O-18) in ice cores to determine past temperatures
- He observed that about 15,000 years ago (now calibrated to ~14,600 years), Greenland warmed by 16°F over 50 years
- He placed beer bottles with funnels in his backyard to collect rainfall at various temperatures to validate his oxygen isotope theory
- Working with Chester C. Langway Jr. from the US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, he demonstrated that past climate could be deduced from oxygen isotope analysis
- His research, along with that of Claude Lorius of France and Hans Oeschger of Switzerland, revolutionized scientific knowledge of how the temperature and composition of the atmosphere have changed over the last 150,000 years
- Dansgaard died January 8, 2011, in Copenhagen at age 88
Source: Cold War Secrets and The Discovery of Catastrophic Climate Change by The Randall Carlson