University of Toronto professor Richard Peltier has been awarded the Franklin Institute 2010 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science. Peltier is a physics professor and founder of the Centre for Global Change Science.
“The stuff I do is really physics and mathematics oriented,” says Peltier, “but I am very interested in earth processes, biological processes, physical/chemical processes, how the entire system has evolved through time, and when and how life originated.”
The Franklin Institute was founded in 1824 and strives to inspire science and technology learning. The Bower Award was founded in 1990 and carries a cash prize of $250,000.
The award recognizes Peltier for advancements in the understanding of earth systems and demonstrating connections between surface climate variability and the internal properties and dynamics of the earth.
Peltier’s academic career began at the University of British Columbia where he completed his undergraduate degree. A native Vancouverite, he moved to Toronto to complete his Master’s in geophysics, which involved fieldwork in Churchill and Gillam, Manitoba analyzing auroral magnetic fluctuations and their impact on the electric connectivity of the deep earth.
Peltier also completed his Doctorate at the University of Toronto, where he published his thesis on the mantle convection process. It was during his post doctoral work in Boulder at the University of Colorado that he found his life’s work.
“The work I started doing had to do with Global Isostatic Adjustment,” says Peltier,. “There was no mathematical theory for this process at that time.”
Global Glacial Isostatic Adjustment is a process that occurs when a continental ice sheet grows on the surface of the earth, decays, and leaves a signature in the landscape of a large-scale ice mass. 21,000 years ago, during the last ice age, Canada was covered by the Laurentian Ice Sheet, which grew to the thickness of four kilometres. Following the ice’s disappearance, the earth has been rebounding in a viscal elastic fashion. Peltier developed the mathematical theory to explain this phenomenon.
“I was very interested in this at first because by interpreting this data you can infer the effective viscosity of the deep earth, and it is that viscosity that controls the convention process [responsible for] continental drift,” says Peltier. “I needed to measure the viscosity of the earth in order to make the conventional model [and] to see if the model was actually sensible.”
Peltier has continued to develop this model ever since.
In the process of studying ice sheets, Peltier began investigating why ice sheets existed in the first place. It became evident that the huge concentration of ice mass that existed over Canada in the last ice age was a continuously recurring phenomenon.
“I was absolutely stunned when I began to realize that this was true. I had not understood that the process had been so repetitive,” says Peltier. He built a series of models explaining how small variations and the effective strength of the sun are able to produce huge variations in ice cover in quasi-periodic patterns for the last million years of earth’s history.
Peltier’s greatest contribution within the field of global warming has involved performing tests on the models and applying these models to historic data for making global warming predictions.
If [the models] don’t [agree with the data], we say we have no right to make global warming predictions because the models don’t pass the test,” says Peltier. “So far we have discovered [the models] pass the test with flying colours.”
The ability to run global warming models outside the boundary conditions in which they were developed gives added confidence to the predictions they make about the global warming process.
While Peltier is the first Canadian to win the Bower Award, Canada certainly does not fall short within Earth Sciences field.
“In Earth Science, Canada ranks really near the top,” says Peltier. “The Earth Science community is probably the strongest science community in Canada, and it’s great it gets this recognition.”
Peltier’s career has previously received recognition and top honours, including the 2004 Vetlesen Prize, often called Earth Sciences Nobel Prize. He is also among the most frequently cited earth scientists in the world from 1991 to 2001. He is a fellow in the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and a recipient of the Royal Society of Canada’s Bancroft Award, to name a few honours. Peltier has also supervised more than 30 doctoral students.
The winner of the Bower Award is evaluated on the basis of uncommon insight, skill, and creativity, as well as the ability to impact the future or have some public benefit.
Peltier will travel to Philadelphia to receive the award on April 29 at an awards banquet that will culminate a week-long series of events celebrating the Laureate’s remarkable accomplishments.
