William Richard Peltier

William Richard Peltier
FRSC
CitizenshipCanadian
EducationUniversity of British Columbia, University of Toronto
Known forMathematical models of ice sheets
AwardsVetlesen Prize
Scientific career
Fieldsgeodynamics, oceanography, atmospheric sciences, climate change
WorkplacesUniversity of Toronto
Thesis Thermal Stability of non-Boussinesq Configurations  (1971)
Colin O. Hines
Websitewww.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/~peltier/
Notes

William Richard Peltier, FRSC, (born 1943), is university professor of physics at the University of Toronto. He is director of the Centre for Global Change Science, past principal investigator of the Polar Climate Stability Network, and the scientific director of Canada's largest supercomputer centre, SciNet. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, of the American Geophysical Union, of the American Meteorological Society, and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Peltier's research interests include: atmospheric and oceanic waves and turbulence, geophysical fluid dynamics, physics of the planetary interior, and planetary climate.

Peltier is notable for his seminal contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of the deep Earth, both concerning the nature of the mantle convection process and the circulation of the visco-elastic interior caused by the loading of the surface by continental scale ice sheet loads. His gravitationally self-consistent global theory of Ice-Earth-Ocean interactions has become widely employed internationally in the explanation of the changes of sea level that accompany both the growth and decay of grounded ice on the continents, both during the Late Quaternary era of Earth history and under modern global warming conditions. His models of the space-time variations of continental ice cover since the last maximum of glaciation are employed universally to provide the boundary conditions needed to enable modern coupled climate models to be employed to reconstruct past climate conditions. A most notable contribution to work of this kind has been his theory of the so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger millennial timescale oscillation of glacial climate. He has been the primary contributor to the global reconstructions ICE-3G, ICE-4G, ICE-5G (VM2), and the most recent ICE-6G (VM5)model. These models are important for the quantification of post-glacial rebound and late Pleistocene to Holocene variations in sea level.

Career

While pursuing a college education in physics, Peltier supported himself by working for a geological firm, staking mineral claims in the Northwest Territories. He later said that the high density of black flies drove him to be a theorist. After getting his undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, he went to the University of Toronto for his masters and Ph.D where he worked on the problem of mantle convection with Colin Hines as his graduate advisor.

After Peltier graduated in 1971, Hines arranged a postdoctoral fellowship for him at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. There he met W. E. (Bill) Farrell, who was working on the deformation of an elastic Earth due to the tidally varying pressure of the oceans. Farrell encouraged Peltier to work on a related problem, glacial isostatic adjustment.

Glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) is the response of the Earth to changing loads as glaciers advance and retreat. On time scales of hundreds of thousand of years, Earth's lithosphere behaves as if it is floating on the mantle, and given enough time it achieves a state of isostasy where denser material sinks and lighter material rises to balance the gravitational load. However, when a large load such as a glacier is added, it presses the lithosphere down; and when it melts away, the lithosphere rises, a phenomenon known as post-glacial rebound. After the most recent ice age, some parts of Canada and Scandinavia have rebounded by nearly 300 meters and are still rising (relative to sea level) at several millimeters per year.: 43–44  The rate of adjustment is slow because the Earth's mantle has a high viscosity. Peltier was already aware from his doctoral work that models of mantle convection required a good estimate of viscosity, and he realized that this could be obtained from an analysis of GIA. Modeling the Earth as a Maxwell solid, an incompressible material with both viscosity and elasticity, he showed that a correspondence principle could be used to reduce the viscoelastic problem to the simpler elastic problem.

During this period, Peltier also worked on the geophysical fluid dynamics of the atmosphere, studying internal waves in the jet stream and oceanic boundary currents. In a 1976 paper with Hines he proposed monitoring the ionosphere to detect tsunamis; thirty years later, when GPS systems became available, there was a resurgence of interest in this idea.

Aside from visiting appointments and sabbaticals, Peltier has spent his entire career at the University of Toronto (U of T). In 1977, he was granted tenure, in 1979 he became a full professor, and in 1993 he was appointed University Professor. This is the highest academic title at U of T, held by at most 2 percent of tenured faculty. He has had sabbaticals at the University of Cambridge, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.

Publications

Peltier has published over 280 peer-reviewed papers for a total of over 32,000 citations and an h-index of 87. In 2001, Science Watch analyzed citation data from Essential Science Indicators and found that Peltier was the fifth most cited researcher in the geosciences for 1991 to 2001. Some of his papers are:

Honours and awards

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Tobin, Mary (30 June 2004). "Vetlesen Prize of $200,000 is Awarded for Achievement in Climate Sciences Research". www.ldeo.columbia.edu (Press release). Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "W. R. Peltier: 2010 Charles A. Whitten Medal Winner". Honors Program. American Geophysical Union. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "W.R. Peltier: Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). University of Toronto. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  4. 1 2 "Fellows". The Royal Society of Canada. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  5. ↑ "The University of Toronto Centre for Global Change Science". Archived from the original on 2010-03-23.
  6. ↑ Polar Climate Stability Network on pcsn.ca
  7. ↑ "SciNet - High Performance Computing Consortium at the University of Toronto". www.scinethpc.ca.
  8. ↑ Tushingham, A. M.; Peltier, W. R. (1991). "Ice-3G: A New Global Model of Late Pleistocene Deglaciation Based Upon Geophysical Predictions of Post-Glacial Relative Sea Level Change". Journal of Geophysical Research. 96 (B3): 4497–4523. Bibcode:1991JGR....96.4497T. doi:10.1029/90JB01583.
  9. ↑ Peltier, W. R. (1994). "Ice Age Paleotopography". Science. 265 (5169): 195–201. Bibcode:1994Sci...265..195P. doi:10.1126/science.265.5169.195. PMID 17750657. S2CID 29508590.
  10. ↑ Peltier, W.R. (2004). "Global glacial isostasy and the surface of the ice-age Earth: the ICE-5G (VM2) Model and GRACE". Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. 32: 111–149. Bibcode:2004AREPS..32..111P. doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.32.082503.144359.
  11. 1 2 Hall, Joseph (1 November 2009). "The man with earth-sized knowledge". The Toronto Star. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  12. ↑ Baker, Trevor F. "Earth Tides and Ocean Tide Loading – Bidston Observatory". Bidston Observatory. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  13. ↑ Gornitz, Vivien (2013). Rising seas past, present, future. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231519205.
  14. ↑ Ribe, N. M. (2010). "4. Analytical Approaches to Mantle Dynamics". In Bercovici, David (ed.). Mantle Dynamics: Treatise on Geophysics. Elsevier. p. 196. ISBN 9780444535801.
  15. ↑ Sabadini,..., Roberto; Vermeersen, Bert (2004). Global dynamics of the earth applications of normal mode relaxation theory to solid-earth geophysics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 3. ISBN 9781402012686.
  16. ↑ Peltier, W. R.; Hines, C. O. (20 April 1976). "On the possible detection of tsunamis by a monitoring of the ionosphere". Journal of Geophysical Research. 81 (12): 1995–2000. doi:10.1029/JC081i012p01995.
  17. ↑ "Current University Professors". Office of the Vice-President & Provost. University of Toronto. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  18. ↑ "W.R. Peltier". Google Scholar Citations. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  19. ↑ "The greatest research on Earth". Science Watch. 12 (6). November–December 2001. Archived from the original on 4 January 2003.
  20. ↑ "Honour roll: The Patterson distinguished service medal". Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  21. ↑ "Gruppe 2: Fysikkfag (herunder astronomi, fysikk og geofysikk)" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
  22. ↑ "W. Richard Peltier". The Vetlesen Prize. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Archived from the original on 6 July 2016. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
  23. ↑ "UW awards 17 honorary degrees at spring convocation" (Press release). University of Waterloo. 2 May 2007. Archived from the original on 3 July 2007. Retrieved 2017-09-03.
  24. ↑ "William Richard Peltier: Milutin Milankovic Medal 2008". European Geosciences Union. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  25. ↑ "2009 Achievement Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Physics is awarded to Richard Peltier" (Press release). Canadian Association of Physicists. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  26. ↑ "W. Richard Peltier". Bower Laureates. The Franklin Institute. 15 January 2014. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  27. ↑ "Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering". National Sciences and Energy Research Council. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  28. ↑ "Toronto climate scientist wins top science prize". CBC News. 17 February 2012. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  29. ↑ "The Canada Council for the Arts announces $500,000 in Killam Prizes". Killam Laureates (Press release). 3 April 2013. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  30. ↑ Hall, Jenny (3 April 2013). "Pioneering physicist Richard Peltier wins Killam Prize". University of Toronto News. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  31. ↑ "IUGG Gold Medal" (PDF) (Press release). IUGG. 6 February 2019. Retrieved 4 September 2026.

Further reading