Siwan Davies

FLSW The Learned Society of Wales () is a national academy, learned society and Charitable organization, charity that exists to "celebrate, recognise, preserve, protect and encourage excellence in all of the scholarly disciplines", and to serve the W ...

is a Welsh professor of Physical Geography in the department of science at

Swansea University Swansea University () is a public university, public research university located in Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom. It was chartered as University College of Swansea in 1920, as the fourth college of the University of Wales. In 1996, it chang ...

Research

Davies' research focus is to analyze past

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

and to reconstruct past climate changes. Together with a team of lecturing staff, technicians, PhD students and post doctoral researchers Davies is looking at rapid climatic changes. One of the challenges to understand why these changes occur is understanding where these events happen, are there triggers in the oceans or are there triggers in the atmosphere? By analyzing ash layers that have been spread across and therefore incorporated into ice and terrestrial matter from erupted

volcanoes A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often fo ...

. By analyzing the microscopic ash particles in these matters Davies and her team can measure differences and similarities in changes that have occurred. These findings help to date and explain when these changes happened and why. By understanding what happened in the past will give them insight into what may happen in the future. Davies and her team are working closely with the ice and climate group at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

as well as UK institutions such as Bangor and the

University of Saint Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, following the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, t ...

. Davies is currently working in collaboration with scientists from 14 different countries to excavate ice from the northwest of

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

as part of the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (Neem) project. The ice will be retrieved in layers as far down as 8,000ft. The findings within this excavation will include evidence of organic materials as well as air bubbles that will be an indication of

greenhouse gases Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the gases in the atmosphere that raise the surface temperature of planets such as the Earth. Unlike other gases, greenhouse gases absorb the radiations that a planet emits, resulting in the greenhouse effect. T ...

that could have been found in the atmosphere over 100,000 years ago. Davies research on minuscule ash particles within the layers of ice, will help create a timeline of volcanic eruptions, which will help compare and analyze climatic evidence recorded in the Greenland ice with that preserved in the deep sea.

S4C S4C (, ''Sianel Pedwar Cymru'', meaning ''Channel Four Wales'') is a Welsh language free-to-air public broadcast television channel. Launched on 1 November 1982, it was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speakin ...

filmed a series documenting Davies experience in meeting communities in Greenland and the

Maldives The Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, and historically known as the Maldive Islands, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in South Asia located in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives is southwest of Sri Lanka and India, abou ...

affected by

s and in particular the ice caps melting. Siwan Davies is also an advocate for promoting women in

STEM Stem or STEM most commonly refers to: * Plant stem, a structural axis of a vascular plant * Stem group * Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics Stem or STEM can also refer to: Language and writing * Word stem, part of a word respon ...

, speaking at events like soapbox science in Swansea, 2014. She is a founding committee member of Swansea Science Grll and SwanStemWomen.

Career history

Publications

Journal articles

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Prizes

* 2011 Philip Leverhulme prize in Geography £70,000 * 2013 Lyell Fund (Geological Society)

Research

Career history

Publications

Journal articles

Prizes

References

Further reading