UC Berkeley Geography Professor Kurt Cuffey digs deep—literally—to explore the important layers beneath glaciers’ beauty. Each crevice reveals something different about our environment and the growing concern of climate change.
As a professor who focuses on earth and planetary science, Cuffey’s research addresses climate feedback loops, a process in which initial global warming causes the melting of ice—darkening the planet surface—and causing further warming. In particular, his research showed how carbon dioxide and global temperature over a long period of time are more strongly associated than previously thought. This reinforcing cycle will only continue further as carbon dioxide is released by cars, factories and machines.
His research also explores how the Arctic and Antarctic regions heat up more than elsewhere, called “polar amplification.” According to Professor Cuffey, if all the polar ice were to melt, global sea levels could rise by 200 feet—flooding major cities and displacing millions of people. Professor Cuffey’s geophysical studies help voters and the government make important decisions about our planet.
Professor Cuffey spoke to Berkeley Social Sciences about his work and glaciology’s role in understanding climate change. This interview has been edited for clarity.
Could you give a brief overview of your work and what led you to study glaciers?
Kurt Cuffey: I joined UC Berkeley in 1999 and have worked in the field of glaciology for over three decades. I am broadly interested in the functioning of Earth’s environment and the formation of its landscapes. My research mainly focuses on how glaciers flow and evolve, how erosion by glaciers shapes landscapes like mountain ranges and how polar glaciers record climate change.
My work has long been a mix of theoretical, data analytic, field and laboratory studies such as writing code to perform calculations or sampling rocks for analysis in Antarctica and the Canadian Rockies. I became a glaciologist because I was captivated by the combination of glaciers’ crystalline beauty and their relevance to major environmental systems. I was also captivated by the stunning landscapes influenced by glacial erosion, including Yosemite Valley and the Swiss Alps.
What is polar glaciology? How is it important in society and climate change policies?
Kurt Cuffey: “Polar glaciology” refers to the study of ice at high latitudes. If all the polar ice melted, sea level would rise by more than 200 feet, drowning most of our planet’s cities and displacing two billion people. Polar ice also participates in reinforcing processes of climate warming, in which some initial warming causes melting of ice, which darkens the planet surface, which causes yet more warming. Polar ice also contains what are by far the best records of how Earth’s environment (including climate) changed naturally prior to the influence of humans. Many prehistoric events provide tests of our geophysical understanding of climate, and consequently tell us whether our predictions of future climate change should be believed or not. The importance of all these issues and more emerges from our collective responsibility to be good tenants of the planet, ensuring the long-term health of our infrastructure, food production systems, and so forth. Voters and governments can, in principle, learn from our geophysical studies and craft policies that work toward certain goals, or take responsibility for not doing so.
What are some major findings from your research over the course of your career?
Kurt Cuffey: I studied how the Arctic and Antarctic experience faster global warming compared to other parts of the world, a phenomenon called “polar amplification.” In addition, my work showed that, over long timescales, the interaction between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature was stronger than previously recognized – so strong, in fact, that it must reflect a reinforcing cycle between the two, not a one-way effect.
My work quantified when the spectacular landscapes of Yosemite Valley and the New Zealand Fiordland developed. My work synthesized geophysical understanding of glacier flow and evolution for the rising generation of scientists who need that knowledge to study impacts of climate change. For example, I am best known for writing a book about glacier physics, a work that included a lot of original synthetic analysis.
What challenges do you face in studying environmental processes that unfold over thousands of years?
Kurt Cuffey: In an ideal scientific experiment, we try to keep everything the same except for the thing we’re studying. But in long-term environmental studies, we interpret past changes in nature as experiments that have already happened. This is difficult since those “experiments” aren’t like ones where we can control the conditions like we can in a lab. Furthermore, a lot of information is lost over time or never recorded by measurable properties of the environment. In some ways, it is remarkable that we can learn anything at all. Many of our conclusions are based on inference – a human footprint on a sandy beach indicates someone walked there, but you don’t see the person. This makes all of our reconstructions of past environments incomplete.
What has surprised you most in your decades of research?
Kurt Cuffey: In the first decade of the 2000s, the major glaciers draining the polar ice sheets began to react to climate change much faster than anticipated, due to a previously unrecognized sensitivity to ocean conditions. The glaciers have partially stabilized since, but it was a real wake-up call about how rapidly major glacial features can change, and about our own ignorance of these complex systems. There exists a very large degree of uncertainty about how environmental systems react to climate change, and it is important to recognize that uncertainty cuts both ways: future changes might be less substantial than feared, but they also might be much worse.
