On Oct. 17^th, 2007, Prof Lonnie G. Thompson, US academician and distinguished professor of the Ohio State University, visited the ITP and gave a lecture entitled ‘Abrupt climate change and its impact on China’.

In driving home the message of the existence of abrupt climate change and its impact on human beings, Prof Thompson elaborated in the following aspects. He first introduced the status quo of climate change, in particular, global warming. Then he made glaciers as his proxy in revealing global warming, the advance and retreat of glaciers as indicators and drivers of the warming. Concerning evidence for abrupt climate change in the past and present, he showed pictures of dramatically decreasing ice coverage in most alpine areas. Recent acceleration of the rate of ice loss in the tropics was especially patent, serving as clear and present warning to humans worldwide. Citing glaciers he has been to and ice core data his group has processed, he shed light on a time perspective for current climate changes, before arriving at his conclusions that, confronting climate change, humans are left with three choices: prevention, adaptations and suffering. With these choices, he ended his topic, leaving the audience with some food for thought.

In the following question and answer section, some scientific staff enquired after the extent of anthropogenic influence on glacier retreat. Others commented on his listed three choices, calling on more effort in the study of human adaptations to abrupt climate change, esp. in China.

After the lecture, Prof Lonnie Thompson also reached an agreement with Prof Yao Tandong of the ITP regarding the collaboration among nations to tackle alpine glacial retreat in the warming earth mainly in the tropical regions.

Prof Thompson’s visit to the ITP was his last stop in China involved in the CAS’s Einstein Lectureship trip, targeting at enhancing talents’ cultivation in the graduate university of the CAS and further cooperation between Chinese scientists with scientists in other countries in world frontier scientific fields.