A Kiwi scientist has been drilling into millions of years worth of sediment far below the rapidly-melting Greenland ice sheet to understand how much it will raise New Zealand's sea level.
GNS Science sedimentologist Dr Georgia Grant has just received an international award, UNESCO-L'Oréal For Women in Science fellowship, for her work which looks at past warmer climates to remove uncertainty about the future.
Antarctica is much closer to New Zealand but it's Greenland's melting glaciers in the North Pole that will cause more sea level rise for us here.
"So Greenland, as that ice sheet melts, and the melt rate is accelerating, it's twice as much as Antarctica is, that water is being pushed more towards the Southern Hemisphere," Dr Grant said.
Dr Grant wants to understand just how threatened New Zealand is by that melting. She's fresh off an eight-week expedition on a research ship off Greenland, drilling marine sediments.
The drill plunged deep into the ocean floor, extracting samples of layers of sediment to map out the past three million years of climate history.
Sea levels rose by about 20cm over the past 120 years - that's now sped up. Sea level is predicted to rise 30cm by 2050.
But those predictions are based on limited data because the rate of ice sheet melt is so hard to model. Dr Grant hopes her research will give us more certainty about what the future holds.
"The past is the key to our future - understanding how it evolved and grew and how it's melted in the past might provide some insights as to how quickly and by how much it can melt in the future," she said.
She's been awarded a $25,000 grant towards this work - one of just five women scientists from around the world.
"It's really a huge endorsement and encouragement to keep staying in science and keep doing research," Dr Grant said.
Hoping also to encourage other young women into a field of research that's of vital importance to us all.
