Keir Nichols
@cosmokeir.bsky.social
330 followers 330 following 42 posts
Scientist at SUERC/University of Glasgow 🧪 PhD - Tulane ⚜️🏔️ Geographer masquerading as a geologist (he/him) https://linktr.ee/keirnichols
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cosmokeir.bsky.social
I'm thrilled to have started a new role as an "In situ Radiocarbon Scientist" at @uofglasgow.bsky.social/ SUERC/ @isotopesuk.bsky.social! I'll be setting up a new NEIF in situ 14C lab over the next year 🧪🏔️
A photo of me standing in front of the Gilbert Scott Building at the University of Glasgow. As per Google, "the building is a striking Gothic Revival structure...and features an iconic bell tower, one of Glasgow's most notable landmarks." A photo of the side of the AMS Laboratory at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) with lovely clear blue skies above it. A sign on the side of the building includes the logo for SUERC, "AMS Laboratory", and different universities and organisations associated with it.
Reposted by Keir Nichols
glaciocook.bsky.social
🏔️❄️New paper: “Multi-temporal DEMs used to quantify the geomorphological impact of a late 20th century glacier re-advance at Schwarzberggletscher, Switzerland”.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#glaciers #climatechange #sfm #geomorphology
Archive images of Schwarzberggletscher, Switzerland, showing the glacier front and its advance to produce a moraine. Repeat DEMs from the 1974 to 2010 show that the glacier advanced and built a moraine, but that the landscape thawed since the early 1990s.
Reposted by Keir Nichols
ediggeo.bsky.social
📣 📣 We are back! 📣 📣

After more than 2 years away from social media, we are excited to reconnect and engage with the community. Life changes, new jobs, and moves around the world have kept us quiet - but behind the scenes, we have been planning and building. Now we are ready to relaunch EDIG!
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The EDIG logo. The EDIG Logo is a blue and green (representing land masses and the ocean) globe, with a grey banner wrapping around its centre. Within the grey banner are the letters 'E. D. I. G'. There are three blue hands holding up the globe.
cosmokeir.bsky.social
Chuffed to be included in this review paper on the Foundation-Patuxent-Academy ice stream system, Antarctica led by Neil Ross - you can see the preprint in open review here: doi.org/10.5194/egus... - featuring the busiest figure I've ever made 🇦🇶🧊
A busy figure with three panels (a, b, and c). Panel a is a plot with distance along centreline (in km) on the x axis and elevation (in metres above sea level) on the y axis. The plot shows the location (along flowline) and elevation of samples collected for cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating at sites adjacent to the Foundation Ice Stream. Panel b is a map that shows the Foundation Ice Stream (and neighbouring ice streams and glaciers), the flowline used in panel a, and the locations from which the samples in panel a were collected. Panel c is a plot with age (in thousands of years) on the x axis and elevation above modern ice surface (in metres) on the y axis. Exposure ages (between 20 ka and the present day) from the sites in panels a and b are plotted, with most of them falling between ~4 and 9 ka. The ages show that the Foundation Ice Stream thinned by hundreds of metres (at least 700 to 800 m) between about 9 and 4 ka.
cosmokeir.bsky.social
I was chuffed to be asked to do the lab work for this study during my postdoc. Being published with Neil, who taught me during undergrad in Aberystwyth, is a dream come true! It was also super cool to work with @eisstrom.bsky.social, @matt-peacey.bsky.social, and many co-authors not on Bluesky!
A photo looking up a valley towards Taullicocha Glacier in Peru. There are prominent cross-valley moraines which we date using cosmogenic 10Be in the paper linked in the previous post. A close up photo of small pieces of granitic rock that were collected from the surface of a boulder on the crest of a moraine in Peru. Quartz was isolated from these rocks for 10Be surface exposure dating.
cosmokeir.bsky.social
New paper alert 🚨🏔️ We use 10Be exposure dating and ELA reconstructions to shed light on glacier advances in the tropical Andes during the Younger Dryas. You can find the paper led by Neil Glasser @aberuni.bsky.social in Scientific Reports tinyurl.com/uwmt8rcn
Younger Dryas glacier advances in the tropical Andes driven by increased precipitation - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Younger Dryas glacier advances in the tropical Andes driven by increased precipitation
tinyurl.com
Reposted by Keir Nichols
Reposted by Keir Nichols
helenmillman.bsky.social
Are you an ECR working in some kind of cryosphere-related field? Are you interested in learning about international climate diplomacy and the COP process? Do you want to go to COP30 in Brazil in November? If yes, apply to volunteer with ICCI: iccinet.org/cop30-cryosp... It's an experience!
Large plenary meeting room at COP27. There are rows of desks, with people seated at the desks, facing a large stage with two big screens either side of it. A diorama of 3 polar bears standing on a small iceberg, wearing orange lifejackets. One of them is looking at a penguin that appears to have been hanged. Screenshot of text from The Times. It reads: "Then, this year, I arrived at the Glasgow Cop to see that the Qatar stand - the stand of the country with the highest per capita emissions in the world
- was especially popular because it had the best coffee. The Indonesian stand had the best food but a stern sign saying you had to listen to a talk before eating. The Tuvalu stand, just beyond it, inexplicably has a diorama of polar bears lynching a penguin."
Reposted by Keir Nichols
Reposted by Keir Nichols
mikekapglacier.bsky.social
New paper alert!

Holocene glacier and climate changes in central Patagonia.

Led by Carly Peltier. Also with @rlsoteres.bsky.social , and others...

authors.elsevier.com/c/1lN53-4PSD...
Reposted by Keir Nichols
subfossilguy.bsky.social
People often think ice is 'millennial' in the Alps 🧊⏱️

It is not 🤔

Or in very small patches, very high up, and very close to the bedrock 🏔️

Look at this charred spruce needle fragment found at 73m deep, on top of Ortles (3859 m asl)

Iit is 2232 yr old! 🤩
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cosmokeir.bsky.social
The PGC were an invaluable resource during my PhD in the US and have been super helpful for the Thwaites project, too. This will be a huge loss for the polar science community, I hope they're able to survive and support US colleagues in the future
polargeospatial.bsky.social
Effective immediately, the PGC is no longer accepting new NSF-supported requests due to a lack of renewal funding. Current work is wrapping up. Please contact your NSF program officer if impacted. We’re grateful to have supported your polar research. Read our full statement at www.pgc.umn.edu
Reposted by Keir Nichols
polargriffin.bsky.social
Absolutely devastating news. I haven't worked directly with them, but PGC has done such great work. ArcticDEM is a masterpiece of geospatial data.
polargeospatial.bsky.social
Effective immediately, the PGC is no longer accepting new NSF-supported requests due to a lack of renewal funding. Current work is wrapping up. Please contact your NSF program officer if impacted. We’re grateful to have supported your polar research. Read our full statement at www.pgc.umn.edu
Reposted by Keir Nichols
rogercreel.bsky.social
North American ice sheets may have persisted into past warm periods --- and this matters for projections of future ice sheet mass loss.

Check out our new preprint! eartharxiv.org/repository/v...

With @bobkopp.net , @drandreadutton.bsky.social , and co.
cosmokeir.bsky.social
Thank you! 😊😊
cosmokeir.bsky.social
Big shoes to fill!
cosmokeir.bsky.social
After living in Louisiana and then London for the last 10 years, I'm chuffed about living close to this sort of scenery:
cosmokeir.bsky.social
Please get in touch if you're interested in working together! Especially if you already have samples (better yet, quartz) that you'd love to have measured. Whilst my background is in glacial geology, I'm excited to branch out into fields like geomorphology, too!