Each winter, Director William (Ned) Friedman and the Arnold Arboretum present the Director’s Lecture Series, featuring nationally recognized experts addressing an array of topics related to Earth’s biodiversity and evolutionary history, the environment, conservation biology, and key social issues associated with current science. The Director’s Lecture Series is open to current Arnold Arboretum members only; visit http://arboretum.harvard.edu for information on becoming a member. Lectures take place in the Hunnewell Building Lecture Hall. Parking will be available along the Arborway and in front of the Hunnewell Building on lecture nights.

On Monday, March 26 at 7 pm, Jerry X. Mitrovica, PhD, the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, will speak on The Fingerprints of Sea Level Change in a Warming World. Sea level changes are a particularly dramatic consequence of global warming and estimates of the average rise in sea level over the past decade are routinely reported in the media. However, such estimates obscure the fact that observed sea level changes vary dramatically around the globe. Professor Jerry Mitrovica will describe the sources of this variability and focus on the unique patterns – or fingerprints – of sea level change that follow the melting of ice sheets and glaciers. Those of us who live on the US east coast should be far more concerned about the fate of the distant Antarctic Ice Sheet than the future of our neighbor, the ice sheet that now covers Greenland.  Image from www.sciencedaily.com.

Register at https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/news-events/directors-lecture-series/