William Richard Peltier,

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

D.Sc. Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used f ...

( hc

(born 1943), is university professor of physics at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...

. He is director of the Centre for Global Change Scienc

past principal investigator of the Polar Climate Stability Networ

and the scientific director of Canada's largest supercomputer centre,

SciNet SCinet is the high-performance network built annually by volunteers in support oSC(formerly Supercomputing, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis). SCinet is the primary network for the year ...

br>
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, of the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's a ...

, of the

American Meteorological Society The American Meteorological Society (AMS) is the premier scientific and professional organization in the United States promoting and disseminating information about the atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic sciences. Its mission is to advance th ...

, and of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick Unive ...

.. His research interests include: atmospheric and oceanic waves and turbulence, geophysical fluid dynamics, physics of the planetary interior, and planetary climate. He is notable for his seminal contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of the deep Earth, both concerning the nature of the mantle convection process and the circulation of the visco-elastic interior caused by the loading of the surface by continental scale ice sheet loads. His gravitationally self-consistent global theory of Ice-Earth-Ocean interactions has become widely employed internationally in the explanation of the changes of sea level that accompany both the growth and decay of grounded ice on the continents, both during the Late Quaternary era of Earth history and under modern global warming conditions. His models of the space-time variations of continental ice cover since the last maximum of glaciation are employed universally to provide the boundary conditions needed to enable modern coupled climate models to be employed to reconstruct past climate conditions. A most notable contribution to work of this kind has been his theory of the so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger millennial timescale oscillation of glacial climate. He has been the primary contributor to the global reconstructions ICE-3G, ICE-4G, ICE-5G (VM2), and the most recent ICE-6G (VM5)model. These models are important for the quantification of

post-glacial rebound Post-glacial rebound (also called isostatic rebound or crustal rebound) is the rise of land masses after the removal of the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period, which had caused isostatic depression. Post-glacial rebound ...

and late

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

variations in

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...

Education

* 1967 B.Sc.,

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...

* 1969 M.Sc. in Physics,

* 1971 Ph.D. in Physics,

Teaching appointments

* 1971-72 Lecturer, Department of Physics, University of Toronto * 1973-74 Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto * 1974-77 Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto * 1978 Visiting Professor, Geophysics and Space Physics, U.C.L.A. * 1978-79 Steacie Fellowship Leave,

NCAR The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR ) is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundatio ...

, Boulder, Colorado * 1977-79 Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto * 1979-93 Full Professor, Department of Physics, University of Toronto * 1987-88 Guggenheim Fellowship Leave, DAMTP and Bullard Laboratories,

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

, U.K. * 1993- University Professor, University of Toronto * 2002-2003 Sabbatical Leave, Professeur Invité, Institute de Physique du Globe de Paris, Université Paris VII * 2004 Professor Invité, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Université Paris VII * 2005–present Adjunct professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences,

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...

* 2006 Visiting professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences and Bjerknes center for Marine Research, University of Bergen, Norway * 2009 Professeur Invite Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, 2009

Notable Publications

Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017

Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018

The Antarctica component of postglacial rebound model ICE-6G_C (VM5a) based on GPS positioning, exposure age dating of ice thicknesses, and relative sea level histories

Space geodesy constrains ice age terminal deglaciation: The global ICE-6G_C (VM5a) model

Comment on "An Assessment of the ICE-6G_C (VM5a) Glacial Isostatic Adjustment Model" by Purcell et al.

Global glacial ice volume and Last Glacial Maximum duration from an extended Barbados sea level record

The modern and glacial overturning circulation in the Atlantic Ocean in PMIP coupled model simulations

Palaeoclimate

High tide of the warm Pliocene: Implications of global sea level for Antarctic deglaciation

A data-calibrated distribution of deglacial chronologies for the North American ice complex from glaciological modeling

The angular velocities of the plates and the velocity of Earth's centre from space geodesy

Honours and awards

* Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, 1977-1979 * E.W.R. Steacie Memorial fellowship, 1978-1980 * Kirk Bryan Award

Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. History The society was founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1888 by Alexander Winchell, John J. Stevenson, Charles H. Hitch ...

* Killam Senior Research Fellowship

Canada Council for the Arts The Canada Council for the Arts (french: Conseil des arts du Canada), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It acts as the federal government's principal i ...

. 1980-1982 * Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, 1986- * Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 1986- * John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1986-1988 * Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, 1988- * Senior fellow of Massey College University of Toronto, 1989- * Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, 1991- * Patterson Medal of the Atmospheric Environment Service of Canada, 1992 * Appointment to the rank of university professor, highest rank at the University of Toronto, 1993- * Distinguished Lecturer of the

Canadian Geophysical Union The Canadian Geophysical Union (French: Union géophysique canadienne) (CGU) began as a society dedicated to the scientific study of the solid earth and has evolved into one that is concerned with all aspects of the physical study of Earth and its ...

, 1999–2000 * Science Watch listing as the fifth most highly cited earth scientists in the world, all disciplines included, 2001 * Elected as Foreign Member to Fellowship in the

, 2004 *

Bancroft Award The Bancroft Award is an award of the Royal Society of Canada "given for publication, instruction, and research in the earth sciences that have conspicuously contributed to public understanding and appreciation of the subject". The award was endow ...

of the Royal Society of Canada, 2004 * J. Tuzo Wilson Medal of the Canadian Geophysical Union, 2004 *

Vetlesen Prize The Vetlesen Prize is a prize in geology awarded jointly by Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation. The prize is generally regarded as the highest distinction in geologic studies, and the " Nob ...

, the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation of New York, 2004 * Leiv Erikson Fellow, Norwegian Research Council, Bjerknes Institute for Climate Research, Univ. of Bergen, 2006 *

Miroslaw Romanowski Medal The Miroslaw Romanowski Medal is awarded annually by the Royal Society of Canada "for significant contributions to the resolution of scientific aspects of environmental problems or for important improvements to the quality of an ecosystem in all asp ...

of the Royal Society of Canada, 2006 *

Milutin Milankovic Medal The Milutin Milankovic Medal is an annual award in Earth science presented by the European Geosciences Union (EGU). The award was introduced in 1993 by the European Geophysical Society (EGS). After a merger with the European Union of Geosciences ...

of the

European Geosciences Union The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is a non-profit international union in the fields of Earth, planetary, and space sciences whose vision is to "realise a sustainable and just future for humanity and for the planet." The organisation has hea ...

, 2008web announcement
* CAP Gold medal for Achievement in Physics

Canadian Association of Physicists Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP), or in French Association canadienne des physiciens et physiciennes (ACP) is a Canadian professional society that focuses on creating awareness among Canadians and Canadian legislators of physics issues, spo ...

, 2009 * Charles A. Whitten Medal

, 2010 * The Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science - Earth Systems Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, 2010 * The Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal in Science and Engineering Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, 2011 * Killam Prize in Natural Science

, 2012 * W. A. Johnston Award from the Canadian Quaternary Association (CANQUA), 2018 * Gold Medal and Fellow of the

International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG; french: Union géodésique et géophysique internationale, UGGI) is an international non-governmental organization dedicated to the scientific study of Earth and its space environment us ...

(IUGG), 2019

References

External links

Home page of Dr. Peltier

* March 27, 2007 Toronto Star article "Reassessing the gravity of the situation

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peltier, William Richard 1943 births Living people Canadian physicists Canadian climatologists Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead authors Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Wilson Medal recipients University of Toronto alumni University of British Columbia alumni Academic staff of the University of Toronto Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Presidents of the Canadian Geophysical Union Fellows of the American Geophysical Union Fellows of the American Meteorological Society