Lonnie and Ellen Mosley-Thompson
Alumni Medalist Award
Lonnie G. Thompson
M.S. Geology, 1973
Ph.D. Geology, 1976
Ellen Mosley-Thompson
M.A. Geography, 1975
Ph.D. Geography, 1979
Three decades ago, when Lonnie Thompson and Ellen Mosley-Thompson began their pioneering efforts to use ice cores to unravel the earth’s climate history, they didn’t suspect that their findings would provide crucial evidence of the magnitude and rate at which global warming has proceeded. Global warming is likely one of the most important scientific issues of our time, and to address one key question—are humans responsible, at least in part, for the observed changes?—the Thompsons have drilled ice cores and made observations in some of the most inhospitable places on the planet.
The husband-and-wife team has led a combined total of more than 65 expeditions to the mountains and ice fields of Africa, Asia, South America, Greenland, and Antarctica. They were the first to develop a technique for measuring dust concentrations in ice cores; and they later added analytical tools to expose the geochemical “museums” preserved in the ice and thereby reconstruct the history of the earth’s atmosphere and environment for tens of millennia. To extract cores from the world’s highest mountains, they developed a lightweight drilling system powered by solar energy. They experimented with using a hot-air balloon to rapidly bring samples down from the mountains, and they rely on transportation ranging from Tibetan yaks to ski-equipped aircraft to transport their ice cores back to civilization. Together, they developed the Ice Core Paleoclimate Research Group, which conducts cutting-edge environmental work.
The Thompsons have obtained millions of dollars in federal and private funding to support their work at Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center, which also raises public awareness of global climate change. Their findings have been noted in the Congressional Record and in more than 100 newspapers and radio and television programs, as well as in Mark Bowen’s seminal book, Thin Ice. The team played an advisory role in Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. “Ellen and Lonnie Thompson are responsible for most of the evidence we have today about global warming and what is happening to our planet,” Mr. Gore has said.
Last winter, Lonnie Thompson stunned the news media by warning that the famed snows of Kilimanjaro will disappear by 2020. “This is a dramatic symptom of global warming,” he said. “It’s caused by emissions from fossil fuels and burning of the rain forests, not by natural climatic changes. We need alternative energy, hybrid cars, and nanotechnology that use less energy—now. The longer we wait, the more painful the crises and their solutions will be.” The couple’s current research addresses effects of climate change on the world’s water supplies.
Lonnie Thompson recently received the government’s highest scientific award, the National Medal of Science. He has been honored by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography. He also received Ohio State’s Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Scholar awards. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, he was named one of America’s Best in Science and Medicine by Time Magazine and CNN.
Ellen Mosley-Thompson has served on numerous advisory committees for the National Academy and as president of the atmospheric sciences section of the American Geophysical Union. She received Ohio State’s Distinguished Scholar and Distinguished Service awards and the Distinguished Alumna Award from her undergraduate alma mater, Marshall University. An Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame inductee, she is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Jointly, the Thompsons received the Commonwealth Award for Science and Invention and the Distinguished Explorer Award from the Roy Chapman Andrews Society.
Lonnie Thompson and Ellen Mosley-Thompson have devoted their lives to understanding the earth and preserving it for humankind. Their achievements make them extraordinary ambassadors for the university.
