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Vera Meyer

Report of GLOMAR PhD student Vera Meyer about her research stay at the Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland from 1 - 31 October 2015

In October 2015 I spent four weeks at the School of Geography, Archaeology and Paleoecology at Queen's University Belfast. Within my PhD-project I conduct paleo-environmental reconstructions for the Kamchatka Peninsula (Siberia). Before I went to Belfast I had obtained summer-temperature data for the Last Glacial Maximum. I went to Belfast in order to meet a scientist who reconstructed the paleo-glacier extent for Kamchatka. I intended to discuss the implications of my data for the paleo-glaciers and for precipitation under glacial conditions. The project was supposed to become a chapter of the manuscript I was writing about the summer-temperature data.

At Queen's University I performed mass balance calculations for the paleo-glaciers using a simple model which was run in Microsoft Excel. Apart from that, I applied a numerical model which simulates the glacier extent depending on different paleo-climatic parameters. This allowed me to make estimations for glacial precipitation. I obtained interesting results which made a chapter for the manuscript eventually evolve to a draft for another manuscript.

My colleagues at Queen's were very cooperative and I enjoyed their hospitality very much. The work with the glaciological models as well as the informative discussion with the scientists at Queen's allowed me to gain knowledge about paleo-glacier reconstructions and to see how glaciological methods can be applied for paleo-climatic questions. As I mainly work with organic geochemical methods this experience broadened my horizon in the field of paleoclimatology and the scientific outcome of my work in Belfast makes my PhD-project more divers. I am grateful that I was able to get to know life in a Brithish university and that I got an idea of how research is done outside Germany.

I thank GLOMAR very much for the financial support which enabled me to spend time in Belfast and allowed me to realize this fruitful sub-project of my PhD.