The Third Johnston-Lavis Colloquium, on the theme of Climate Forcing of Geological and Geomorphological Hazards, addressed relationships between past and contemporary climate change and the triggering of hazardous geological and geomorphological phenomena. The meeting was supported by the UK Met Office, the British Geological Survey, the British Antarctic Survey and UCL and Oxford universities. The conference ran from lunchtime on Tuesday, 15 September to lunchtime on Thursday 17 September.

The programme for the event along with copies of the abstracts can be downloaded here JLC3 CD files (5.4Mb)

Scientific Committee:

Convenors: Richard Betts (Met Office), Chris Kilburn (UCL), Mark Maslin (UCL), Bill McGuire (UCL), David Pyle (Oxford), John Smellie (BAS), David Tappin (BGS).

Contact email: w.mcguire@ucl.ac.uk

SESSIONS

S1: Setting the scene: climates of the past and future

Addressed geological and geomorphological hazards in the context of past episodes of dramatic climate change and future anthropogenic warming.

• Maslin, M., Betts, R., Day, S., Dunkley Jones, T., Owen, M. and Ridgwell, A.
  Gas Hydrates: an essential component in understanding past and future climate change hazards.

• Dunkley Jones, T., Lunt, D. J., Maslin, M. A., Ridgwell, A., Schmidt, D. N. and Valdes, P. J.
  Environmental change through the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: a model-data approach

• Owen, M., Day, S., Long, D. and Maslin, M.
  Is it possible to test whether submarine mass movements and methane hydrates have played a role in late Pleistocene climate change?

• Betts, R. & McGuire, W. J.
  Warmer-world drivers of geological and geomorphological hazards

• Roberts, S.J., Hodgson, D.A., Bentley, M.J., Smith, J.A., Balbo, A., Vyverman, W., Verleyen E., Sterken, M., Sabbe, K., Moreton, S., Sanderson, D.C.W. and Milne, G.
  Relative sea-level change on the Antarctic Peninsula during the Holocene (11.5 – 0 ka): implications for future sea level rise.

• Guillas, S., McGuire, W. J. and Day, S. J.
  Statistical tests of a proposed crustal response to climate-driven ocean loading

• Rees, J. G.
  Prioritising hydro-meteorologically forced geological and geomorphological research

S2: Climate forcing of volcanism and volcanic activity

Addressed relationships between climate change and volcanism, and mechanisms whereby environmental change can drive or modulate magma production and volcanic activity.

S3: Climate as a driver of seismic, mass movement and tsunami hazards

Examined links between past climate change and a broad range of geological and geomorphological hazards, and forward to the influence of contemporary climate change.

• Hampel, A., Maniatis, G., Hetzel, R., Turpeinen, H. and Densmore, A.L.
  Slip-rate variations on active faults caused by ice-sheet growth and melting.

• Song, Y. T.
  Glacial earthquake tsunami – a consequence of climate change.

• Russell, A. R.
  Climate change, glacier-margin recession and glacier outburst flood (jökulhlaup) dynamics: examples from Iceland and Greenland.
  (Download here)

• Knight, J., Keiler, M. and Harrison, S.
  Climate change and implications for natural hazards and hazard risk in the eastern European Alps.

• Rodda, H.
  The use of an extreme rainfall archive to examine occurrences of geomorphological hazards in the UK.

• Talling, P.
  Physical record of meltwater floods, and temporal relationships between meltwater flooding, sediment loading and giant submarine slope failures.

• Wynn, R. B., Talling, P. J. and Masson, D. G.
  Tectono-climatic influences on landslide and gravity flow hazards along the Northeast Atlantic continental margin.

• Tappin, D.
  Submarine mass failures – their climate control?