Science
The 'How' and 'Why' of climate change, and its impacts on the surface of our planet, are my broad areas of research interest. We live in a vast natural laboratory and are surrounded by geologic evidence for ice ages, abrupt climate change, and myriad human-climate interactions.
104 Geography
University of Galway
Galway, Ireland
tel. +353 (0)89 983 8097
gordon.bromley@universityofgalway.ie
My research here at the University of Galway employs a primarily glacial-geologic approach and a Big Picture vantage to reconstruct past change, information we can then use to better understand the present and inform computer-based projections of the future. Currently, I am leading investigations in the Colombian Andes, Ireland, and Europe; I'm also chugging along with my long-term interests in Antarctic ice sheet stability and reconstructing palaeoenvironmental conditions during the peopling of the Americas, while getting increasingly excited about geohazards. This page includes brief introductions to some of the projects I am currently involved in - and to the wonderful team members involved in those investigations - as well as the cosmogenic facilities we run here in Galway. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you would like to learn more.
Peruvian Andes research - project description
Colombian Andes research - project description
Irish glacial-geologic research - project description
Irish coastal erosion research - project description
Irish karst & loess research - project description
Scottish glacial-geologic research - project description
Antarctic ice sheet stability - project description
Volcanic-glacial interactions - project description
People
Current and former postdocs:
Dr Martin Nauton-Forteu (IRC Government of Ireland postdoctoral fellow) - Palaeoweathering in the sedimentary record: New proxies for improved palaeoclimate reconstruction on deep-time scales.
Dr Margaret Jackson (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral fellow) - CoNTESTA: A geologic approach to resolving critical uncertainties in the impact of geomagnetic flux on in situ cosmogenic nuclide production; now at Trinity College Dublin
Former Research Assistants:
Colin Bunce (funded by Geological Survey Ireland) - 2022: A multi-proxy geology approach to resolving critical uncertainties in Irish cosmogenic nuclide geochronology; 2020: Quantifying Ireland’s Dust Bowl: An interdisciplinary assessment of potential loess genesis, deposition, and dynamics in the Burren.
Holly Goodnow (funded by Enterprise Ireland) - 2020: ERC support grant REI1623.
Current PhD students:
Adrienne Foreman (Galway Doctoral Scholar) - Assessing the role of seasonality in Irish abrupt climate change
Chris Stewart (IRC Met Eireann postgraduate scholar) - Fingerprinting abrupt climate change in the West of Ireland: A highresolution timeline of deglaciation and landscape evolution in West Mayo
Gregor Rink (SFI-iCRAG scholar) - A cosmogenic-nuclide approach to quantifying the drivers of rocky coastline erosion under changing climate and sea-level conditions
Anouck Roignot (SFI-GSI Frontiers for the Future scholar) - Geologic Perspectives on Abrupt Climate Change (GeoPAC2): Strengthening Ireland’s capacity for projecting future change
Paulo Rodriguez (SFI-GSI Frontiers for the Future scholar) - Geologic Perspectives on Abrupt Climate Change (GeoPAC2): Strengthening Ireland’s capacity for projecting future change
Former MSc students (UMaine):
Dr Allie Balter-Kennedy (NSF OPP) - A glacial history of Roberts Massif, central Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica, using cosmogenic 3He, 10Be, and 21Ne surface-exposure ages