Andrea Dutton holds up her left arm, emphasizing the teeter-totter metaphor she’s using to explain the implications and possible trajectory of her research.
Typically, she says, ocean water slopes upward as it meets with massive ice sheets in Antarctica. A rapid increase in melting—fueled, for instance, by changing temperatures—could tilt the balance dramatically in the opposite direction, leading to a spike in sea levels.
“For every bit it melts, we see an effect,” says Dutton.
Dutton, an internationally renowned expert on climate change and sea level rise who joined the faculty of the Department of Geoscience in June, recently found herself thrust into the media spotlight over a pair of major stories. She was one of two UW-Madison professors (along with Division of the Arts’ Lynda Barry) awarded a $625,000 “Genius” Grant by the MacArthur Foundation. And she was also a contributing author on a special report commissioned by the United Nations on oceans and cryosphere in a changing climate.
Dutton analyzes fossilized coral and limestone to determine how sea levels changed in the distant past—think 125,000 years ago—and uses her findings as a guide to predict future changes.
“We recruited and hired Professor Dutton because her focus on climate change and expertise in uranium-series rock dating offer fantastic synergies with the research interests of nearly half of our present faculty,” says Chuck DeMets, chair of the Geoscience Department. “Collectively, our department now has world-class research capabilities in Quaternary change, which is crucial for understanding present-day climate change, and in the critical field of geochronology, whose precise dating methods are foundational for much geoscience research.”
Prior to coming to UW, Dutton spent eight years as a member of the faculty at the University of Florida. Some of Dutton’s former Sunshine State colleagues have scratched their collective heads at a sea-level specialist’s move from the Atlantic coast to the upper Midwest. Dutton is convinced she can grow her research program with the move—and she also points out that Florida will be particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including sea-level rise, in the coming years.
“I look at these sea-level projections all the time,” she says. “I can see what’s coming, and it’s miserable.” Wisconsin, thousands of miles from the ocean coasts, doesn’t face that particular threat. (“Plus, snow is fun,” Dutton says.)
Dutton is not a stranger to Madison. Both her parents and her sister’s family lived here for eight years. She was also attracted by a UW-Madison research environment that sets her up for future success in the next phase of her academic career.
“I was impressed by the strong support for research,” she says. ‘Being here will allow me to pursue some new research directions, and my program can grow.”
Those new directions are likely to focus on creating models that could produce answers to some of the big-picture questions related to what’s happening with the oceans and climate change.
The Department of Geoscience plans to construct a “clean lab,” an air-controlled space completely free of contaminants, to accommodate the particulars of Dutton’s research. The process she uses to date her rock and coral samples involves measuring trace amounts of naturally-occurring uranium.
While Dutton is now officially on staff at UW-Madison, she won’t begin teaching classes until Fall 2020. In early January, she’ll begin a six-month stint at the Antarctic Research Centre in Wellington, New Zealand. She’ll combine her work on sea level change with similar work colleagues at Victoria University in Wellington are doing on melting sheets of ice in Antarctica. The project is funded by a Fulbright Fellowship.
“We’ll be looking at several issues,” Dutton says. “When does the ice melt? What does it mean for our future? We’re looking into what’s next by looking into the past--how quickly will the ice melt? Will it be slow or sudden? We’re very vulnerable if it ends up being the latter.”
In addition to her research, outreach and science communication are important to Dutton.
“I have learned that you have to approach subjects like climate change as a conversation about our shared values,” she says. “Honestly, a lot of it is about listening.”