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Dr. Evan J. Gowan

@evangowan.bsky.social
3.1K followers 1.4K following 1.6K posts

I am a climate scientist, focused on paleoclimate, sea level change and the evolution of Quaternary glaciations. I reconstruct ice sheets using glacial isostatic adjustment and ice sheet modelling. In Japan but have been all over the place. 🇨🇦🇯🇵🇦🇺🇩🇪🇸🇪

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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Prof Helen Bostock @oceanhelen.bsky.social · 18h
Great to see this paper finally out. Patiently Led by Prof Zanna Chase as part of c-side PAGES working group on past changes and the role of sea ice in the earth system. 🌊🧊 cp.copernicus.org/articles/22/...
cp.copernicus.org
Antarctic sea ice over the past 130 000 years – Part 2: A review of its role in the Earth system
Abstract. Antarctic sea-ice cover reached historically low levels in 2023, consistent with the simulated decline in sea-ice extent in response to anthropogenic warming. As Antarctic sea ice is closely...
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Thank you. Alas, that website seem inaccessible (I can't even ping it). The main NASA website works, so I don't know why I can't access. Surely someone has already created an image showing the contrast between winter and summer of the Northern Hemisphere, though? This would be a textbook image.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Thanks for the link, but that isn't really what I am looking for. I want a continental scale image. It would take a considerable amount of time to create my own image using that site for something that I just want to put in a single slide of a presentation.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I really want to show that in the summer, everything is green, while in the winter everything is covered in snow or dead vegetation. I thought for sure Wikipedia or NOAA would have something like this, but I guess not!
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Maybe the Bluesky crowd can help me out with this. I want to get some cloudless satellite imagery to highlight the changes in the Northern Hemisphere (or even just Asia/North America) between winter and summer. Somehow, this is very difficult to track down. Any hints?
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Our paper, led by Karla Rubio-Sandoval, came out 2 years ago. In the village of Camarones, Argentina, we used the amino acid racemization to deduce sea level highstands for the Holocene, MIS 5e, and MIS 9/11! doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...
doi.org
Redirecting
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Today's Nobel Prize in Chemistry celebrates the explanation for spontaneous homochirality (where a molecule will convert to its mirror image). This is the process that is behind amino acid racemization dating, which we have used for dating shells in beach deposits. www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemi...
nobelprize.org
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 was awarded to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai “for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.”
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Thanks Nina!
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Don't get me wrong, I like what they tried to do here with their sea level reconstruction. But it is clear that some major uncertainty factor is not being accounted for here.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
My reconstruction currently puts 31 m of sea level equivalent ice volume in the Laurentide at 40 ka, and I can't envision that number going up by more than 10 m from this configuration even with the assumption of a more hard bedded ice sheet. Where would you get 60 more meters of ice volume?
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The Eurasian Ice Sheet just had mountain-centered ice caps, as did the Cordillera Ice Sheet. The Laurentide Ice Sheet was restricted to the extent of the Canadian Shield in most places. The Antarctic Ice Sheets were not a major component of the global sea level fall, even at the LGM.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Obviously figuring out past sea level is a big part of my research, through my ice sheet reconstructions. I think it is implausible to have global sea level at -101 m at 39 ka, because the ice sheets were far short of of their LGM limits at that point.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Fujita et al estimate past "global" sea level (39-17 ka) from benthic large foraminifera assemblages from the Great Barrier Reef. Their estimates of past sea level are much lower than previous estimates, with MIS 3 sea level at 39 ka at -101 m, and an LGM lowstand of -137 m. doi.org/10.1016/j.ep...
doi.org
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Nature @nature.com · 06/10/2026
Francis Halzen wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on a high-energy neutrino observatory at the South Pole go.nature.com/4dYcCn5
go.nature.com
Nobel physics prize awarded for detection of ghostly neutrinos
Francis Halzen wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on a high-energy neutrino observatory at the South Pole.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I currently live in a very rural part of Japan with the exact same problems of declining population and economic stagnation that were present where I grew up. The people are not resentful, but instead choose to try their best to preserve their culture with openness. It is amazing here.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I grew up in a very conservative rural part of Manitoba. I was reading the local newspaper last week and they had an entire page dedicated to the town's first Pride parade, and it sounded like it was well received. The grievances expressed in rural America are a political choice.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Definitely not the same scale, but there were still cracks in the ground when I visited my wife's property in Uki City last week.
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Fumihiko Ikegami @fikgm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Rice crops are harvested at the rice field where the recent Kumamoto Earthquake caused a surface rupture... Geologists are on site. More free photos in the newspaper "Mainichi" website: mainichi.jp/graphs/20261...
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The story about his bad day has everything I love. Raised beaches, proglacial lakes, and glaciation.
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Fumihiko Ikegami @fikgm.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
A legendary publication from Japan Association for Quaternary Research, back in 1996, is recently made freely available from quaternary.jp/links/books/... . And I have reformatted the PDF to an HTML website. Now the text is fully translated to English by GPT-6.1! docs.ikgm.net/Tephras_in_J...
docs.ikgm.net
Inventory of Quaternary Outcrops —Tephras in Japan—
Inventory of Quaternary Outcrops —Tephras in Japan— — 1996 scholarly volume, corrected OCR and faithful translation
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I have a copy of that book!
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Kim Cobb @kimcobb.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
And I'm on the search committee, so send me your questions. But mostly, send the talented early career scientists in your network our way! Target deadline: Oct 26
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I'll tell you, spending time reading a book on the history of Chinese dynasties sure came in handy later when I was involved in a study that linked changes in dust storms to the relative strength of Chinese dynasties. You never know what knowledge will come in handy.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Canada really likes what the Liberals are doing, even though their energy policies are backwards. A pipeline to pump western Canadian oil to the east coast is never going to happen, why not use that money to invest in solar and wind power?
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Andy Emery @andydoggerbank.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Our new paper out now in QSA models the Storegga tusnami wave using more realistic palaeobathymetry based on the most recent glacio-isostatic modelling outputs for the North Sea, and shows that significant wave propagation south of Dogger Bank is extremely unlikely.
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Steven J. Gibbons @stevenjgibbons.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
"Propagation of the Storegga tsunami in the southeastern North Sea" is published in Quaternary Research Advances today. Open access paper (doi.org/10.1016/j.qs...) examining the degree to which the tsunami from the 8150 BP Storegga slide would have been able to reach the coasts of Denmark+Germany.
Screenshot of the first page of the paper "Propagation of the Storegga tsunami in the southeastern North Sea" by Steven J. Gibbons et al., Quaternary Research Advances (2026) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qsa.2026.100345 containing images of figures within the paper and the logos of projects that have supported the work performed.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
For all intents and purposes, my degrees focused on palaeoclimate were in essence degrees in history. Just not the history of people!
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
It is not just climate change, but also rural depopulation. The fields are reverting to forests, reducing the buffer between the bear habitat and towns.
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Luke Zoet @lzoet.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
New work on various physical properties of Antarctic tills we obtained from the Byrd Polar Rock Repository. Proves some useful baseline values for modeling. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
The mechanical, hydrological and mineralogic properties of 11 Antarctic tills | Journal of Glaciology | Cambridge Core
The mechanical, hydrological and mineralogic properties of 11 Antarctic tills - Volume 72
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I remember going up to someone who I assumed reviewed my paper (anonymously) and said "thanks for the nice review". He answered back, "you're welcome". After that exchange, I felt it was not worth bothering to be anonymous, because it was likely easily possible for someone to identify my writing.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I finally made it back to Uki City in Kumamoto, nearly 2 months after the severe earthquake. Since it has also been extremely dry, there are still visible cracks in the ground at the property I am maintaining. #earthquake
A picture showing a visible crack in the ground next to a building. This crack was caused by the Uki Earthquake, which was a magnitude 6.8, and an epicenter about 5 km from this location.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I went on a geotour of Kikaijima yesterday and took my guest to the Araki Fault. Looks like it is moving.
A picture of a road with a crack running through it where the fault is.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I suspect Google Scholar, as a loss leader for Google, is being blocked from using extra resources that would be available for other parts of Google. I have also been blocked a couple of times.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I remember years ago when there was the fight for net neutrality. It is going to be lost for a reason we did not expect - the prevalence of scraper bots will make it so only large companies can afford to have open websites. The independent web will be password locked.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Congrats Jun'ichi! I have already shown this to our intern student studying here.
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Jun'ichi Okuno @oknjnich.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
My paper has just been published! It focuses on Late Quaternary sea-level changes in Japan. x.gd/kXiwz
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 19/09/2026
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) shapes the Earth’s climate, but climate warming is weakening it. Marine sediments show that an AMOC slowdown during the last glacial period increased sediment discharge from South America. In PNAS: ow.ly/svNJ50ZP8IG
Core location (yellow dot) with major provenance geology, the Patagonian Ice Sheet margin, reconstructed ice flowlines, and modern ice fields.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
What is the base topography/ice sheet reconstruction used for this?
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Nagissa Mahmoudi @nagissa.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
We are hiring TWO new faculty members in Earth & Planetary Sciences at McGill! 🌎 We’re looking for new colleagues in: ⛏️ Critical Minerals for Sustainability 🌋 Solid Earth Processes If either is a good fit for you, please apply! Deadline is October 1. www.mcgill.ca/eps/about-us...
mcgill.ca
Employment Opportunities
Current Openings Join our extraordinary and diverse department! Tenure-track appointment in Critical Minerals for Sustainability Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University (www.m...
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Thank you for sharing this. Apparently the 3rd Edition of the Principles of Paleontology is freely downloadable. 🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This paper I blogged on yonks ago - “Comparison of Recently Proposed Causes of Climate Change” - has now been retracted. diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2023/08/17/y...
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com
Yet another eminent scientist
MDPI journals have become a clearing house for the kind of nonsense you can’t peddle through a reputable journal. Received on 23 June and published on the 3 August, the latest accretion of ba…
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Kelly Hereid @kellyhereid.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Post-seismic fluvial reorganization is really fast! Knickpoints migrating and new fluvial terraces forming within a year or two of the Noto Peninsula earthquake in 2024. www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Article
Open access
Published: 14 September 2026
Rapid fluvial response to meter-scale coseismic coastal uplift during the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake
Takayuki Takahashi, Takuro Ogura, Kotaro Iizuka, Yoshiya Iwasa, Yuichi S. Hayakawa, Tatsuto Aoki & Nobuhisa Matta 
Communications Earth & Environment volume 7, Article number: 742 (2026) Cite this article

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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I assume that the memory on the phone was too full and that slowed the responsiveness of the touchscreen. At no point did my Internet searches come up with this solution. The usefulness of the Internet is diminishing.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The touchscreen on my Samsung phone was not randomly not responding over the past few days. Locking the screen would fix the problem for a bit, but the problem would soon return. I figured out what caused it. I cleared the cache on Google Chrome (which was at >2 GB), and this no longer happened.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I was in Germany (as a postdoc) when that song came out. It was actually quite popular there!
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I spent 2 weeks driving around the Australian outback in a Hilux collecting seismometers. Those seismometers found a sedimentary basin that has no expression on the surface! I have not once used an LLM, except as a test to see how students were cheating.
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Howard Lee @hlee.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
"The United States is replacing every official latitude, longitude and height it publishes. Existing coordinates will move by as much as four meters, and the million survey marks in the ground will no longer be what the system is measured from" spacedaily.com/s-the-united...
spacedaily.com
The United States is replacing every official latitude, longitude and height it publishes, existing coordinates will move by as much as four meters, and the million survey marks in the ground will no ...
The National Geodetic Survey has spent years building a replacement for the reference system that fixes every published position in the country. New geodetic-control submissions into the old system st...
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
In the western Pacific, it has already reached the annual average amount of typhoons with 2 months to go in the season. There is a real chance to reach the record.
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Dr. Evan J. Gowan @evangowan.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Don't tell that to my wife who is going to the Renoir exhibit in Kumamoto today!
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Reposted by Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Dr Dan Shugar 🇨🇦 @watershedlab.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Hi 🧪⚒️ Geosky - please give a warm welcome to @chance-ronemus.bsky.social, brand new professor of sedimentary geology at @ucalgary.bsky.social. He’s looking for grad students, so you know what to do…
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