(05Dec2025) Grace Sherwood Winer’s presentation will be on current ice conditions in Svalbard and Iceland. These areas are subject to rapidly melting ice. Grace will take you there to see the ice and the work of ice. In the volcanic island of Iceland, fire and ice interact as volcanoes erupt, sometimes beneath the ice. We’ll look at the sometimes-violent results of that and also mountains that have formed under ice and what we can learn from them. If you want more information on Svalbard and Iceland prior to my presentation, and I hope that you will, please see attached links regarding geography, geology, and topics you may want to think about and discuss at our meeting.
Grace, after studying midwifery in London, served in the USAF Nurse Corp during the Vietnam War. Changing careers, she received her BS and MS in geology from Montana State University. She did her thesis in the Pribilof Islands, a part of the Bering Sea Basalt Province. Since 2005 Grace has worked on expedition ships as a geologist and naturalist on the ships’ Expedition Teams, sailing to remote areas around the North Pacific and North Atlantic.
Grace recommends the NASA article that a discusses “a persistent heat dome last summer creating unprecedented melting of Earth’s northernmost glaciers.” https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153189/svalbard-melts
