Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 17 minutes ago
Climate change has become a major political issue, but few understand how climate has changed in the past and the forces that drive climate. Most people don’t know that fifty million years ago there were breadfruit trees and crocodiles on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, or that 18,000 years ago there was a mile-thick glacier on Manhattan and a continuous belt of winter sea ice extending south to Cape Hatteras. The History of Climate provides context of our current climate debate and fundamental insight how the climate works.
Dr. Daniel Britt is the Pegasus Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He was educated in geology at the University of Washington and Brown University. He has had a varied career including service in the US Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing before going into planetary sciences. He has served on the science teams of 4 NASA missions to Mars, comets and asteroids. He currently does research on the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, the Moon, and Mars and is the director of the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS). He has served as the Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society and the Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America. Honors include 8 NASA Achievement Awards and an asteroid named after him; 4395 DanBritt.
This lecture is part of the IHMC Evening Lecture series.
ihmc.us/life/evening_lectures
Climate change has become a major political issue, but few understand how climate has changed in the past and the forces that drive climate. Most people don’t know that fifty million years ago there were breadfruit trees and crocodiles on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, or that 18,000 years ago there was a mile-thick glacier on Manhattan and a continuous belt of winter sea ice extending south to Cape Hatteras. The History of Climate provides context of our current climate debate and fundamental insight how the climate works.
Dr. Daniel Britt is the Pegasus Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the Department of Physics, University of Central Florida. He was educated in geology at the University of Washington and Brown University. He has had a varied career including service in the US Air Force as an ICBM missile launch officer and an economist for Boeing before going into planetary sciences. He has served on the science teams of 4 NASA missions to Mars, comets and asteroids. He currently does research on the physical properties and mineralogy of asteroids, comets, the Moon, and Mars and is the director of the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS). He has served as the Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society and the Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America. Honors include 8 NASA Achievement Awards and an asteroid named after him; 4395 DanBritt.
This lecture is part of the IHMC Evening Lecture series.
ihmc.us/life/evening_lectures
