Hartmut Heinrich is a German marine geologist and climatologist. Dr. Heinrich is Head of the Physics Department at the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

. He is actively involved in GOOS

GOOS

GOOS is a global system for sustained observations of the ocean comprising the oceanographic component of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems...

 (Global Ocean Observing System). In 1988 he described the suddenly occurring climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

s in the history of the earth, which have since been named after him, Heinrich event

Heinrich event

Heinrich events, first described by marine geologist Hartmut Heinrich, occurred during the last glacial period, or "ice age". During such events, armadas of icebergs broke off from glaciers and traversed the North Atlantic. The icebergs contained rock mass eroded by the glaciers, and as they...

s.

Heinrich studied geology at the University of Göttingen and attained a doctorate at the University of Kiel

University of Kiel

The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...

 in marine geology

Marine geology

Marine geology or geological oceanography involves geophysical, geochemical, sedimentological and paleontological investigations of the ocean floor and coastal margins...

. The discovery which was named for him, Heinrich events - periods of substantial ice output of the continental ice sheets, by which the global climate is strongly affected - were subsequently confirmed by investigations of ice core

Ice core

An ice core is a core sample that is typically removed from an ice sheet, most commonly from the polar ice caps of Antarctica, Greenland or from high mountain glaciers elsewhere. As the ice forms from the incremental build up of annual layers of snow, lower layers are older than upper, and an ice...

 samples from the Greenland

Greenland

Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

 ice sheet

Ice sheet

An ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km² , thus also known as continental glacier...

 by the Greenland ice core project

Greenland ice core project

The Greenland Ice Core Project was a multinational European research project, organised through the European Science Foundation. Funding came from 8 nations , and from the European Union...

 (GRIP). Dr. Heinrich warns of the global warming

Global warming

Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

consequences which could occur precipitously and of far larger effects on navigation and population.

Selected publications

• H. Heinrich: Origin and consequences of cyclic ice rafting in the northeast Atlantic Ocean during the past 130,000 years. Quaternary Research 29, pp. 142–152, 1988
• G.C. Bond, H. Heinrich, W.S. Broecker, L. Labeyrie, J. McManus, J. Andrews, S. Huon, R. Jantschik, S. Clasen, C. Simet, K. Tedesco, M. Klas, G. Bonani and S. Ivy: Evidence for massive discharges of icebergs into the North Atlantic ocean during the last glacial period. Nature, 360, pp. 245–249, 1992