Gordon Hamilton

Glaciologist Born: July 27, 1966; Died: October 24, 2016 DR GORDON HAMILTON, who has died aged 50, was a Dundee-born glaciologist who was killed doing the job he loved – trying to help save the planet. He was killed, probably instantaneously, when his snowmobile plunged down a hidden 100ft ice crevasse on the Ross archipelago of Antarctica during a field expedition.

Dr Harrison, a US-based university professor and father of two, was one of the world’s leading physical glaciologists, a climate scientist who studies the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica up close and personal, rather from behind a desk. This time it turned out just too personal.

His life’s goal was to try to predict what will happen when climate change gradually but inevitably melts the world’s massive landscapes of ice, raising sea levels that could conceivably submerge coastal cities, towns and communities around the globe. He was particularly concerned about coastal areas of his native Scotland, which he visited regularly, including for his 50th birthday in July, to see relatives, catch up with his beloved Dark Blues – Dundee Football Club – and nip over to Stornoway to catch a concert by his favourite band, Runrig.

“In Greenland, glaciers have accelerated their flow speeds,” he said in a recent interview, his Dundee accent somewhat Americanised by more than 20 years in the US. “They are like conveyor belts discharging icebergs into the ocean and thereby raising sea level. If the entire Greenland ice sheet alone were to slide into the ocean, it could cause a catastrophic seven-metre rise in sea levels. If even a small part of the Greenland ice sheet were to collapse, and we got a rise in sea level of one metre, that would have enormous implications for societies around the world, especially societies clustered around the coast.”

He may have appeared to some as a kind of Indiana Jones figure – he sometimes carried a rifle in Greenland in case he was attacked by polar bears – but in fact he was the opposite: he went about his work quietly, though acutely aware his work had vital implications for all of us and for infinite future generations.

On the day he died, Dr Harrison was part of a US team camped in a crevasselittered area of Antarctica known as the McMurdo shear zone, 125 miles long and three miles wide. They were working for the US Antarctic Programme managed by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Using GPS (Global Positioning System) and GPR (Ground-penetrating Radar), Dr Harrison was, ironically, trying to identify crevasses that could be filled in so heavier vehicles could haul supplies to their base at McMurdo station. They had already found and filled in several crevasses in the previous few days.

The Scot was alone on his snowmobile when he hit a crevasse hidden by loose snow and therefore invisible from his viewpoint. He and his team had been working on developing robots precisely to prevent human accidents. His colleagues said the 100ft plunge onto hard ice hundreds of feet thick would probably have killed him but that his snowmobile may also have crushed him. His body was hauled out relatively quickly and was returned to his wife and family at their home in Orono, Maine.

His colleagues said he had been welltrained in glacial safety and that his team were accompanied by experts familiar with the area. He had also been through many other dangerous field missions, including leaning out of helicopters above icy fjords in Greenland to drop GPR instruments that use radar pulses to take images of subsurfaces.

The aim was to promote public understanding of climate change science. He believed the world was still not well enough educated or even interested in the dangers climate change poses to us all, our children, grandchildren and future generations.

Gordon Stuart Hamilton was born in Dundee on July 27, 1966. He attended Ancrum Road Primary and Harris Academy, where his interest in geography was piqued and where he played rugby and the clarinet, his family said. “He loved the outdoors and relished undertaking challenges as part of a team.”

After graduating with a BSc (honours) in Geography at Aberdeen University in 1988, he studied at Cambridge University, gaining a PhD in glaciology in 1992. From 1992-93, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Norwegian Polar Research Institute in Oslo.

He married Fiona Sorensen, who had been born in Albany, New York State, but brought up in England, in the village of Bradford on Avon, west Wiltshire, and they had two sons Martin and Calum. In 1993, the family moved to the US, where Dr Hamilton became a research associate at the Byrd Polar Research Centre of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

In 2000, he moved to Orono, Maine, where he became an associate research professor at the School Of Earth And Climate Sciences and the university’s Climate Change Institute, for which he was working when he died.

“You knew if Gordon came into the tent, that things were going to be fun and pleasant,” said Paul Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute. “They were repeating an activity they had done many times before, but it’s a dangerous area and accidents happen. That’s exactly what this was. He was just a delightful person. He was super-friendly and could always be counted on to have a good sense of humour, even in sometimes stressful situations.

“It’s hard work. It’s very cold. Just even getting to and from these places is a lot of work and once you’re there, you’re in the field for weeks to months and it’s pretty much seven days a week.”

Susan Hunter, the president of Maine University, added: “The university has lost one of its leading scientists. Gordon’s glaciology research around the world — from Antarctica to Greenland — was second to none. He leaves a legacy as an outstanding scientist, and a caring mentor and well-known teacher to undergraduate and graduate students.”

In a 2013 video uploaded by the university, Dr Hamilton said: “I can’t think of a better job or another job I would rather be doing.”

Whether on the Maine campus or on a glacier, Dr Harrison’s heart remained in Scotland. “Every Christmas, the Broons or Oor Wullie annual made its way across the Atlantic,” his family said. “He even managed to take in some of the Oor Wullie Bucket Trail when he was in Dundee in the summer.”

Dr Harrison is survived by wife Fiona and their adult sons Martin and Calum.