The Nordic Palaeo Alliance (NORPALL) is a collaborative group of early career Earth science researchers with the ambition of improving age constraints on glacier landforms, sediments, and climate archives within the Nordic region. Geochronologically constraining or dating glacial deposits and stratigraphic archives facilitates i) the establishment of rates and magnitudes of past geological, environmental and climatic changes, ii) the characterization of response time and (a-)synchronicity of ice margins, iii) the correlation of glacier behavior with forcing mechanisms and iv) input data to enhance numerical (icesheet/glacial isostatic adjustment; GIA) modeling.
The Nordic Lands are linked through a shared Quaternary history; however, each region hosts its own unique glacial and climate archives. Understanding the rates and style of past deglaciation is critical for projecting future change. Palaeo-investigations which provide quantitative / geochronological constraints are increasingly important given today´s (anthropogenic driven) climate change and its direct effect on the cryosphere and global sea level. NORPALL fosters the development of new geochronological approaches for reconstructing the past to constrain projections of the future.
The Nordic regions have a long and strong history of collaborative Quaternary research networks (PONAM, QUEEN, APEX, PASTgateways, PalaeoARC, ARCPaC), however until now none of these networks have been run by and specifically for early career researchers (ECRs). The Nordic Palaeo Alliance is guided by a steering committee which is composed of a core group of eight ECRs (employed at five research institutions) from Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. This group has no active collaboration of funded research project.
The primary goals of NORPALL are to i) establish and unite a community of like-minded early career researchers who will ii) target outstanding research questions facing Nordic Quaternary Science and ultimately, iii) promote and advance Quaternary research focusing on chronological tools within the Nordic countries by training future scientists. NORDPALL´s objectives will be met through a variety of techniques including quarterly steering group meetings, geochronology focused workshops paired with Nordic laboratories, graduate-level summer schools enhanced by collaborating mentor-senior scientists and social events paired with international scientific conferences (e.g. Nordic Geological Winter Meeting & ARCPaC).
