Peter Clift

Infobox Scientist


image_width = 150px
name = Peter Dominic Clift
birth_date = 26th August 1966
birth_place = London, United Kingdom
death_date =
death_place =
residence = UK
field = Earth sciences, geophysics, oceanography
work_institution = University of Aberdeen, University of Bremen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chinese Academy of Science
alma_mater = University of Oxford, University of Edinburgh

Peter Clift is a British marine geologist and geophysicist specializing in the geology of Asia and the western Pacific. He is currently Kilgour Professor of Geology at the University of Aberdeen, where he has been since 2004.

cientific Research

Clift is a geologist who applies marine geophysical, geochemical and classical geological methods to understand the history of geological basins over the last 50 million years. In particular, he works on understanding the relationships between mountain building in the Himalaya and Tibet Plateau and the intensification of the Asian monsoon. Clift has worked on evolution the Indus River, which he dated to being older than 45 million years. He has proposed that the Indus captured the four major rivers of the Punjab region into its basin after around 5 million years ago. Prior to this time the Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Jellum Rivers would have flowed eastwards into the Ganges River, not westwards into the Indus. He is now working on a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust to understand the impact that the changing courses of rivers in western South Asia may have had on the development of civilizations, most notably the Indus Valley Civilization. He is testing the hypothesis that the mythical Sarasvati River used to flow from the region of Chandigarh in Punjab (India) but ceased to flow after 4000 years ago, possibly due to weakening of the monsoon.

Clift has also used the sediment records of the South China Sea to propose a start to the monsoon after 24 million years ago, compared to the more popular 8 million year age. He is involved with efforts to have the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program collect samples in the Asian marginal seas for monsoon studies. Clift also works with the tectonics and nature of mass recycling in subduction zones. Prior to Aberdeen Clift worked for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as a research scientist (1995-2004), was a staff scientist with the Ocean Drilling Program at Texas A&M University (1993-1995) and was a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh (1990-1993) sponsored by BP and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Education

Clift took his Bachelor's degree at the University of Oxford, where he was a student at Worcester College. He completed his Ph.D. on the geology of southern Greece in 1990 at University of Edinburgh.

Personal life

Peter Clift grew up in Ware, Hertfordshire where he attended St. Edmund's College, Ware. His father, Donald W. Clift, also a native of Ware, worked for BP, including in Beijing, China for five years. His mother Margaret T. Clift (nee Feighan) is from Cullyhanna, Northern Ireland. In 1994 Clift married Chryseis O. Fox in Bryan, Texas. Fox is originally from New York City and Miami and works at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a book designer. They are both ardent animal lovers and keepers of African Grey Parrots.

Awards

*2005, Appointed as visiting professor, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou.
*2005, Murchison Fund, Geological Society of London, UK
*2005–2007, Humboldt Foundation Fellow, University of Bremen, Germany
*2004, Visiting lecturer, University of Tokyo, Japan
*2003, Visiting lecturer, National Central University and Academia Sinica, Taiwan
*2001, Swiney Trust invited visiting lecturer, University of Edinburgh, UK
*1987, Worcester College, University of Oxford, Prize for Excellence

Major recent publications

He has published 77 peer-reviewed papers listed in Web of Science.

The most cited of them are Robertson AHF, Clift PD, Degnan PJj, et al., "Paleogeographic And Paleotectonic Evolution Of The Eastern Mediterranean Neotethys "Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology" 87 (1-4): 289-343 Oct 1991, cited 128 times
and
Larsen HC, Saunders AD, Clift PD, Et Al., "7-Million Years Of Glaciation In Greenland" Science 264 (5161): 952-955 May 13 1994 Times Cited: 69

Clift, P.D. and Vannucchi, P., 2004. Controls on tectonic accretion versus erosion in subduction zones: Implications for the origin and recycling of the continental crust." Reviews of Geophysics," 42, RG2001, doi:10.1029/2003RG000127.Times Cited: 32

Others include:

Clift, P.D. and Blusztajn, J., 2005. Reorganization of the western Himalayan river system after five million years ago. "Nature", 438, 1001–1003, doi:10.1038/nature04379.

Clift, P.D., Shimizu, N., Layne, G., Gaedicke, C., Schlüter, H.U., Clark, M. and Amjad, S., 2001. Development of the Indus Fan and its significance for the erosional history of the western Himalaya and Karakoram. "Geological Society of America Bulletin", 113, 1039–1051.

External links

Peter Clift's web page [http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~wpg008/PChomepage.html]