Congratulations to Yixi Zheng, recipient of the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS) Early Career Scientist Prize! Yixi, from the University of East Anglia, UK, and a researcher with ITGC's TARSAN project, received the award for her paper:
Zheng, Y., Stevens, D. P., Heywood, K. J., Webber, B. G. M., and Queste, B. Y. (2022). Reversal of ocean gyres near ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea caused by the interaction of sea ice and wind, The Cryosphere 16, 3005–3019, https:// doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-3005-2022
In choosing Yixi for this award, the selection panel wrote: Analyzing ship-based observations, the authors discover a hitherto unknown gyre close to the Thwaites Ice Shelf in Antarctica, which rotates in the opposite direction as an adjacent gyre close to Pine Island Glacier despite similar wind forcing. They then introduce a novel theory and use an elegant idealized numerical model to demonstrate that gyres adjacent to ice shelves can change strength and even direction depending on the angle between the sea ice edge and the wind conditions. The findings provide new insights into the complex interactions between atmosphere, sea-ice, ocean and ice shelves potentially directly affecting ice sheet behavior.
In addition to Yixi Zheng, this year's award winner was Veronica Tollenaar. IACS received 23 nominations for this award.
