Posts

Dr. Christian Wild is a postdoc in the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, USA. He is an ice-scientist who focuses on Antarctic ice shelves and their interaction with ocean tides. Within the TARSAN project, he will collect geophysical measurements of ice thickness, internal layers in the snow pack and rates of firn compaction to integrate them with air- and space borne measurements. His goal is to gain a more regional understanding of ice-shelf stability in the Amundsen Sea. Christian also spends a big part of his life hanging by his fingertips. He is a keen rock climber, loves chocolate and shares his adventures on his online blog.

Anna Wåhlin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1799-6476) is a Professor of Physical Oceanography at the Department of Marine Sciences, University of Gothenburg. Her research focus is in the field of Polar Oceanography, mostly in the Southern Ocean. Specifically, her research investigates several aspects of dynamics of polar seas, including physical oceanography, ocean circulation, topographic effects, ice shelf melt processes and air-sea-ice interaction. When Wåhlin was appointed professor in 2015, she became Sweden’s first female full Professor of Oceanography. She is project leader for Sweden’s national AUV infrastructure funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. Between 2015 and 2017, Wåhlin was co-chair of the joint Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and SCOR initiative Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS). She is an Associate Editor of the journal Advances in Polar Science and member of the IOW scientific advisory board (2016-2019). Her awards include being a Fulbright Scholar (2007-2008), receiving a Crafoord Research Stipend from the Swedish Royal Academy of Science (2010), being a SCAR visiting professor (2013) and receiving the Albert Wallin science prize from the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences (KKVS) in Gothenburg 2018.

Dr Rob Hall is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is a physical oceanographer who uses observations and numerical model simulations to research shelf sea and deep ocean fluid dynamics. As part of TARSAN Team, he will use autonomous underwater vehicles to diagnose turbulent mixing rates and the flow of water masses into and out of the ice-shelf cavities.

Dr. Martin Truffer is a Professor in the Department of Physics and the Geophysical Institute at University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA. He is a geophysicist interested in subglacial processes and ice-ocean interaction, using a variety of geophysical tools. As part of TARSAN Team, he will be responsible for drilling boreholes through the Dotson and Crosson Iceshelves, which will be used to retrieve sediment cores and install through-ice ocean moorings.

Guilherme is tagging Weddell and elephant seals to obtain important information about the water in the eastern Amundsen Sea. The tags collect conductivity, temperature and depth (i.e., CTD profiles) when seals are diving, potentially in places and during periods when research may be very difficult, such as close to Thwaites Glacier during winter. With a background in veterinary medicine, ecology and statistics, Guilherme is interested in the environmental changes that are affecting Thwaites Glacier and, potentially, also affecting the animals living around in the Amundsen Sea.

The third General Assembly meeting for the ITGC is planned as a virtual meeting 15-18 June 2020.
ITGC is a co-convener of the European Geophysical Union's session Ice-Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions in West Antarctica and the Weddell Sea Sector on Wednesday, 6 May 2020.
MELT, TARSAN, GHC, THOR, and TIME teams departed for McMurdo Station in early November 2019, and deployed to the field in December 2019. 

Iain Wheel is a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews. He will be applying Elmer/Ice and HiDEM models to investigate ice shelf and ice-cliff [in]stability.

Jonathan Adams is a PhD student and a researcher on the GHC project.