Instrument Highlight: Phase-sensitive radar (ApRES), Filchner Ice Shelf
Research teams use phase-sensitive radars for determining ice shelf basal melt rates. Data is used to enhance climate models.
The ApRES instruments yield time series of ice shelf thickness change at precisions of ~1 mm. Measurements taken over a 10-day period will generate information about derived melt rate of a few cm per annum or better. The is used improve the performance of ocean models.
TIME blog 2018-2019
Thwaites Interdisciplinary Margin Evolution (TIME) is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Environment Research Council (NERC) to study the Eastern Shear Margin of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. The project is trying to better understand the response of the glacier to changes in climate and the contributions to sea level rise of this collapsing glacier.
See the blog at https://studyearth.wixsite.com/utepthwaites
Ted Scambos is a Senior Research Scientist at the Earth Science Observation Center of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. His research interests include glaciology; remote sensing of the poles; climate change effects on the cryosphere; Antarctic history; geochemistry; and planetary science.
Scambos is a lead principal investigator for the Science Coordination Office of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (SCO project). He and his team will integrate ITGC efforts for efficiency and effectiveness, foster wider scientific collaboration, and deliver crucial science outcomes to key stakeholders.
Scambos is also a co-investigator on the TARSAN project.
Professor David Vaughan was Emeritus Fellow and the former director of science at British Antarctic Survey with responsibility for the strategic development and excellence in scientific output of the Science teams employed by BAS. In 2017 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to science.
Vaughan took the role as lead UK principal investigator for the Science Coordination Office (SCO) at the start of the ITGC program. He and his team integrate ITGC efforts for efficiency and effectiveness, foster wider scientific collaboration, and deliver crucial science outcomes to key stakeholders. After his retirement from BAS in 2021, as of spring 2022, Vaughan became Emeritus Principal Investigator for the program.
Hilmar Gudmundsson is a professor of glaciology and extreme environments at the University of Northumbria. His specific focus is on the future evolution of glaciers and ice sheets in a warming world.
Gudmundsson is a lead Principal Investigator on the PROPHET project. He and his team will combine existing computer simulations of ice and ocean near the Thwaites Glacier, to improve models to reduce the uncertainty in the projection of the glacier’s behavior and subsequent contribution to sea level rise in the future.
Mathieu Morlighem is a professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College. His research interests are focused on better understanding and explaining ongoing changes in the cryosphere, as well as reducing uncertainties in the ice sheet contribution to sea level rise using numerical modeling. He is a co-founder of the Ice Sheet System Model, a new generation numerical model of ice sheet flow.
Morlighem is a lead Principal Investigator on the PROPHET project. He and his team will combine existing computer simulations of ice and ocean near the Thwaites Glacier, to improve models to reduce the uncertainty in the projection of the glacier’s behavior and subsequent contribution to sea level rise in the future.
Jeremy Bassis is an associate professor at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the complicated array of dynamic processes affecting ice sheet and glacier evolution, and how those ice bodies respond climate change—past, present, and future. One of the ice sheet processes that his research targets is improving our understanding of the mechanics of iceberg calving, a process that accounts for up to two-thirds of the mass discharged from the cryosphere to the ocean. This process has implications for century-scale sea level rise, and introduces a "fast" timescale into the response of the ice sheets to climate change, one that is not accounted for in numerical models.
Bassis is a lead Principal Investigator on the DOMINOS team. He and his team will use computer modelling to examine calving and associated processes that could cause the rapid retreat and collapse of the glacier.
Doug Benn Chair of Environmental Change at St Andrews University. His interest in glaciers started in his teens as he hiked and climbed in the Scottish Highlands. He followed both climbing and scientific interests while pursuing his PhD on the Younger Dryas glaciers on the Isle of Skye. He has studied glaciers in Norway, Iceland, the Alps, North and South America, and the Himalaya.
Benn is a lead Principal Investigator on the DOMINOS team. He and his team will use computer modelling to examine calving and associated processes that could cause the rapid retreat and collapse of the glacier.
