Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

NSIDC Cryosphere Seminar

Wednesday June 14 2023 @ 11:00 am
to 12:00 pm

June

14

Wed

2023

11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Event Type
Seminar
Availability

Open to Public

Audience
  • CIRES employees
  • CU Boulder employees
  • General Public
  • NOAA employees
  • Science collaborators
  • NOTICE:  THIS EVENT IS CANCELED BECAUSE THE SPEAKER IS SICK.  
    Observations of Antarctic ice-shelf surface melt and hydrology, and implications for dynamics and break-up with Dr. Alison Banwell, CIRES
    About 75% of Antarctica is buttressed by floating ice shelves, which regulate the rate that grounded ice is lost to the ocean. Since the 1990s, many ice shelves have thinned, and in some cases disintegrated. With projected future increases in atmospheric temperatures, models suggest that surface meltwater production will rise non-linearly, and as a result, ice shelves will become more vulnerable to surface meltwater-induced breakup events. Focussing on the north George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, I will present field and satellite-based observations and model analysis, which reveal insights into the role surface meltwater on ice-shelf dynamics such as flexure and fracture.\
    Bio: Alison (Ali) Banwell is a glaciologist and Research Scientist in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), part of the University of Colorado Boulder. Broadly, her research focuses on monitoring and quantifying glacier, ice-sheet and ice-shelf melt, hydrology and dynamics using satellite remote-sensing, fieldwork and modeling. She received her Ph.D. in Glaciology from the University of Cambridge, and her B.Sc. from the University of Edinburgh, UK. She has led may field expeditions in Antarctica and has also conducted fieldwork on the Greenland Ice Sheet, Svalbard and the Himalaya.