The Cryosphere and Sea Level Rise
We employ an interdisciplinary approach to understand the interactions between ice and climate. We combine observations from remote sensing platforms and field data with numerical modeling to understand the physical processes controlling the response of the ice sheets to climate change, and to reduce the uncertainties of projections of the future contributions of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets to sea level rise regionally and globally over the coming centuries.
The GeoHazards & Environmental Resilience Lab (GERLab) investigates the processes that shape the stability and resilience of Earth’s surface in an era of accelerating environmental change. Our research seeks to understand how human and natural systems interact across scales from site-specific infrastructure vulnerabilities, watershed dynamics to regional and global compound coastal hazards.
Uses climate models to investigate Arctic and Antarctic sea ice change, focusing on the processes driving polar amplification and the impacts of cryosphere loss on the global climate system; and understand the causes and effects of our rapidly changing polar regions, with a focus on the role of individual climate forcers on the climate system. Leading the MethaneMIP project (methanemip.org) to investigate the climate and health benefits of methane mitigation according to the current generation of Earth System Models.
The fluid dynamics and thermodynamics of the global ocean, its role in coupled Earth System dynamics, and its implications for climate solutions (mitigation and adaptation).
Employs advanced multi-sensor geophysical techniques, including satellite time-variable gravity (GRACE), to study the mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets and glaciers worldwide
Uses satellite remote sensing techniques (interferometric SAR, radio echo sounding, laser altimetry, high resolution optical), airborne geophysical surveys (radar sounder, laser, gravity), field survey (GPR, GNSS, GPRI, multibeam sonar, CTD, S4, ocean AUVs) and ice sheet (ISSM, GlaDs), ocean (MITgcm) and atmospheric modeling to understand the evolution of ice sheets and their past, present and future contributions to sea level rise.
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