Monday, February 3, 2025 11am to 12pm
About this Event
Presented by: Joanna Millstein, Colorado School of Mines
Abstract: Glaciers deform through the driving force of their own weight and display dramatic responses to both external forcing, such as changes in climate, and internal forcing like variations in stress. Determining the response of glaciers and ice sheets to such forcing was, until very recently, limited by sparse observations and data across the cryosphere. The rapid expansion of pertinent and available satellite-based data has created an opportunity to understand the processes contributing to dynamic change through melting and calving, the fracture of icebergs. I leverage the expanding volume of satellite observations to develop and refine models of ice flow and ice fracture through mechanical and statistical frameworks. In this talk, I will discuss a modern reexamination of the constitutive law for glacier ice and new parameterizations for large ice fractures. These observational studies improve higher-order ice sheet models, enabling a more complete view of ice sheet change. This research showcases the power of quantifying and calibrating the processes of ice flow and ice fracture to understand ice sheet stability and to assess future projections of glaciers and ice sheets in a changing climate.
Host Mike Ritzwoller
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