The primary goal of my research and of COSIM's land ice modeling team is to improve the predictive capability of land ice models and to incorporate those models within large-scale Earth System Models (ESMs). Our broader goal is to improve the capability of ESMs for estimating past, current, and future changes in global sea level resulting from changes in the volume of glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets.
The improvements we work on are in two main areas, (1) improved land ice model dynamics and physics and (2) true coupling between land ice, atmospheric, and oceanic models. To date, most large-scale ice sheet models rely on a simplified treatment of the dynamics and physics governing ice flow. While these models have the advantage of being computationally cheap, recent studies have shown that more complicated models are necessary to mimic the rapid changes on the ice sheets that are being observed today. My past research has focussed primarily on the first improvement noted above. The COSIM team lends considerable expertise to the second improvement, as well as to the broader fields of geophysical fluid dynamics and numerical and computational methods.
My interest in ice-flow modeling started with my PhD work at the University of Washington where I developed a two-dimensional, "full Stokes" ice-flow model, in order to better understand the potential for changes at the heads of ice streams and outlet glaciers. Prior to that, my experience and educational training were focussed on physical glaciology and in particular, understanding the dynamics of the West Antarctic ice sheet through field work and remote-sensing based studies.
I first became interested in studying glaciers after I spent a summer on the Juneau Icefield in Alaska and British Columbia as an undergraduate major in geology. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to occasionaly take part in field work at various places on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
