[ESS] Riley Culberg (Cornell)

“Ice, Water & Climate: Radar Remote Sensing of Englacial Water Dynamics on the Greenland Ice Sheet’

The Greenland Ice Sheet is currently one of the largest contributors to barystatic sea level rise, in part because of increased surface melting over the last two decades. However, quantifying how surface melting translates into mass loss is challenging, since at least half of all surface melt is permanently or temporarily retained inside the ice sheet in porous snow or fractured ice. In this talk, I will show how my research group uses radar remote sensing to image these englacial water systems and capture their evolving storage capacity and response to extreme weather events and long-term atmospheric warming. Our ice-sheet scale observations demonstrate that the combined effects of atmospheric forcing and ice dynamics produce significant regional diversity in Greenland’s englacial water systems, and by extension, a much more nuanced story about their role in ice sheet mass balance.

Earth Science Seminar —

Lecture portion of the EAPS graduate-level class 12.571, covering current research in geophysics, geology, geochemistry, and geobiology. All members of the MIT community are welcome to join for presentations by guest speakers, held approximately every two weeks during the term.

Contact: earth-science-seminar-info@mit.edu