PAOC Colloquium – Natalya Gomez (McGill University)

The interactions between ice, sea level and the solid Earth in Antarctica — Marine sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet are prone to runaway retreat in a warming climate and have the potential to contribute significantly to sea-level change in coming centuries, but the extent and timing of ice loss remains uncertain. Constraining ice cover changes in Antarctica is challenging for a number of reasons. The solid Earth, water and ice systems are strongly linked, and interactions between these systems are difficult to model and measure as key processes are often buried under the ice and take place on a range of spaciotemporal scales. Modern measurements of these systems contain a large signal from glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) due to past ice mass changes, but the solid Earth’s rheological structure that governs this isostatic response is characterized by significant lateral variability in Antarctica. This talk will focus on the physics of and interactions between ice dynamics, sea level change and solid Earth deformation in Antarctica and their consequences for the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s contribution to past and future global sea-level changes.

About this series:

The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Contact paoc-colloquium-comm@mit.edu for more information and Zoom password.