GeoSciMeg

As technology advances so to does our understanding of the planet. Penny How perfectly demonstrated this at a seminar I recently attended all about her PhD thesis.  Aims Using time-lapse photography Penny aimed to better understand the methods of dynamic alteration at the terminus of two tidewater glaciers (Fig 1). Figure 1 : Example of a Tidewater Glacier, Kronebreen in Svalbard, (Penny How's Blog) Note: Tidewater Glacier - Glaciers that flow into the ocean. Why So, why is it important to understand glacier processes? Climate change or more specifically global warming leads to ice loss from glaciers and this impacts global sea level rise. However, there is still a limited understanding of how glacial change will affect sea level rise especially within different emission scenarios. There are two main ways in which ice transfers from glacier to ocean: 1) High temperatures promote glacier melting and surface melt channels funnel water into the oceans. Melt...

It is well known many scientific discoveries have been made by accident and the work Martin Sharp explained in a recent seminar I attended is no exception. Martin and his team have been working on on the Devon Ice Cap (Figure 1) supported by the University of Alberta. They began their investigations due to the lack of research within Canadian glaciology and choose the Devon Ice Cap purely as it was the closest in location to the support bay. It therefore provided the easiest and cheapest access, a lucky chance that has paid off! Figure 1: Location of the Devon Ice Cap, Canada. Both in map (left) and satellite (right) image, covering an area of over 12,000km 2 , (Google Maps).  Martin presented his research findings in two parts concentrating first on the discovery of two hyper saline subglacial lakes under the Devon Ice Cap. Note:  Hypersaline subglacial lakes  – A hypersaline lake is a body of water with significant salt concentrations and therefore has a hig...