Icy Seas: Polar Oceanography by ship, snowmobile, and submarine robotics
At present, considerable uncertainty surrounds the details of how Earth’s ice sheets interact with the surrounding ocean. This inhibits the reliability of future sea level rise projections from ice sheet models, which range from 8 to 75 cm by 2100 based on contributions from Greenland and Antarctica. Hence, there is a pressing need to uncover the oceanic processes occurring at ice sheet margins through direct observations, in order to improve their representation in large-scale models. However, harsh climate conditions, expansive sea ice and ice shelves, and the overall remote nature the Arctic and Antarctic complicate the logistics needed to acquire these in situ data. My research seeks to navigate these barriers by using a range of platforms to collect observational data, including ships, snowmobiles, and underwater robotics. In this seminar I will discuss how my scientific interests in estuarine and coastal oceanography meld with small-scale mixing dynamics to better constrain the critical ice-ocean processes occurring at ice sheet margins. These topics hold relevance for how coastal communities will respond to rising seas in the coming decades.
Bio: Peter Washam is a research scientist in the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science. His research is a hybrid between physical oceanography and glaciology, focused on interactions between the ocean and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. This centers on the oceanic (and atmospheric) processes that drive melt at the ice sheet margins, and the fate of the resultant meltwater. He uses a combination of observational tools to conduct his research but has focused primarily on underwater robotics recently.