Crater through glacier produced during the 12 August
1970 volcanic eruption on Deception Island, Antarctica.
Photo by Henry Brecker
Ice stream and mountains, Antarctica
Photo by Paul Mayewski
We investigate the mass balance and dynamic of present-day glaciers, with emphasis on the large ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland, and we model advance and retreat of former ice sheets during glaciation cycles of the Quaternary Ice Age. Institute glaciologists seek answers to glaciological questions that impact on the larger global environment. Examples are:
- How do glaciers, especially the large ice sheets, contribute to changes in global sea level?
- Can rapid changes in the size and shape of ice sheets trigger rapid changes in climate?
- Are rapid changes in glaciers, especially in ice sheets, inherent in their dynamics or must be triggered by external changes?
- What can glacier landforms tell us about the climate changes that initiated and terminated the last glaciation, and that will initiate the next one?
- What can ice core chemistry tell us about changes in the Earth's climate over time?
Faculty
Jim Fastook, Gordon Hamilton, Roger Hooke, Terry Hughes, and Paul Mayewski.
Research
Mass Balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet using precision GPS measurements
Gordon Hamilton
Studying Byrd Glacier as a rock-floored ice stream ending as a calvng ice shelf
Terence Hughes, Roger LeB. Hooke, James Fastook
Did the Laurentide Ice Sheet Control Abrupt Climate Change?
Terence Hughes, James Fastook
Jakobshavns Isbrae, West Greenland in 1986.
Photo by Richard Cameron
Simulating the behaviour of past and present ice sheets by computer modeling.
James Fastook
Relating glacial geomorphology to the dynamics of glaciers and ice sheets.
Roger Hooke
Studying ice streams as the major conduits for discharging ice from ice sheets.
Terence Hughes.
USITASE Glacio Chemistry
Paul Mayewski
Books
TheIce Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change Paul Mayewski, Frank White: University Press of New England (2002).
The Last Great Ice Sheets, G.H. Denton and T.J. Hughes, editors, Wiley-Interscience, 1981.
Principles of Glacier Mechanics, R.LeB. Hooke, Prentice-Hall, 1998 (Ind edition to be published by Cambridge Univ. Press). Ice Sheets, T.J. Hughes, Oxford, 1998.
Contributions to Science
Determining mass-balance changes in space and time for present-day ice sheets.
Gordon Hamilton
Long-term collaborations with Swedish and Russian glacial geologists, geomorphologists, and glaciologists, including student exchanges.
Participation in major interdisciplinary research projects such as:
- CLIMAP (Climate: Long-range Investigation, Mapping and Prediction) during the International Decade of Ocean Exploration, 1970-1980
- WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet Initiative), an ongoing glaciological program of the National Science Foundation
- ITASE (International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition), an international study of mass balance and climate records now and in recent centuries over the Antarctic Ice Sheet.