IACS Early-Career Award Recipients 2019:
Dr. Doug Brinkerhoff, University of Montana, USA
Brinkerhoff, D., Truffer, M., & Aschwanden, A. (2017). Sediment transport drives tidewater glac-ier periodicity. Nature Communications, 8(1), 90. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00095-5
Citation for the paper by the Selection Panel:
Douglas Brinkerhoff and his colleagues have developed the first self-contained and consistent model of glacier-meltwater-sediment dynamics that explains the tidewater glacier cycle. Their ice dynamics model is coupled to models of subglacial water flow, erosion, and sediment transport and parameterised to match features of the Taku Glacier in S.E. Alaska. The model is able to reproduce cyclical slow advance and rapid retreat of a tidewater glacier without any external climate forcing. This provides significant new insight into understanding of the tidewater glacier cycle and will be of interest to a wide audience.
Dr. Denis Felikson, NASA Goddard Space Center, USA
Felikson, D., Bartholomaus, T., Catania, G., Korsgaard, N., Kjær, K., Morlighem, M., Noël, B., van den Broeke, M., Stearns, L., Shroyer, E., Sutherland, D., Nash, J., Inland thinning on the Greenland ice sheet controlled by outlet glacier geometry, Nature Geoscience, 2017 May;10(5):366. https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2934
Citation for the paper by the Selection Panel:
Denis Felikson and his co-authors show that the Péclet number, which is determined from high-resolution bedrock and surface topography data, can explain the competition between inland diffusion and advective resupply of ice in Greenland outlet glaciers with floating tongues. This provides a conceptually simple but powerful understanding of the disparate response of Greenland outlet glaciers to terminus perturbations. It also allows identification of the most vulnerable glaciers to climate forcing so that they can be targeted for further studies.
The 2019 evaluation panel: Ian Allison (Chair), Kumiko Azuma, Charles Fierz, Gwenn Flowers, Tómas Jóhannesson and Anais Orsi.