Science and Engineering at The University of Edinburgh |
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Section Contents
- Andrew Wright
- Svalbard Glaciers
- Antarctic subglacial drainage
- ICECAP
- Teaching
Svalbard GlaciersI studied for my PhD at the Bristol Glaciology Centre, part of the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. The aim of the project was to investigate the importance of surface meltwater refreezing as an accumulation process on glaciers in the North-European maritime high Arctic. The work combined field-based and modelling studies to evaluate the different ways in which refreezing is incorporated into the glacier surface energy/mass budget models which are used to estimate the amount of meltwater run-off from the worlds glaciers. PhD thesis: 'The Impact of Meltwater Refreezing on the Mass Balance of a High Arctic Glacier'  The photos on this page are from a glacier called Midre Lovenbreen in northwest Spitsbergen. At nearly 80N the research station of Ny Alesund near the foot of this glacier is the most northerly permanently inhabited settlement in the world. Midre Lovenbreen was the site for my fieldwork in 2002, this involved measuring the radiative components of the glacier surface energy budget and using thermistor strings buried in the snow to investigate the rate of meltwater percolation and to locate sites of refreezing. Numerical modelling can be used to make predictions of the future behaviour of glaciers such as Midre Lovenbreen given estimates of how the climate might change in the future. We can determine whether such models are accurate by verifying their predictions against field measurements. An important aspect of numerical modelling is the ability to test the sensitivity of systems to variations in parameters, to do this we do not necessarily need to have a very good idea of the 'true' values of such parameters. see: Wright, A.P., J.L. Wadham, M.J. Siegert, A. Luckman and J. Kohler 2005 Modelling the impact of superimposed ice on the mass balance of an Arctic glacier under scenarios of future climate change. Annals of Glaciology 42: 277-283. Wright, A.P., J.L.Wadham, M.J. Siegert, A. Luckman, J. Kohler and A.M. Nuttall 2007 Modelling the refreezing of meltwater as superimposed ice on a high Arctic glacier: A comparison of approaches. Journal of Geophysical Research 112 (F04016) doi:10.1029/2007JF000818.  |