Wed 23 Apr 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Yingpu Xiahou, University of Auckland
- Wednesday 23 April 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 330b.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Wed 09 Apr 15:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Claire Parrott, University of British Columbia
- Wednesday 09 April 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 2.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Wed 19 Mar 14:00: Tipping points of the Ross and Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelves: how worried should we be?
Ocean models consistently project that with sufficient climate change forcing, the Ross and Filchner-Ronne ice shelf cavities could abruptly transition from a cold state to a warm state. Crossing these tipping points would have profound consequences for basal melt rates, buttressing of ice streams, and ultimately sea level rise. Here we analyse over 14,000 years of “overshoot” simulations with the UK Earth System Model, which includes a fully coupled Antarctic Ice Sheet. As the climate warms, stabilises at different temperatures, and cools again, we simulate many examples of the cavities tipping and recovering. We find that global warming thresholds of around 3.5°C and 5°C tip the Ross and Filchner-Ronne respectively. We also find evidence of hysteresis: the climate must cool back down beyond the tipping thresholds in order for each cavity to return to its original cold state. Even if the oceanography recovers, the ice sheet does not: sea level contribution from each catchment takes centuries even to stabilise, and the ice does not begin to regrow on this timescale. Therefore, if the Ross or Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelves cross tipping points, the resulting sea level rise will be effectively irreversible.
- Speaker: Kaitlin Naughten
- Wednesday 19 March 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 2.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Wed 26 Mar 15:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Gian Giacomo Navarra, Princeton University
- Wednesday 26 March 2025, 15:30-16:30
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 330b.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Wed 12 Mar 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Katie Lowry, British Antarctic Survey
- Wednesday 12 March 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 2.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Wed 26 Feb 15:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Benjamin Taylor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
- Wednesday 26 February 2025, 15:30-16:30
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 1.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
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Mon 17 Mar 13:00: Volcanic fissure localisation and lava delta formation: Modelling of volcanic flows undergoing rheological evolution
In this talk, I will present two volcanologically motivated modelling problems. In the first, I will detail how thermoviscous localisation of volcanic eruptions is influenced by the irregular geometry of natural volcanic fissures. Fissure eruptions typically start with the opening of a linear fissure that erupts along its entire length, following which activity localises to one or more isolated vents within a few hours or days. Previous work has proposed that localisation can arise through a thermoviscous fingering instability driven by the strongly temperature dependent viscosity of the rising magma. I will show that, even for relatively modest variations of the fissure width, a non-planar geometry supports strongly localised steady states, in which the wider parts of the fissure host faster, hotter flow, and the narrower parts of the fissure host slower, cooler flow. This geometrically-driven localisation differs from the spontaneous thermoviscous fingering localisation observed in planar geometries, and is potentially more potent for parameter values relevant to volcanic fissures.
The second problem concerns lava delta formation. A lava delta arises when a volcanic lava flow enters a body of water, extending the pre-eruption shoreline via the creation of new, relatively flat land. A combination of cooling induced rheological changes and the reduction in gravitational driving forces controls the morphology and evolution of the delta. I will present shallow-layer continuum models for this process, highlighting how different modes of delta formation manifest in different late-time behaviours. In particular, I will derive a steady state shoreline extent when the delta formation is driven only by buoyancy forces, and late time similarity solutions for the evolution of the shoreline when the viscous lava fragments and forms `hyaloclastic’ debris on contact with the water.
- Speaker: Jesse Taylor-West (Bath)
- Monday 17 March 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: MR3, CMS.
- Series: Quantitative Climate and Environmental Science Seminars; organiser: Dr Kasia Warburton.
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Mon 03 Mar 13:00: Intensified shelf break exchange through submarine canyons: upwelling, internal tides, and turbidity currents
Submarine canyons are a ubiquitous feature of continental margins worldwide and their complex geomorphology controls several physical processes that intensify the exchange of water masses, nutrients and carbon across the shelf break – from shallow shelf seas to the deep open ocean, and vice versa. In this seminar, I will illustrate three important shelf break exchange processes that are strongly controlled by submarine canyon geomorphology and discuss their interdisciplinary impacts. I will then highlight some previous and current research into these processes, applied to an exemplar submarine canyon close to the UK, and introduce two exciting upcoming projects that will further elucidate our understanding.
- Speaker: Rob Hall (UEA)
- Monday 03 March 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: MR3, CMS.
- Series: Quantitative Climate and Environmental Science Seminars; organiser: Bethan Wynne-Cattanach.
Wed 12 Feb 13:00: Short-term, high-resolution sea ice forecasting with diffusion model ensembles
Sea ice plays a key role in Earth’s climate system and exhibits significant seasonal variability as it advances and retreats across the Arctic and Antarctic every year. The production of sea ice forecasts provides great scientific and practical value to stakeholders across the polar regions, informing shipping, conservation, logistics, and the daily lives of inhabitants of local communities. Machine learning offers a promising means by which to develop such forecasts, capturing the nonlinear dynamics and subtle spatiotemporal patterns at play as effectively—if not more effectively—than conventional physics-based models. In particular, the ability of deep generative models to produce probabilistic forecasts which acknowledge the inherent stochasticity of sea ice processes and represent uncertainty by design make them a sensible choice for the task of sea ice forecasting. Diffusion models, a class of deep generative models, present a strong option given their state-of-the-art performance on computer vision tasks and their strong track record when adapted to spatiotemporal modelling tasks in weather and climate domains. In this talk, I will present preliminary results from a IceNet-like [1] diffusion model trained to autoregressively forecast daily, 6.25 km resolution sea ice concentration in the Bellingshausen Sea along the Antarctic Peninsula. I will also touch on the downstream applications for these forecasts, from conservation to marine route planning, which are under development at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). I welcome ideas and suggestions for improvement and look forward to discussing opportunities for collaboration within and beyond BAS .
[1] Andersson, Tom R., et al. “Seasonal Arctic sea ice forecasting with probabilistic deep learning.” Nature communications 12.1 (2021): 5124. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25257-4
- Speaker: Andrew McDonald, University of Cambridge and British Antarctic Survey
- Wednesday 12 February 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: BAS Seminar Room 2; https://ukri.zoom.us/j/96472472041.
- Series: British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series; organiser: Dr Birgit Rogalla.
Fri 21 Feb 17:30: Eve's Byte of the Apple
Abstract:
In “Eve’s Byte of the Apple”, Sandi Toksvig will be taking an alternative look at the evolution of information, at how the knowledge of women and about women is encoded, and what comes from those codes. Since 2023 Sandi has been a Bye-Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge working on The Mappa Mundi Project, creating a global interactive digital platform telling women’s stories worldwide. In this lecture, she considers how the evolution of information technology has been historically biased against women, continuing that bias to the present day. Most importantly, she asks what might be done about it.
Biography:
Sandi Toksvig was born in Copenhagen, Denmark but grew up travelling the world. After graduating with a first-class degree from Cambridge, Sandi began a career on stage, television and radio. As a political and women’s rights activist, she was co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party in 2015. Sandi has written stage plays, journalism and over 25 books including fact and fiction for both children and adults. Her latest novel Friends of Dorothy was published in 2024.
- Speaker: Sandi Toksvig OBE
- Friday 21 February 2025, 17:30-18:30
- Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
- Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.
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Wed 12 Feb 17:30: Climate-ice sheet interactions in the long-term past and their importance for the long-term future
The simulation of the last deglaciation (about 20.000 years before present to present) represents a hitherto unsolved challenge for comprehensive state-of-the-art climate models. During my presentation, I will introduce our novel coupled atmosphere-ocean-vegetation-ice sheet-solid earth model that is used to simulate the transient climate. An ensemble of transient model simulations successfully captures the main features of the last deglaciation, as depicted by proxy estimates. In addition, our model simulates a series of abrupt climate changes, which can be attributed to different drivers that will be discussed throughout the presentation. I will furthermore show, how the model can be applied for simulations of the long-term future. The future simulations show, that parts of the Antarctic ice sheet become unstable even under low-emission scenarios, with significant implications for the modelled climate response. Sensitivity experiments additionally show that, the Greenland ice sheet may exhibit multiple steady-states under pre-industrial climate conditions. This has significant implications for a potential regrowth, once disintegrated entirely.
- Speaker: Marie-Luise Kapsch (Max Planck Institute for Meteorology)
- Wednesday 12 February 2025, 17:30-19:00
- Venue: Latimer Room, Clare College.
- Series: Quaternary Discussion Group (QDG); organiser: wb350.