ACINN Graduate Seminar - WS 2025/26

2026-01-21 at 12:00 (on-line and on-site) in the seminar room

From Antarctic sea ice unleashing glaciers to Alaskan icefalls releasing ogives: Investigations of glacier processes using remote sensing, field data, and numerical modeling

Naomi Ochwat

ACINN, University of Innsbruck

 

Earth’s glaciers, ice sheets, and ice shelves are changing significantly due to our warming climate. Glaciers that drain the Antarctic Ice Sheet have become more susceptible to rapid speed-up and retreat, especially once their floating portions become unstable or collapse. The world’s mountain glaciers are experiencing substantial melting and changing dynamics. Yet, the cryosphere is riddled with unsolved instabilities, unexplored tipping points, and unresolved ice-dynamic mysteries. This seminar will expound on three key topics in glaciology: drivers of ice shelf/fast-ice collapse, causes of rapid tidewater glacier retreat, and controls on mountain glacier morphology.

We will journey to Antarctica where I will discuss the history and dynamics of the Larsen B embayment. Here, I will present on research that combines a plethora of remote sensing and in-situ datasets that solves not one, but two glaciological mysteries. First, I will tell the tale of the fast-ice break-out that occurred in 2022, using a combination of satellite data, ERA-5 reanalysis, and GNSS results. Then, we will focus our attention to one glacier in particular that underwent the fastest tidewater glacier retreat documented in the modern record. Here, I will present a series of datasets that led to our ground (ice) breaking conclusions. Thereafter, I will present new research in the region investigating glacier calving and instability processes using in-situ data and modelling methods. 

After Antarctica, we will travel north to Alaska to unravel a fundamental glaciological dynamics question that has been unanswered since the 1980s. Here, I will capture your attention with the striking wave-ogive features found in some mountain glaciers and explore the possible formation mechanisms, using in-situ data and results from a finite difference model. 

 

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