Berkeley Geography
Spring 2022 Colloquium
Wed, February 23 | 3:30pm | 575 McCone & Zoom
Near-Surface Cryo-Hydrology from Greenland to Europa: Insights from Ice-Penetrating Radar
Riley Culberg (he/him)
PhD Candidate, Stanford University (Electrical Engineering)
In the interior of the Greenland Ice Sheet, surface meltwater typically drains into a near-surface layer of old, porous snow where it is then stored in perennial aquifers or refreezes into infiltration ice structures. These processes play an important role in modulating surface mass loss from these regions, but are very difficult to observe with most satellite remote sensing systems or field methods. This talk will discuss how airborne ice-penetrating radar can be used to characterize the evolving structure of the ice sheet near-surface and gain new insights into the interactions between shallow water systems, refreezing processes, and regional climate, weather, and ice dynamics. Some of these water systems are also compelling analogs for cryo-hydrologic processes elsewhere in our solar system, and this talk will also touch on what the Greenland Ice Sheet can tell us about double ridge formation on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
