University Calendar

Åsa K Rennermalm, Rutgers University, presents this week's seminar.

About Dr. Rennermalm

Åsa Rennermalm is an associate professor at the Department of Geography at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research interest is hydrology and glaciology of the Arctic region. She is studying the Greenland ice sheet to understand how much meltwater escapes to the ocean where it affects marine environments and raise global sea levels. Her work centers around field data collection and analysis, but also involves models and satellite data. She has participated in several Arctic field expeditions. Åsa joined Rutgers faculty in 2009. Before then, she was a postdoc researcher at University of California Los Angeles. Her Ph.D. is from Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, and she has a master and undergraduate degree from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Abstract

Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic region are experiencing some of the  largest impacts of climate change on Earth. Since the 1990s, Greenland ice sheet  surface melting has increased and is now one of the leading drivers of global sea‐level  rise. For over a decade, my team and I have traveled to Greenland to study how  climate change transforms the surface melting of the ice sheet. In this talk, I will share  what we have learned from observing rivers on the ice sheet and tundra, and from  extracting shallow ice cores high up on the ice sheet. Our ice cores show dramatically  increased surface melting since the 1990s, but also a temporary melting slow‐down  between 2013‐2018. In the rarely studies ice sheet surface rivers, we found surprising  amounts of sediment deposited, increasing the absorption of solar radiation and  melting. In this talk, I will take you on a virtual journey to one of the most remote  places on earth and explore the footprints of climate change.