An article written by T. Moon, I. Joughin, B. Smith and I. Howat from Science/AAAS journal.
Posts Tagged «Ben Smith»
April 30, 2020 – PSC researcher Ben Smith’s paper ‘Pervasive ice sheet mass loss reflects competing ocean and atmosphere processes’ discussed in the New York Times.
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New data from space is providing the most precise picture yet of Antarctica’s ice, where it is accumulating most quickly and disappearing at the fastest rate, and how the changes could contribute to rising sea levels.
ICESat-2 is a satellite mission under development by NASA for launch in 2015. It will make measurements of ice sheet elevations in Antarctica over a 3-5 year period, to accurately the shape of the ice sheet, and to show how the ice sheet is changing over time. As the satellite is developed, the science definition team, made up of researchers from NASA and from several different universities, provides direction as to what scientific questions the satellite measurements must address. APL researcher Ben Smith has joined the team to investigate how best to tailor the measurements to the characteristics of ice…
NASA climate scientists report that Antarctica has gained ice in the form of snow accumulation. This study was recently published in the Journal of Glaciology and reporters have sought comments from their peers at the Polar Science Center.
Deeply embayed ice shelves and narrower fringing ice shelves surround much of Antarctica. Recent results indicate that these ice shelves help regulate the flow of upstream glaciers and ice streams (“ice-shelf buttressing”). This investigation focuses on determining the mass balance of Antarctica’s non-Peninsula ice shelves and on improving our knowledge of the processes that control basal melt.
Conway, H., Smith, B., Vaswani, P. et al, “A low-frequency ice-penetrating radar system adapted for use from an airplane: test results from Bering and Malaspina Glaciers, Alaska, USA”, Annals Glaciology, 50(51), 93-97, 2009.
We are using field and remote sensing data to investigate Elevation Change Anomalies (ECAs) discovered recently in the Ross Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), which reveal the filling and draining of subglacial lakes.
APL-UW has produced a video about Polar Science Weekend, an annual public outreach event centering around polar research. Watch APL-UW scientists, including veteran PSW participants PSC’s Ben Smith and Wendy Ermold, explain their research in ways that apply the principles of physics via hands-on activities to the community.
April 30, 2020 – Using the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument NASA has ever flown in space, a team of scientists led by the University of Washington has made precise measurements of how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed over 16 years.
“If you watch a glacier or ice sheet for a month, or a year, you’re not going to learn much about what the climate is doing to it,” said lead author Benjamin Smith, a glaciologist at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. “We now have a 16-year span between ICESat and ICESat-2 and can be much more confident that the changes we’re seeing in the ice have to do with the long-term changes in the climate.
Fudge, T.J., and B. Smith, “Instruments and Methods Light propagation in firn: application to borehole video“, J. Glaciology, 56(198), 614-624, 2010.
Numerous recent studies have revealed rapid change in ice discharge from Greenland’s outlet glaciers. A near doubling in flow speed of many of Greenland’s glaciers substantially increased the rate at which the ice sheet calved icebergs to the ocean over the last five years.
UW Today reports on the results of a study recently published in The Cryosphere, involving PSC’s Ben Smith, Alex Huth, and Ian Joughin who teamed up with the University of Edinburgh and, using satellite data, identified a considerable drainage of interconnected lakes below West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier.
Howat, I.M., Smith, B.E., Joughin, I., et al, Rates of southeast Greenland ice volume loss from combined ICESat and ASTER observations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35(17), L17505, 2008.
Howat, I. M., I. Joughin, M. Fahnestock, B. E. Smith, and T. A. Scambos, Synchronous retreat and acceleration of southeast Greenland outlet glaciers 2000-06: ice dynamics and coupling to climate, J. Glaciol., 54(187), 646-660, 2008.
Howat, I. M., Y. Ahn, I. Joughin, M. R. van den Broeke, J. T. M. Lenaerts, and B. Smith, Mass balance of Greenland’s three largest outlet glaciers, 2000-2010, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, 2011.
IceBridge is a NASA project that supports the acquisition of various data from aircraft in both polar regions that will bridge the gap in coverage between the now defunct ICESat satellite and the next generation ICESat II to be launched in 2015 at the earliest. The main focuses of the data acquisition will be laser altimetry and radar measurements of ice sheets (Greenland and Antarctica) and sea ice (Arctic and Antarctica).
June 18, 2019 – This week is ICESat-2 Hackweek 2019, held at the University of Washington. Participants are learning about technologies used to access and process ICESat-2 data with a focus on the cryosphere.
The Applied Physics Laboratory-UW interviews PSC’s Jamie Morison and Ben Smith about ICESat-2, their roles in the NASA project and how it will improve research efforts and data. Watch the video here or on APL’s YouTube channel.
IMBIE [includes B. Smith & I. Joughin]. 2018. Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017. Nature. 558:219–222. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0179-y
Joughin, I., D. E. Shean, B. E. Smith, and P. Dutrieux, Grounding line variability and subglacial lake drainage on Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, Geophys. Res. Lett., 43(17), 9093–9102, doi:10.1002/2016GL070259, 2016
Joughin, I., I. Howat, M. Fahnestock, B. Smith, W. Krabill, R. Alley, H. Stern, and M. Truffer, 2008, Continued Evolution of Jakobshavn Isbrae Following its Rapid Speedup, J. Geophys. Res., 113, F04006, doi:10.1029/2008JF001023.
Joughin, I., S. Das, M. King, B. Smith, I. Howat, T. Moon, “Seasonal speedup along the western flank of the Greenland Ice Sheet”, Science, 320, 5877, 2008.
Joughin, I., B. Smith, I. Howat, T. Scambos and T. Moon, “Greenland flow variability from ice-sheet-wide velocity mapping”, Journal of Glaciology, 56 (197), 2010.
Joughin, I., B. E. Smith, and W. Abdalati, Glaciological advances made with interferometric synthetic aperture radar, J. Glaciol., 56(200), 1026-1042, 2010.
Joughin, I., B. E. Smith, and D. M. Holland (2010), Sensitivity of 21st century sea level to ocean-induced thinning of Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37.
Joughin, I., Smith, B.E., Shean, D.E., Floricioiu, D., Brief Communication: Further summer speedup of Jakobshavn Isbrae, The Cryosphere, 8, 209-214, doi:10.5194/tc-8-209-2014, 2014.
Laurence, G., Burgess, D., Copland, L., Langley, K., Gogineni, P., Paden, J., Leuschen, C., van As, D., Fausto, R., Joughin, I., Smith, B. (2019), Measuring Height Change Around the Periphery of the Greenland Ice Sheet With Radar Altimetry. Frontiers in Earth Science, 7:146. doi:10.3389/feart.2019.00146
McFadden, E. M., I. M. Howat, I. Joughin, B. Smith, and Y. Ahn, Changes in the dynamics of marine terminating outlet glaciers in west Greenland (2000-2009), J. Geophys. Res.-EarthSurf., 116, 2011.
Shean, D. E., Christianson, K., Larson, K., Ligtenberg, S., Joughin, I.R., Smith, B. E., Stevens, C.M., In-situ GPS records of surface mass balance and ocean-induced basal melt for Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, The Cryosphere Discuss, 2016-288, doi:10.5194/tc-2016-288, 2017.
Shean, D. E., O. Alexandrov, Z. Moratto, B. E. Smith, I. R. Joughin, C. C. Porter, Morin, P. J., An automated, open-source pipeline for mass production of digital elevation models (DEMs) from very high-resolution commercial stereo satellite imagery, ISPRS J. Photogramm. Remote Sens, 116, 101-117, doi: 10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2016.03.012, 2016.
Smith, B.E., Fricker, H.A., Joughin, I.R.., and S. Tulaczyk, ‘An inventory of active subglacial lakes in Antarctica detected by ICESat (2003-2008)’, J. Glaciology, 55(192), 573-595, 2009.
Smith, B. E., Gourmelen, N., Huth, A., and Joughin, I.: Connected subglacial lake drainage beneath Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, The Cryosphere, 11, 451-467, doi:10.5194/tc-11-451-2017, 2017.
Smith, B.E., Raymond, C.F. and T. Scambos, “Anisotropic texture of ice sheet surfaces”, J. Geophys. Res., 111(F1), F01019, 2006.
PSC’s Jamie Morison and Ben Smith are interviewed by KING 5 news about NASA’s latest space laser, Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), which launches 15 September. ICESat-2 helps monitor glaciers, sea ice and ice sheets via NASA satellite technology. Watch the interview to learn more.
Winebrenner, D.P., B. Smith, G. Catania, C.F. Raymond, and H. Conway,’ Estimation of the temperature-dependence of radio-frequency attenuation beneath Siple Dome, from wide-angle and profiling radar observations’, Ann. Glaciology, Vol. 37, 2003.