Research

My research focuses on understanding how the cryosphere and oceans interact in a variety of scales, using experimental and numerical methods. To see published work proceed to publications. For short summaries of some of the work I am involved in read on.

Post Doc 2 - Experimental study of Internal Tsunamis generated by glacial calving

Glaciers release large chunks of ice into the ocean, which is one way in which they lose mass. When they do so, these events can create underwater waves called internal tsunami waves that propagate away from the impact site. Unlike surface waves, these internal tsunamis stir the ocean’s internal layers, affecting how heat and nutrients move. This project will recreate glacier break-off events in a laboratory to study how these underwater waves form and behave. Understanding this process is essential to improve climate models and predict changes in ocean ecosystems and sea levels more accurately.

Post Doc 1 - Ice Shelf Ocean Interactions in the laboratory

At Northumbria University within the Future of Ice on Earth Peak of Excellence, I worked on laboratory-scale simulations of the buoyant boundary currents produced by meltwater under ice shelves. The project involves numerical modelling of the problem using SPINS, and identifying a laboratory setup. The initial work from this project was published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics

PhD - Experimental and Numerical experiments on Internal Solitary Waves

With my PhD, I turned to a process-based approach to understanding the ocean, specifically understanding internal solitary waves, their dynamics, instabilities, and the diapycnal mixing they produce. Each of my results chapters address a different research question:

• How stratification affects the behaviour of shoaling Internal Solitary Waves?
• How stratification impacts boluses produced by fissioning Internal Solitary Waves?
• How can we use new techniques to better understand where mixing takes place in fluid simulations?
• How do internal solitary waves interact with sea ice in the Arctic Ocean?

To read more about my work on Internal Solitary Waves see my dedicated web page for this: Here

And to read about the new mixing diagnostics tool USP (user scatter plots): GitHub Code and Documentation

BSc/MSc - Freshwater in the Arctic Ocean

My BSc and MSc dissertations both investigated how large-scale freshwater patterns could influence the transfer of heat from warm Atlantic water to waters at the surface (and subsequently ice).

My BSc, titled “What would be the global climatic implications of turning off Russian rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean?” investigated the role of freshwater derived from 4 major siberian rivers in the Arctic Ocean stratifications, and the wider climate-scale implications of potential diversion of the freshwater source to provide water to the population centres of the USSR as part of the “Sibaral” project. This involved a simple 1-dimensional water column model, where the freshwater content at the surface was adjusted at a level equivalent to removing this freshwater source.

This led on to my MSc research, titled “How does Siberian river outflow impact the onset and duration of sea ice formation and melt?”. Focussing on the role that riverine freshwater plays in the formation and melt of sea ice in the Kara Sea, an important sea ice nursery, and receiver of large volumes of continental runoff, the research used EOF analysis on gridded satellite and reanalysis data to identify the spatio-temporal patterns in sea ice seasonality, and freshwater.