Alexander Robel
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
How much will melting ice sheets raise sea levels by 2100 and beyond? Coastal communities, governments and industry need to know.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Mathematics & Statistics
Computer Science
- Topics
ice sheets
glaciology
sea level rise
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2028
What they work on
- Build an open-source software package that applies transient ensemble Kalman filtering, a method that repeatedly corrects many model runs against observations, to a wide range of ice sheet models.
- Reconstruct past changes at Sermeq Kujalleq (Jakobshavn Isbrae) in Greenland and Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica by assimilating glaciological and geological observations, then use these reconstructions to initialize future projections.
- Add data assimilation to a cloud-based ice sheet model with a browser interface so simulations of past and future glacier behavior can draw directly on a community repository of ice sheet observations.
- Develop and pilot a high school curriculum on data-based exploration of sea level rise, aligned with Georgia and national computer science and statistics standards.
More about the research
Yet most of the uncertainty in sea level forecasts for a given emissions pathway comes from ice sheet models that are poorly constrained by real observations. Different modeling groups use different calibration data and procedures, so their projections differ widely. This project aims to combine modern records of ice sheet change with geological evidence of past change, and to feed both into ice sheet models in one consistent way.
Why it matters
Sea level rise threatens coastal cities and communities, and planners need reliable estimates of how much ice sheets will contribute. By tying ice sheet models more tightly to both modern and geological observations, this work could narrow the large uncertainty in sea level projections for 2100 and beyond. Open software and a browser-based model would make these better-constrained tools available to many more researchers and students.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Shaun Marcott
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Earth & Environmental Science
Date the thinning of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet by measuring 135 beryllium-10 exposure ages along about 15 vertical mountain transects in western Canada, known as the "glacial dipstick" approach.
John Cassano
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Collect year-round, autonomous atmospheric and surface measurements from an instrumented 30-meter tall tower at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide field camp, to track how the lowest layer of air exchanges heat with the ice.
Robert DeConto
University of Massachusetts, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether the northern Greenland Ice Sheet is more sensitive to Arctic warming than the southern ice sheet, by drilling through the ice and measuring cosmogenic nuclides such as beryllium-10 and aluminum-26 in the bedrock below to find past ice-free periods.
The school
Georgia Institute of Technology: 50 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 572 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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