John Cassano
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
The air just above West Antarctica is warming faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. Together with heat from the ocean, this warming is contributing to melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet and therefore to rising global sea levels.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
Engineering
- Topics
atmospheric boundary layer
West Antarctic Ice Sheet
WAIS Divide
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- 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.
- Sample the full depth of the atmospheric boundary layer, the lowest air layer in direct contact with the ice, with an unmanned aerial system (drone) campaign that complements the tower record.
- Use the tower and drone observations to study turbulent mixing and surface energy and mass balance, adding weather data to the Thwaites Glacier field campaigns.
More about the research
To understand how the ice is affected, scientists need measurements of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The ABL is the lowest layer of the atmosphere, where air trades heat and moisture directly with the ice surface. Year-round observations of this layer over the remote ice sheet are scarce.
Why it matters
Melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet adds to global sea-level rise, which threatens coastal communities worldwide. Measurements of how the warming lower atmosphere exchanges heat with the ice could improve how turbulent mixing is represented in weather and climate models. They could also sharpen estimates of the ice sheet's surface mass and energy balance, which inform projections of future melt.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kevin Adkins
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach, FL·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure the surface energy budget and key weather variables continuously with a 30-meter flux tower in coastal Florida, to identify when sea-breeze boundaries and circulations pass the site.
Patricia Cleary
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, WI·Earth & Environmental Science
Develop and integrate an uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) vertical profiler, including a nitrogen dioxide (NO2) instrument built with NOAA, to measure ozone and NO2 above the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Von Walden
Washington State University, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
Continue the ICECAPS ground-based record at Summit Station of cloud properties, radiation, surface energy and precipitation over the Greenland Ice Sheet.
The school
University of Colorado Boulder: 36 labs on PI Pages, $718M a year on research, 447 research doctorates a year.
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