The Physics of the Greenland Ice Sheet

I researched Dr. Aurélien Mordret after reading the article “Monitoring southwest Greenland’s ice sheet melt with ambient seismic noise.” Dr. Mordret is a French geophysicist. He got an undergraduate degree in Seismology from Strasbourg University and PhD from Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, France. He is interested in many aspects of seismology, including volcano seismology and industrial seismology. 

The paper of his that I read is about using seismic noise to quantify the changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet volume. Increases and decreases in the snow pack impacts the subsidence and uplift of the crust under the ice sheet, which creates variations in the seismic wave velocity of the ice sheet. The differences in the seismic wave velocity can be seen particularly when examining different seasons; there is a decrease in seismic velocity during the summer when the ice melts and an increase in winter when more ice forms.

Using ambient seismic noise to measure the variations in seismic wave velocity, Dr. Mordret can gain data on the short-term fluctuations of the ice sheet, which is helpful for predicting the volume of ice that will melt in the future. Using the physics concept of looking at sound waves was not a method of gathering data on ice sheets that I had encountered before, and I thought that it was a really interesting paper and concept. Dr. Mordret’s work is an example of how researchers can use physics to understand anthropogenic climate change.