Dr. Henry Patton, post doctoral researcher at CAGE, won an award for best poster at PAST Gateways conference at Alfred Wegener Institute. Poster showed how modelling is used to reconstruct the last ice sheet to cover the Barents Sea.
Text: Maja Sojtaric
The ice sheet that Patton and his colleagues at CAGE are reconstructing was a massive complex, stretching from Northern Norway to Siberia. At its maximum it was around 3 kilometres thick.
“My primary research is reconstructing the ice sheet using numerical modelling. I am trying to work out how ice grew and evolved during the last ice age. Ultimately we wish to look into how the ice cover disappeared, and what drove its deterioration.” says Patton.
His poster at PAST Gateways conference focused on the first part of this research: the reconstruction.
“These are the preliminary results showing output of the model, visualizing velocity of the ice sheet. Here I include several important boundary conditions that drive the growth and collapse of the former ice sheet. One of them is thermohaline ocean circulation.”
Next step in Pattons work is to develop models for deglaciation. It is complex modelling that must include effective ocean warming and shifting climate patterns. If properly constrained the model can help scientists understand marine based ice sheet collapse how it impacted gas hydrates buried in the seabed.
“The way the Barents Sea ice sheet collapsed is thought to be similar to what could happen to the ice sheet in West Antarctica. Implications of getting decent reconstruction of Barents Sea ice sheet are therefore very important for our understanding of future climate change, as it is the only paleo-analogue we have for West Antarctica.”
