Velicogna Research Group

The focus of our research group is to study the cryospheric components of the water cycle and their response to climate forcing.

In particular, we study the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, their contribution to sea level rise and the evolution of the Arctic water cycle in response to climate change.

We use multi-sensor geophysical techniques, especially satellite time-variable gravity (GRACE) and altimetry (ICESAT, ERS, Envisat), as well as passive microwave and GPS, in combination with in-situ data, global climate model outputs and re-analysis data.

Our work has implications for future sea level rise, Earth system modeling and global land water cycle. The impacts are not only scientific but also societal as we are working on developing tools to better predict the regional patterns of sea level rise and we are looking at changes in land ecosystems associated with changes in land hydrology.

Our group is composed of 2 Ph.D. students, 1 postdoctoral researcher, and 1 research scientists. We collaborate with other researchers in our department (ice sheet research and hydrology), and at other universities in the US and abroad (see collaborations). Our projects range in scale and complexity from regional-scale studies to continental-scale studies with integrated complex modeling and satellite data sets.

Follow the links above to learn more about our current personnel, our research and active projects, opportunities for graduate student and postdoctoral research, teaching, available data, or to contact us.

 

Our research group in the news:

ChillingThe New Yorker 2006 :“The satellites, nicknamed Tom and Jerry, have been chasing each other around the globe….. By monitoring their relative positions to the fantastic exactitude of one micron—less than one-fiftieth the width of a human hair—scientists can detect tiny variations in the earth’s gravitational field."

Now, almost four years to the day after they were launched, Tom and Jerry have yielded a scarily significant result: Antarctica is losing ice….. The finding, which was reported two weeks ago in the online version of Science, is particularly ominous, because climatologists had expected that even as the ice sheet lost mass at its edges, its over-all mass would increase, since rising temperatures would lead to more snowfall over the continent’s midsection.”