Guest visit and invited talk by Doug Benn (19.11.2024)

This week, Professor Doug Benn from the University of St. Andrews visited our institute and gave a guest lecture as part of the weekly M3OCCA Research Seminar.

The topic of his lecture was “Icy Oscillators: Understanding glacier surges”

Glacier surges are important but often misunderstood glacier accelerations, which have been observed in many parts of the Arctic, High Mountain Asia, and a few other areas of the world. In this talk, Professor Benn will discuss the geographical distribution of surge-type glaciers and its relationships with climate and glacier geometry. He will go on to show how these patterns can be understood using enthalpy balance theory, a new unifying framework for modelling glacier dynamics. The talk will conclude with a discussion of unsolved problems and possible new directions for research.

During his visit, we had lively discussions on our various research topics and on potential future collaboration. A social gathering with some local cuisine in the evening rounded off his visit.

Thank you again for your wonderful lecture!