Seven people standing for a group photo at Georgia Tech
Nearing the end of semester two at Georgia Tech, and I am so grateful this team who does awesome science. As our group keeps growing, I will always value the work each of them - one amazing postdoc (@yangx309.bsky.social) and the spectacular GATO “undergrad army” - did to help get us off the ground.
This is the first paper coming out of the ICESEE project, funded by NSF. The ultimate goal is to release a gapless estimate of the state of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet extending back through the satellite era (and potentially earlier 🤞). Keep an eye out for more to come! github.com/ICESEE-proje...
This is the first paper coming out of the ICESEE project, funded by NSF. The ultimate goal is to release a gapless estimate of the state of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet extending back through the satellite era (and potentially earlier 🤞). Keep an eye out for more to come! github.com/ICESEE-proje...
We have a new pre-print out, led by postdoc Brian Kyanjo, describing an open-source, interoperable, scalable data assimilation library for ice sheet models including some promising results with two community ice sheet models. Check it out! doi.org/10.48550/arX...
John Christian, former postdoc, now prof at @uoregon.bsky.social, led this study on how ice sheets and sediment work together to make grounding zone wedges, explaining pauses in Antarctic retreat over otherwise smooth reverse-sloping beds during the last deglaciation dx.doi.org/10.1029/2025...
A new paradigm…if you will…
Yes! Though the caveats are quite important for mapping forcing to stability and retreat rate doi.org/10.1017/jog....
This is an interesting, if provocative perspective. I agree with most of what the authors say except I view the paradigm they advocate as more of a “yes and” rather than a replacement for our current understanding. 1/
“Irrecoverable decline is a conceivable future for the Antarctic Ice Sheet, but it is only one of the multiplicity of its evolutions and we are, today, far from understanding the scope of possible futures.”
Glad we provoked the intended critical thinking about instabilities! Our hope was certainly along the lines of “yes, and…” as indicated in one of our final sentences:
Schematic illustration of a conceptual model of Earth’s marine ice sheets
⚒️ Perspective: A new paradigm for understanding the Earth's marine ice sheets
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We're hiring a *post doc*!
Are you a global change ecologist (broadly defined) and want to work with Jenny McGuire, @benjaminfreeman.bsky.social, me & many others?!🦎🐦🦴⛰️
Come join an amazing, hungry, and very exciting eco-evo group here at GT!
careers.hprod.onehcm.usg.edu/psc/careers/...
Next up for Madie is a postdoc at UNC-Chapel Hill working with Ken Zhao on DNS simulations of ice-ocean interactions. She has a killer seminar-length talk summarizing her PhD work, so you should invite her to your department soon!
A forthcoming paper will present a new theory and model of the role of bubbles in glacier discharge plumes in driving more than 10x the melting predicted by previous theories (and explaining lab experiments as below and observations on the way)
Followed by a revised theory of how ocean waves erode icebergs and glacier fronts, overturning 40 years of previous attempts by considering the role of meltwater in buffering heat transfer from waves doi.org/10.1029/2025...
Madie was exceptionally productive in the 4.5 years it took her from undergrad to PhD, starting with this interesting study of turbulent mixing in a high-fidelity model of subglacial seawater intrusions doi.org/10.5194/tc-1...
Presenting our newest PhD from the GT Ice & Climate Group, Dr. Madeline Mamer! 🎉🌊🧊
We have a new perspective piece out at Nature Geoscience taking a critical view of how we talk about ice sheet stability and where we can go from here. Check it out! rdcu.be/faUdM
One last shout out! This trip was supported through an internal grant on sustainability education and community based learning administered by the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education @gtresearch.bsky.social. We couldn't have done it without them!
And that’s it! This was our first time running this field trip and it was a smashing success thanks to a highly engaged group of students and assistance facilitating meetings from our community partners in GA and SC. Here’s the crew all together!
We ended the day and our trip by discussing engineering design and career pathways at JMT, the engineering firm that designed the projects we saw earlier in the day
We also saw a pump station nestled right in a neighborhood and discussed how critical infrastructure can be designed to fit within the urban fabric to increase local buy-in
Next we got to see the Low Battery Seawall, where 100+ year old infrastructure was not only raised but also made into an accessible community amenity along almost a mile of downtown waterfront
Yesterday was the last day of the trip, and an exciting one: we were in Charleston where we started by hearing from the Chief Resilience Officer for the city about the philosophy in designing flood mitigation efforts across municipal departments
screenshot of a resignation letter expressing sadness at leaving NASA
My resignation letter
We are excited to be launching a new project soon in partnership with PPBA and a community partner in NY to empower communities to design and evaluate their own flood mitigation using models - more on this to come!
It was also a great opportunity for the students (and me!) to meet Jasmine Smith, President of the Pin Point Betterment Association who have been extensively working with the GT CEAR Hub to put community voices first in designing flood mitigation infrastructure
In the afternoon we went to the Pin Point Heritage community to learn about one of the largest remaining Gullah Geechee communities in the Southeast and their historical relationship to the marsh, fisheries and flooding
Day 2 of our spring break field trip: we spent the morning with staff from the City of Savannah discussing how to innovate within municipal governments to adapt to to changing stormwater runoff, land use and urban heat
A very timely piece from @ajc.com related to the current federal pause on funds for beach nourishment programs across the country, I added some words on the important of coastal protections under sea level rise www.ajc.com/news/2026/03...
