Alicia Fallows

“To study snow and sea ice interactions, focusing on snow flooding and snow ice formation."

PhD project title:

Multidisciplinary study of ice growth for polar climate change investigations: from laboratory experiments to modelling to remote sensing.

Alicia Fallows

Project description:

Earth’s cryosphere, including sea ice, snow, ice sheets, and more, has experienced significant loss due to climate change, affecting habitats and increasing absorption of solar radiation. Understanding the processes driving snow and ice formation, evolution, and melting is critical for a greater understanding of the cryosphere’s role in Earth’s climate system.

Sea ice and snow are essential components in the global climate system. Sea ice regulates heat and moisture exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. Snow has a high albedo, reflecting solar radiation, and acts as an insulator, modulating heat exchange between the surface and atmosphere. Coupled together, snow can impact the sea ice growth and alter physical properties.

My research aims to study snow and sea ice interactions, focusing on snow flooding and snow ice formation. This is prevalent in Antarctica, where snow can depress ice below the water surface, triggering flooding and refreezing, leading to changes in ice and snow properties and surface ice growth. It may also become more prevalent in the Arctic with the changing climate. The project will combine experiments in UCL Earth Sciences’ cold laboratories, computational modelling, and satellite data interpretation. Fieldwork may provide additional in situ observations if possible.

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