Delighted to advertise this PhD opportunity through IAPETUS for October 2026 entry:
The glaciers of South Georgia from the 1950s to 2100 CE
Rationale:
The glaciers of the Subantarctic island of South Georgia are sentinels of climate change, being located directly in the path of the rapidly evolving Southern Hemisphere Westerlies. These Westerlies are a critical control on glacier behaviour both in Patagonia and the Antarctic Peninsula. South Georgia therefore offers a unique opportunity to investigate how changes in the Westerlies are reflected in glacier change.
However, the mass balance of South Georgia’s glaciers, and their responses to changing climatic variables, is not well known. Glacier mass loss is accelerating in many regions of the world, including on the Antarctic Peninsula (Hugonnet et al., 2021), but longer term trends are not available for South Georgia (Farias-Barahona et al., 2020). This impedes our ability to understand and contextualise current change, and predict future vulnerabilities.
South Georgia is a haven for wildlife. Warming, increasing habitat connectivity and decreased meltwater availability as glaciers shrink will impact important terrestrial and marine ecosystems, including albatross, penguin and seal breeding colonies, and influence the spread of invasive species. Understanding current trends and predicting future glacier change is important for developing management and protection plans.
To date, investigations of glacier change on South Georgia have focused on a combination of geomorphological mapping, aerial photographs and satellite remote sensing. From 2000-2013, glaciers thinned and tidewater glaciers retreated, with the highest rates of change along the north-east coast (Cook et al., 2010; Farias-Barahona et al., 2020). Mapping of terminus fronts from aerial photography from the 1950s-2017 shows widespread recession (Cook et al., 2010), but glacier mass balance remains unresolved over this longer term.
As the availability of satellite imagery has increased, along with new techniques to process digital elevation models from archival aerial photography, there are new opportunities to derive glacier extent and volumetric change over a 60 year time period. In addition, the glaciers of South Georgia have never been simulated in detail, meaning that mass balance sensitivities and future behaviour are unknown. This PhD project will take advantage of these opportunities to develop an improved record of glacier change in South Georgia, and test the response of glaciers to changes in the climate in the past and future.
Aim:
To quantify glacier behaviour in South Georgia since the 1950s and explore glacier responses to different climate conditions.
Research questions:
How have glaciers evolved from the 1950s to present?
How do surface structures (debris cover, crevasses, icefalls etc) influence glaciology and mass balance?
What are the mass balance sensitivities of glaciers?
How do changes in the Southern Hemisphere Westerlies influence glaciers, and how is this modulated through topographic effects?
How might the glaciers behave under future climatic conditions?
Objectives:
Project objectives are flexible and can adapt in response to student interests.
- Reconstruct glacier thickness, area and geodetic mass balance evolution using archived aerial photographs and satellite imagery.
- Map and evaluate the ice surface structures (e.g. debris cover, firn, meltwater, crevasses, icefalls, ogives) across South Georgia’s glaciers.
- Evaluate oceanic and atmospheric datasets to determine driving mechanisms of glacier change.
- Use numerical glacier models to provide insights into glacier mass balance sensitivities and future glacier behaviour.
These four objectives together will provide a new understanding of the drivers of past and current glacier change on South Georgia, and provide new insights into the future behaviour of these glaciers under different climate scenarios.
Widening Participation
In order to address historical imbalances in the higher education sector, Iapetus is committed to recruiting a diverse, representative community of researchers in Environmental Science. The DTP has developed an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy to further this. This includes the Widening Participation Scheme, which identifies Home applicants from underrepresented groups. Also, we are pleased to introduce the Iapetus Diversifying Talent Scholarship Scheme, a separate competition designed for those from underrepresented groups. For more, please see the Iapetus website.