Ian Eisenman
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California San Diego
Seminar Information
Engineering Building Unit 2 (EBU2)
Room 479
Seminar Recording Available: Please contact seminar coordinator, Jake Blair at (j1blair@eng.ucsd.edu)
The seasonal growth and retreat of Antarctic sea ice represents one of the largest annual surface cover changes on Earth. There is a striking asymmetry in the mean annual cycle between fast retreat during 5 months of the year and slow growth during the remaining 7 months. Much previous work during the past 40 years has attempted to explain this asymmetry. On longer timescales, the Antarctic sea ice cover has expanded during most of the satellite record. This expansion is at odds with basic physical intuition about how ice should respond to rising global temperatures. In this talk, I will present the results of work we are doing to identify the physical mechanisms responsible for both of these apparent enigmas. This work draws on models, ranging from an idealized representation of a small set of physical processes to comprehensive global climate models, as well as analysis of observations.
Ian Eisenman is a Professor of Climate, Atmospheric Sciences, and Physical Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. He received a bachelor's degree in Philosophy and Physics from Williams College, a masters degree in Physics from UC Santa Barbara, a masters degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, and a PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University. His research focuses on climate dynamics, including sea ice, paleoclimate, icebergs, and the large-scale circulations of the ocean and atmosphere. His research group uses a variety of models ranging from idealized mathematical representations of climate phenomena that can be addressed with pencil and paper to comprehensive climate models that are run on supercomputers, also drawing on observations.