ABSTRACT

Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet contributes to rising global sea levels. However, local sea level along much of the Greenland coast is falling due to postglacial rebound and a decrease in gravitational attraction from the ice sheet. This affects Greenlandic coastal communities, which have to adapt their coastal infrastructure, shipping routes, and subsistence fisheries. In this presentation I will review the various ways in which ice mass changes affect sea level close to the ice sheet and detail how geologic and space-based observations can aid understanding of these processes. Building on advances in this work we have made predictions of future sea level change around Greenland for this century. This is part of the "Greenland Rising" project, in which meetings with community members have guided the collection of new measurements of nearshore bathymetry that are combined with the sea level projections. I will share the current status of this project and my lessons learned from working with local communities.

About the Speaker:

Jacky Austermann is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and works on better understanding how sea level and ice sheets have changed over the past hundreds, thousands, and millions of years. Austermann earned her Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from Harvard University in 2016 and conducted a short postdoc at Cambridge University before joining Columbia University in 2018. In 2019, Austermann was awarded the Jason Morgan Early Career Award from the American Geophysical Union for her outstanding contributions to tectonophysics and has been selected as a Sloan Fellow in 2021.