The Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

Hi, my name is Sirray Smith. I am a senior at Morgan State University located in Baltimore, Maryland studying physics. This summer I worked with Dr. T.J. Fudge on constraining geothermal heat flux in Antarctica using an ice-and-heat flow model. I primarily worked throughout the UW area, such as my office in the Atmospheric Sciences-Geophysics building or a local cafe.

I began this project by first understanding how ice sheets work and move, as I did not have any prior knowledge in that area. I also began to get acclimated to Matlab as I had little experience using it before. The main model that I ran was entirely through Matlab, so I spent some time getting used to it before inputting any data. I read many research papers on ice rises and their characteristics to insert into the model to find the maximum amount of heat that would need to come up from the interior of the earth to cause melt at the base of the ice rise. I was able to use these geothermal heat flux values that I found for 13 different ice rises in Antarctica, taking account of any known basal temperatures and plotting them on a map against a previous model from 2019.

This project allowed me to not only grow my technical skills, such as coding, but also allowed me to grow professionally. I was able to attend multiple different seminars learning a wide range of areas in the field of environmental science. I was also able to explore the area of Seattle, as well as Mt. Rainier. This project motivated me to want to continue on and pursue a Ph.D after I completed my Bachelor’s degree.

I had a wonderful time in Seattle and enjoyed my time with the other interns! I made a lot of valuable relationships and friendships.

Project Introduction

Research Poster