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Alexis Irvin

University of Florida

Research Mentor: T.J. Fudge

Project: Interannual Climate Variations at a Future Ice Core Site in Antarctica

My name is Alexis Irvin, and I am a third year Environmental Science student at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. This summer I worked with Dr. T.J. Fudge, Annika Horlings, and Lindsey Davidge at the University of Washington to examine interannual climate variations at a future ice core site in Antarctica. In addition to the CICOES coding bootcamp that took place during the first week of the program, I spent many weeks learning MATLAB and reading academic papers regarding Hercules Dome. For the second portion of the project, I created animations that presented the reanalysis data in a visual format as well as plots to draw conclusions about further climate impacts at the site.

Screenshot from one of the many animations I constructed during the project, showing monthly temperature fluctuations across the continent using polar stereographic coordinates.

Hercules Dome is an ice core drilling site located approximately 150km upward from “The Bottleneck” and conveniently between the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets. For this project, my work was focused on understanding the relationship between temperature and accumulation patterns at Hercules Dome and Antarctica. In doing so, I also considered impacts from the Southern Annular Mode, the north-south movement of the Southern Westerly Winds, when predicting accumulation patterns and further discussed how this might lead to data on storm cycles and climate variability.

Why Hercules Dome?

Hercules Dome is of particular interest to glaciologists because of its location and ability to provide insight on climate change events. As an ice core drilling site outside of Byrd Station and the South Pole, it provides data not only from both the East and West Antarctic ice sheets, but also from an area that has not been thoroughly studied. There is also hope to better understand whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has collapsed previously by studying Hercules Dome, which is predicted to show moisture changes in its core if the WAIS did indeed collapse during the last warm period. All the information from ice cores, including Hercules Dome, is valuable in providing insight on climate change events that have happened in the past and help scientists predict what might happen in the future.

Presentation:

Video coming soon