Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi – glaciologist

Scientists of the Antarctic: Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi

Video transcript

We're living at a time now where we're actually committed to change. There's a lot of heat that's been added into the earth's global climate system, so we're on a trajectory where the ice sheets are melting. They're going to continue to melt. That's a fact. What we're trying to understand now is how much and how soon.

Before I was a glaciologist with the Australian Antarctic Division, I was an oceanographer. And before that, I used to be a chef and I used to work in kitchens all around the world.

We've had a big project focused on the Totten Glacier in East Antarctica over the last couple of years. The Totten Glacier drains a region of the ice sheet that contains about 3.5m of sea level. It's a huge number. More broadly, the greater catchment that drains into that glacier contains about seven metres of sea level.

A 20 cm rise in global sea levels will cause a 100-fold increase in flooding frequency. So that's actually where the risk is. It's not in the rate of mean sea level. It's in the increased risk of flooding frequency.

So we need to understand what the system is doing today and, to do that, we actually have to get onto the glacier, so we get in helicopters and we fly out to glaciers and we take measurements in the field. Those include deploying radar instruments that measure how thick the ice is, and how rapidly it's melting from the bottom and how rapidly it's actually thinning when it's flowing out towards the oceans as well, but we also use other geophysical techniques, including seismics.

So we use a sound source that's maybe made from a small explosion, so we use some TNT or we strike a steel hammer onto a plate, and that provides the source that echoes around inside the ice and then we listen to the time it takes for that sound to come back up to the surface and we can learn information about the structure of it.

I hope eventually that what the research that we do, will lead to is be able to inform policy decisions in Australia and internationally.

[end transcript]

Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi: PhD (QMS), BSc (Hons EnvSc), Cert MarSc

Research interests

I am a senior scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division. As part of this role I lead a team of researchers focused on understanding how and why the Antarctic ice sheet will respond to climate change. I received my PhD in oceanography in 2009, which focused on understanding the mechanisms controlling the dynamic interaction between the ice sheets and the oceans.

I have worked in several remote, deep field locations, including Law Dome, the Amery Ice shelf and most recently the Totten Glacier (leading field seasons since 2016). The Totten is one of the largest glaciers in Antarctica and thought to be susceptible to rapid retreat due to a warming climate, and one of the main potential contributors to global sea level rise. My focus is on integrating observations, theory and models.

Current projects

Australian Antarctic Science projects

#4574: State estimate of East Antarctic ice shelves
#4436: Totten ice dynamics and evolution
#4287: Ocean forced evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
#4096 Interactions between ice shelf and ocean in the cavity beneath the Amery Ice Shelf
#4626 Southern Ocean sea level monitoring network
#4346: ICECAP II
#4511: ICECAP – EAGLE

National & international projects

ARC Discovery: Predicting biodiversity distribution on the Antarctic continental shelf (2019–2022)
Finnish Academy of Science: Coupled ocean and land ice dynamics (COLD)

National & international collaborations

Theme Leader “Cryosphere-Ocean interaction”, Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative. July 2014–March 2020
Project leader (interim) Australian Antarctic Partnership Program (May 2019–)
Project co-leader 1.2 Ocean forced evolution of the Antarctic ice sheet, ACE CRC. Jul 2014–Sept 2019
Liaison to IAPSO and IACS to develop and establish an International Commission on ice/ocean interactions
Member, World Climate Research Programme Data Advisory Council (WCRP DAC) as the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) representative. July 2017-June 2020
Member, coordination committee for the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) in the Southern Hemisphere. July 2015–mid 2019
Chair, Realistic Ice-sheet/ocean State Estimates (RISE) international program, endorsed by both the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) and WCRP-CliC
Co-chair, Second Ice-Shelf Ocean Model Inter-comParison (ISOMIP+) experiments component of the MISOMIP WCRP-CliC targeted research activity
Australian liaison to the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS). 2016–ongoing
Editor, The Cryosphere
Editor, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Co-chief editor, special issue on Ice/ocean interactions with Journal of Marine Science and Engineering

Key outcome areas

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
World Glacier Monitoring Service
Global Sea Level Observing System (GLOSS)

Publications

Gwyther D.G., T. O’Kane, B.K. Galton-Fenzi and D.P. Monselesan, 2018. Observed Totten Glacier ice shelf melt rate variability due to intrinsic processes. Nature Communications.

White D.A., D. Fink, A.L. Post, K. Simon, B.K. Galton-Fenzi, et al., 2019. Beryllium isotope signatures of ice shelves and sub-ice shelf circulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of U.S.A.

Jansen J., N.A. Hill, P.K. Dunstan, J. McKinlay, M.D. Sumner, et al., 2017. Abundance and richness of key Antarctic seafloor fauna correlates with modelled food availability, Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Jong L. M., Gladstone R. M., Galton-Fenzi B. K., and M.A. King, 2018. Simulated dynamic regrounding during marine ice sheet retreat.The Cryosphere, 12: 2425–2436.

Naughten K.A., K.J. Meissner, B.K. Galton-Fenzi, M.H. England, R. Timmermann and H.H. Hellmer, 2018. Future Projections of Antarctic Ice Shelf Melting Based on CMIP5 Scenarios. J. Climate 31: 5243–5261.

See more of Dr Galton-Fenzi’s publications on Google Scholar.

This content was last updated 21 hours ago on 17 September 2024.