Environmental Modelling at Nottingham

Antarctic Lake Ice Dynamics

We were involved with the multi-disciplinary Equator project (funded by the EPSRC), studying the dynamics of Antarctic lakes. The project included researchers from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the School of Computer Science and Information Technology. Fieldwork was supported by the Australian Antarctic Division.

Inland Antarctic lakes are among the harshest environments in the world for life to inhabit, and are widely regarded as sensitive indicators of climate change.

In 2003 an automatic probe was deployed on Crooked Lake, a freshwater lake in Eastern Antarctica. The probe measures several meteorological parameters, ice thickness, ice temperature and light levels in the water column. We used the probe data to develop a physics-based model which simulates the growth and melt of the lake ice over time.

On experimenting with different levels of model complexity using model selection criteria, we found that air temperature is by far the dominant variable in such systems, and a model based on temperature alone can calculate ice thickness to a reasonable level of accuracy. This allows predictions of how such lake may respond to long-term global warming scenarios.

Available Outputs

For a summary paper for the overall project 'e-Science from the Antarctic to the GRID' [click here]

For a paper describing the probe used for data acquisition 'Real-time physical data acquisition through a remote sensing platform on an Antarctic lake' [click here]

The lake ice modelling work formed the basis of a PhD thesis 'Modelling Antarctic lake ice responses to meteorological variables' by Tim Reid. To download pdf [click here]

One aspect of the work was selecting the appropriate level of detail in the models used. This work is described in a Conference paper: 'Selecting Appropriate Models of Antarctic Lake Ice Dynamics' [click here]

The models developed are available as MatLab scripts and data [click here]