Clarkson University Professor Works to Understand Arctic Sea Ice and Ocean Waves

Potsdam, NY (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Dr. Hayley Shen a professor emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Clarkson, and her international research team, are trying to predict how the changes in the Earth’s climate may affect the ice conditions in the Arctic by using computational modelling.

“Changes to Arctic ice coverage are a key indicator of our changing climate, and the impacts of reduced ice cover are still being identified,” Shen said. “Taking measurements in the Arctic is challenging due to the extreme conditions, so for a long time, scientists relied on limited observations and theoretical modelling to understand the ice-ocean-atmosphere system.”

Dr. Shen has established a model that can be used to help forecast waves in areas of the ocean that are covered by ice. Shen and her team focus on how waves change as they move through a body of water covered with ice and how new ice growth is affected by the wave conditions.

Over the past three decades, scientists have been studying ice formation using wave tanks, which range in size from 4 to 70 meters in length. “In the past 20-year period, we have used a number of facilities at the US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory and Germany’s Hamburg Ship Research Basin with various sizes,” explains Dr. Shen. “Because of their different sizes, a range of wave frequencies could be tested, where smaller tanks were for high-frequency short waves and the larger ones for low-frequency long waves.”

Shen’s research has been recently published in Scientia. You can read it all here: https://www.scientia.global/wp-content/uploads/Hayley_Shen/Hayley_Shen.pdf