About
This is the website for the research group led by Dr. Luke Trusel in the Department of Geography at Penn State.
Our research explores the response of Earth's ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland to past, ongoing, and future climate change.
We integrate observations, ice cores, and climate models to contextualize recent change and elucidate connections between the polar regions and the broader Earth system.
Fundamentally, we seek to understand how climate impacts the ice sheets, and in turn, what these changes mean for us.
Recent news & events
September 2024: Join us! We are seeking a motivated PhD student to join the Cryosphere and Climate Lab in Penn State Geography in Fall 2025 as part of a newly funded NASA Cryospheric Science Program grant. The project focuses on using remote sensing and machine learning to investigate surface hydrology on the Antarctic Ice Sheet, emphasizing how these processes impact ice shelf and ice sheet evolution.
Ideal candidates will hold an M.S. degree by Fall 2025 and should have strong interests in cryosphere, climate, and data sciences. Highly motivated prospective students holding a B.S. degree will also be considered and would be eligible to apply to the 5-year MS-PhD program. Experience in remote sensing, machine learning, and glaciology is desirable, but candidates eager to learn these skills are encouraged to apply.
The admitted student will be supported primarily through research assistantship (RA) appointments and will have the opportunity to engage with the Penn State Ice and Climate Research Center (PSICE) among other resources at Penn State. After being admitted, applying to the Climate Science Dual Title PhD Program, which offers interdisciplinary training in climate science across multiple disciplines, is also possible.
If you're passionate about understanding the cryosphere and contributing to impactful research, we'd love to hear from you! Applications to the Geography PhD program are due December 1, 2024 and early discussion with Dr. Trusel about applying is strongly recommended.
August 2024: Congratulations to PhD student, Mahsa Bahrami, for being awarded the NASA FINESST fellowship! Her project, DeepLakes, is investigating Antarctic ice sheet supraglacial hydrology using multi-source satellite data and deep learning approaches.
See Penn State News story: Geography student secures $150K NASA grant for ice sheet meltwater research
December 2023: We’re well-represented at AGU once again!
Emma, Mahsa, Jess, Luke, and Zhuolai at AGU 2023 in San Francisco
Luke Trusel and Zhuolai Pan will present Antarctic Peninsula surface meltwater production derived from satellite-reanalysis data fusion (Mon 12/11)
Mahsa Bahrami will present Antarctic Supraglacial Lake Detection Using a Deep Learning Approach and Sentinel-2 Data (Mon 12/11)
Jessica Kromer will present Exploring the role of sea ice in modulating atmospheric river impacts in Antarctica (Thur 12/14)
Luke Trusel will present Extreme precipitation-driven four-decade high in Antarctic Ice Sheet surface mass balance (Thur 12/14)
Emma Robertson will present Evaluating Atmospheric River Signatures in West Antarctic Ice Core Isotopic Records (Fri 12/15)
August 2023: We published two new articles stemming from our NASA project on Antarctic ocean-atmosphere-ice sheet interactions in Geophysical Research Letters and Journal of Climate!
August 2023: Welcome to Mahsa Bahrami, who has joined the group and will be working toward her PhD in Geography and Climate Sciences!
March 2023: Congratulations to Jessica Kromer for being awarded the R.S. Tarr student presentation award by the Cryosphere specialty group at the AAG Annual Meeting in Denver! Well done!
December 2022: Congratulations to Zhuolai Pan for successfully completing his M.S.! Zhuolai’s research has harnessed machine learning to generate novel, observationally based estimates of Antarctic Peninsula surface meltwater production. Stay tuned for the forthcoming manuscript!
December 2022: Come find us at AGU in Chicago!
Luke Trusel will present Atmospheric Response to Antarctic Sea Ice Reductions Drives Ice Sheet Surface Mass Balance Increases (Mon 12/12)
Anton Fatula will present Exploring the Dynamics and Causes of Multiple Supraglacial Lake Drainages at the Amery Ice Shelf Grounding Zone (Mon 12/12)
Luke Trusel will present Repeated Tidally Induced Hydrofracture of Supraglacial Lakes at the Amery Ice Shelf Grounding Zone (Tue 12/13)
Emma Robertson will present Polar Impact: A Field Work Survival Guide for All (Fri 12/16)
And check out the oral and poster sessions we are convening, Understanding Surface Mass Balance and the Impacts of Extreme Weather Events on Ice Sheets and Ice Shelves.
April 2022: Thrilled to share our new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters: “Repeated Tidally Induced Hydrofracture of a Supraglacial Lake at the Amery Ice Shelf Grounding Zone”!
Open Access paper here: https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL095661
Check out this this brief twitter thread about what we see and why we think it is important to consider in the context of ice shelf stability. Also see the Penn State News feature: Strong tides, vanishing lakes may prove beneficial to Antarctic ice shelf.
Below is a 3D view of the recently drained lakebed showing an 8-m deep crater into which ~18 million cubic meters of water drained.
December 2021: The CryoLab is well-represented at the AGU Fall Meeting this year!
Weiming Hu will present Quantifying Linkages between Navigational Conditions and Maritime Traffic in the Arctic Ocean (Tue 12/14)
Jessica Kromer will present Using Causal Discovery Applied to Observational Datasets to Evaluate Ocean, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheet Surface Interactions in Antarctica (Thur 12/16)
Zhuolai Pan will present Antarctic ice shelf surface melt rates derived from observational data and machine learning (Thur 12/16)
Luke Trusel will present Influence of the Southern Annular Mode on recent and future Antarctic ice sheet surface melt (Thur 12/16)
And check out the oral and poster sessions we are convening, Advances in Understanding Ice Sheet and Ice Shelf Surface Mass Balance: Past, Present, and Future.
September 2021: Important new paper in Nature Geoscience led by Matt Osman shows that Greenland’s ice caps grew during previous Common Era warm periods, but today this relationship has reversed due to stronger warming: Abrupt Common Era hydroclimate shifts drive west Greenland ice cap change
May 2021: Pleased to have contributed to two new ISMIP6-based papers that were just published:
Edwards et al., Projected land ice contributions to twenty-first-century sea level rise, in Nature.
Payne et al., Future sea level change under CMIP5 and CMIP6 scenarios from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, in GRL.
March 2021: Congratulations to Emma Robertson for being selected for an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award! Emma’s research seeks to understand the impacts and signatures of atmospheric variability on Antarctic ice sheet surface mass balance through the synthesis of remotely sensed data, ice core geochemical records, and climate models and reanalyses.
December 2020: Our group at AGU: Check out the research of graduate students Zhuolai Pan and Emma Robertson, and stop by our oral and poster sessions, Advances in Understanding Ice Sheet and Ice Shelf Surface Mass Balance: Past, Present, and Future.
August 2020: Extremely happy to be welcoming incoming geography graduate students Jessica Kromer, Zhuolai Pan, and Emma Robertson to our group, and excited for the science to come!
June 2020: Proposal funded! Along with PSU Geography colleagues, Manzhu Yu and Guido Cervone, we have been awarded a grant from the Penn State Center for Security Research and Education to study linkages between Arctic climate change and maritime transportation.
June 2020: Pleased to be recognized by AGU as an outstanding reviewer in 2019 for the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Thanks AGU!
April 2020: Undergraduate researcher, Zhuolai Pan, was awarded the first place prize in the Penn State Undergraduate Exhibition for his presentation, Dynamics of supraglacial lake drainage on Amery ice shelf, East Antarctica. Congrats, Zhuolai!
April 2020: New paper led by Ruthie Halberstadt (UMass Amherst) just published in Remote Sensing: Antarctic Supraglacial Lake Identification Using Landsat-8 Image Classification!
February 2020: Coauthored paper, A benchmark dataset of in situ Antarctic surface melt rates and energy balance, led by Stan Jakobs (Utrecht University) just published in Journal of Glaciology.
January 2020: Antarctic Supraglacial Lake Detection Using Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 Imagery: Towards Continental Generation of Lake Volumes, led by Mahsa Moussavi (NSIDC) (and co-authored by group alumna, Leanne Cioffi), out now in Remote Sensing!
Filled: Seeking graduate students for Fall 2020!
Join our group and the Penn State University Department of Geography in Fall 2020!
I am seeking a highly-motived PhD student interested in applying remote sensing to understand interactions among the ocean, atmosphere, and Antarctic ice sheet surface mass balance, as part of a NASA-funded project. The prospective student would be part of the dual-title PhD program in Geography and Climate Science and join excellent faculty and students in the Penn State Ice and Climate group as well as the CLIM (Climate Impacts) group in Geography.
Additional opportunities may exist for students interested in pursing a MS degree in Geography in topics of cryospheric and climate change.
Please reach out soon via email if you are interested in applying so that we can discuss the opportunities. Please also note that applications to The Graduate School at Penn State are due December 13, 2019.
August 2019: I have been quoted in several recent news articles about the exceptional Greenland Ice sheet surface melt this summer:
Scientific American: Historic Greenland Melt Is a “Glimpse of the Future”
CNBC: Extreme ice melt in Greenland threatens coastal communities, scientists warn
The Guardian: Heatwaves amplify near-record levels of ice melt in northern hemisphere
June 2019: Move to Penn State University. I am pleased to announce that I will be moving to a tenure-track position in the Department of Geography at Penn State University later this summer. Very excited about the opportunities that this will present. Students already at Penn State as well as prospective graduate students are encouraged to reach out about research opportunities! More to come soon…
May 2019: Thrilled to contribute to an important new paper in Nature led by Matt Osman of the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. Here, we use Greenland ice cores and a geochemical proxy to reconstruct marine primary productivity in the North Atlantic Ocean over the last several centuries. Our reconstruction reveals an Industrial-era decline in productivity in this biologically and economically-important region. These declines track the anthropogenic warming and increased runoff from the Greenland ice sheet. Further productivity declines due to continued warming could result in further reductions in productivity, with cascading effects across marine food webs.
See paper at Nature website: Industrial-era decline in subarctic Atlantic productivity
March 2019: Very honored to be this year’s recipient of the Rowan University Research Achievement Award! This is a university-wide award given to one faculty member each year.
February 2019: New paper just published in Nature and featured on the journal cover! “Global environmental consequences of twenty-first-century ice-sheet melt” led by Nick Golledge of Victoria University of Wellington was published February 6, 2019!
See coverage at:
December 2018: New lead paper in Nature! “Nonlinear rise in Greenland runoff in response to post-industrial Arctic warming” was published December 5, 2018!
See our accompanying website for a broad overview of the science and its implications. Also see Nature News feature on the paper.
Select media coverage (for more, see Altmetric [164 new stories listed as of Jan 23, 2019]):
The Guardian - Sea levels may rise more rapidly due to Greenland ice melt
National Geographic - What Greenland’s ‘unprecedented’ ice loss means for Earth
PBS News Hour - Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at its fastest rate in 350 years
Vox - Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at its fastest rate in centuries
USA Today - Greenland’s ice sheet melt has ‘gone into overdrive’ and is now ‘off the charts’
New York Times - Greenlands Melting Ice Nears a ‘Tipping Point’, Scientists Say
Videnskab - Nyt klimastudie er sygt deprimerende - men det er ikke det værste ved det [Danish]
November 2018: We have a (second) new paper out in Nature Climate Change: “Antarctic surface hydrology and impacts on ice-sheet mass balance” was published online today, November 19, 2018.
Rowan News provides a short summary of the main findings of this and the previous paper.
November 2018: New paper “The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets under 1.5 °C global warming” led by Frank Pattyn, Catherine Ritz, and Edward Hanna published in Nature Climate Change!
See coverage: “Ice Sheets in Greenland, Antarctica Could Reach Catastrophic 'Tipping Points' if We Don't Limit Warming” in EcoWatch.
September 2018: We are seeking to build a partnership with a nearby high school science teacher to develop hands-on lessons using satellite observations of Antarctic ice shelves.
Update! We are pleased to be partnering with Penny Rodrick-Williams of Tower Hill School in Wilmington, DE!
August 2018: The CryoLab was featured in a news article by Rowan University.
August 2018: Co-authored paper led by Kristin Schild on ice-ocean interactions and glacier calving in Svalbard published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface.
June 2018: Led two presentations at the SCAR/IASC POLAR 2018 meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
June 2018: Research project to investigate Antarctic surface mass balance funded by NASA Cryosphere Science Program. This is a collaborative project between Rowan, University of Colorado, and University of Maryland.
April 2018: CryoLab undergrad, Leanne Cioffi, presented her research, “Predicting the next big ‘berg: assessing rift propagation on Larsen D ice shelf, Antarctica” at the Rowan University STEM Symposium.
April 2018: Co-authored paper led by Melchior van Wessem on modeling Antarctic climate published in The Cryosphere.
April 2018: Co-organized and participated in Vast and Vanishing: Art and Science Perspectives on Climate Change panel discussion, coinciding with artwork exhibit by Diane Burko at the Rowan University Art Gallery. See news feature in The Whit.
February 2018: Co-led and organized NSF-funded Workshop on Antarctic Surface Hydrology and Future Ice-shelf Stability at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
November 2017: Presented a research seminars at Rutgers University Department of Geography and Temple University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
November 2017: Co-authored paper led by Jan Lenaerts on high resolution modeling of West Antarctic surface mass balance processes published in Annals of Glaciology.
October 2017: Research seminar presented as part of the Pegrum Lecture Series in the Department of Geology at University at Buffalo.
September 2017: Research seminar presented at the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
August 2017: Work commences on NSF-funded project on Antarctic ice shelf surface melting and supraglacial lakes!
June 2017: Multi-authored paper led by Ted Scambos on the state of Thwaites Glacier and its potential future evolution published in Global and Planetary Change.
June 2017: Gave invited presentation at the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Workshop in Boulder, CO.
