Max, please introduce yourself.
Hi! I am Max, a post-doctoral researcher working at Northumbria University.
Tell us about your professional and academic career before becoming part of the OCEAN:ICE community.
Before my job here in Newcastle, I pursued a PhD in Utrecht, The Netherlands, where I worked with Peter Kuipers Munneke and Michiel van den Broeke. During those four years, we investigated the firn layer of the Greenland ice sheet using a combination of firn and climate models. More specifically, I spend a lot of time improving and validating the firn model, and investigating how changes in the firn layer, such as the formation of ice slabs and aquifers, are driven by large-scale atmospheric changes. Before my PhD, I studied Chemical Engineering and Applied Physics, and performed ocean simulations at the research institute Deltares.
What do you do within OCEAN:ICE?
In my work, which is part of WP3, I look at the underside of the Antarctic ice sheet. Initially, this meant looking at the input of subglacial discharge into the ocean, but this has now evolved into looking at the basal melt rates underneath ice shelves. Using data assimilation techniques, we hope to use our ice-sheet model Ua together with remote sensing data to arrive at an improved estimate of these melt rates.
What have you enjoyed about OCEAN:ICE so far?
I like that OCEAN:ICE is a big group of people from different backgrounds, yet joined by a common interest. It was especially fun to meet most of you during the previous meeting in Copenhagen.
Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share?
I am better than you at Mario Kart 😉
Stay tuned on our social media channels (X, Mastodon, LinkedIn and Facebook) for more of the series of OCEAN:ICE 'Researcher in the Spotlight' articles.