Ada Loewen wins the Tertia M.C. Hughes Prize!

By |2026-06-08T06:14:51-04:00June 8th, 2026|Uncategorized|

Congratulations to Ada Loewen, winner of this year's Tertia M.C. Hughes Graduate Student Prize from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS). Ada was selected by the awards committee for two contributions of special merit: her impactful community-engaged oceanographic research in Nunavut and her exceptional service to CMOS.

New paper on identifying fractures in landfast sea ice now available!

By |2026-01-23T09:18:17-05:00January 23rd, 2026|Uncategorized|

Congratulations to PhD candidate Ada Loewen who just published a study in Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing that identified over 4000 fractures in the landfast sea ice of Admiralty Inlet.  This paper describes a method that connects remotely sensed data (interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), optical imagery), Inuit Knowledge, and in-situ observations to identify fractures [...]

PhD opportunity

By |2026-01-12T21:07:52-05:00January 12th, 2026|Uncategorized|

We are seeking a PhD student with strong quantitative skills for an Arctic glacio-hydrology research project in the Water and Ice Research Laboratory (WIRL), Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. The project will build on WIRL’s long-term Milne Fiord research program on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high Arctic, and will [...]

Research on how ice islands deteriorate just published

By |2025-11-21T09:34:37-05:00November 21st, 2025|Uncategorized|

A new paper that examines the role of the 'footloose' calving mechanism in ice islands was just published in the Journal of Glaciology.   Jesse Smith, compared observed ice island calving events from the Canadian Ice Island Drift, Deterioration and Detection (CI2D3) Database with predictions from a finite element model created by Mahmud Sazidy.  Simulated rams [...]

Unprecedented rapid glacier retreat in the Antarctic

By |2025-11-08T02:29:53-05:00November 8th, 2025|Uncategorized|

A Colorado University Boulder–led study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, investigates the retreat of Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier and highlights the role of the ice plain bed geometry in this process. In 2023, the glacier retreated at an unprecedented rate, losing a total of 8 kilometres of ice in just two months. Yulia Antropova, a PhD [...]

WIRL is now on bluesky!

By |2025-08-29T08:54:53-04:00August 29th, 2025|Uncategorized|

It has been a while since we posted on social media.  It didn't really seem like that much fun anymore as  Twitter morphed into X.  But now the WIRL site is sharing posts with Bluesky - you can find us here: https://bsky.app/profile/wirlcarleton.bsky.social The twitter feed that we posted to previously has been copied in. Sorry [...]

New paper on the Milne Ice Shelf basal channel

By |2025-08-30T07:50:22-04:00August 10th, 2025|Uncategorized|

New research has unlocked some of the mysteries surrounding the basal channel under the Milne Ice Shelf that discharges fresh water from the Milne Fiord epishelf lake to the Arctic Ocean.  The analysis titled "Momentum, Heat, and Salt Budgets to Estimate Drag and Transfer Coefficients inside an Ice Shelf Basal Channel" was led by Jérémie [...]

A study on the future melt rates in Milne Fiord now published

By |2025-07-24T09:35:35-04:00July 24th, 2025|Uncategorized|

Ever wonder how fast the Milne Ice Shelf or Milne Glacier or its ice tongue will melt after major calving events or under various warming scenarios? The answers to these questions and more are in Jérémie Bonneau's new paper in The Cryosphere. Check it out here!

An analysis of iceberg/ice island tracks now published in Arctic Science

By |2025-07-24T09:11:04-04:00June 24th, 2025|Uncategorized|

A study, led by Abby Dalton at the Laboratory for Cryopsheric Research at the University of Ottawa examines the drift of iceberg tracks in Nares Strait and Baffin Bay. The study is the first to use a novel Iceberg Beacon Track Database and relies on the Cryologger Ice Tracking Beacon both developed at WIRL.  For [...]

Understanding ice growth on the Rideau Canal

By |2025-07-24T08:59:51-04:00May 30th, 2025|Uncategorized|

A publication was just released on the 'Impact of environmental factors on energy balance and ice growth in winter recreational waterways' in the Journal of Cold Regions Engineering. This study, authored by postdoctoral researcher Elham Nakhostin, is part of the NSERC-funded project Climate Change Effects on the Rideau Canal Skateway led by engineering professor Shawn [...]

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