Speaker: Christine McCarthy Lamont Assistant Reserach Professor. Columbia University 

Title: “Slip Sliding Away: mapping the sliding behavior of ice streams”

Abstract: Ice streams represent a significant portion of the Antarctic ice mass balance. Understanding the controls on flow and sliding rates are key to predictive modeling of sea level rise. In my laboratory experiments I measure the frictional properties that control basal sliding. In particular, I will present results from ice-on-rock friction experiments in which the driving velocity was periodic, representing tidal modulation. Using the formulation of rate- and state- dependent friction that has been used to describe earthquakes and fault dynamics for decades and the parameters gleaned from the experiments, we are able to describe the full range of sliding behavior (from creeping to modulation to episodic stick-slip) observed both in the lab and in nature.

Short Bio: Christine McCarthy is a research scientist at Columbia’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. She received her Masters and Ph.D. from Brown University, after which she conducted a two-year postdoc fellowship in Tokyo at the Earthquake Research Institute. She specializes in running laboratory experiments that measure how ice and other geologic materials respond to external forcing at various timescales. In particular she is interested in how features at the microscopic scale affect macroscopic-scale behavior, such as how glaciers slide or how seismic waves are damped as they travel through the Earth. She and her husband live in New York City with a precocious preschooler and determined two year old.