Adrian Jenkins

Biography

Adrian is a senior research scientist at the British Antarctic Survey with 30 years of experience in the study of interactions between land ice and the ocean. He joined BAS in 1985 as a glaciologist with a background in physics and geophysics and initially undertook three seasons of fieldwork on Ronne Ice Shelf. Using the results of those glaciological measurements he estimated the rates of melting and freezing at the ice shelf base and developed a simple numerical model of the ocean circulation beneath the ice shelf to explain those results. The problem of ice‐ocean interactions has remained the primary focus of his research efforts throughout his career. In recent years he has mainly been concerned with the study of how ocean-driven melting of the Amundsen Sea ice shelves is controlling the rate at which ice is being lost from that sector of Antarctica. The resulting thinning of inland ice there currently represents Antarctica’s main contribution to sea level rise. Over the course of his career he has gained experience in the development and application of a number of tools to both observe and model the ice-ocean system, including the use of phase-sensitive radar to measure the melt rates of ice shelves, the deployment of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles to explore the sub-ice cavities, and the development of numerical models, ranging from simple, process-oriented forward and inverse models to ocean general circulation and coupled climate models.

Research Interest

Ocean circulation and ice shelf Filchner Ice Shelf System, Antarctica iSTAR – Stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet iSTAR-A Ocean2Ice Processes and variability iSTAR-B Ocean circulation and melting beneath the ice shelves of the south-eastern Amundsen Sea