ST. PETERSBURG, FL - CMS PhD student, Theresa King, has been invited to sail on International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 379 to the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica. This expedition will set sail from Punta Arenas, Chile in January 2019, and over the course of two months, will collect sediment records from the continental shelf and rise of the Amundsen Sea. These records will allow for a better understanding of West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) dynamics from the Paleogene through the Holocene. Such an understanding, correlated with global climate records, will illuminate the stability and sensitivity of the WAIS through time. As the WAIS is currently experiencing the largest amount of ice loss of Antarctica, the information gleaned from this expedition will be vital to improving modeling parameters and outputs of future climate and sea level conditions.
Aboard the D/V JOIDES Resolution, King will work as a Petrophysicist/Physical Properties Specialist. Upon returning to CMS, King’s research will focus on using the recovered sediments to reconstruct interactions between the ice shelf and warm waters on the continental shelf.