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Ian Joughin

Senior Principal Engineer

Affiliate Professor, Earth and Space Sciences

Email

irj@uw.edu

Phone

206-221-3177

Biosketch

Ian Joughin continues his pioneering research into the use of differential SAR interferometry for the estimation of surface motion and topography of ice sheets. He combines the remote sensing with field work and modeling to solve ice dynamics problems. Solving the problems helps him understand the mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets in response to climate change.

In addition to polar research, he also contributed to the development of algorithms that were used to mosaic data for the near-global map of topography from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).

Department Affiliation

Polar Science Center

Education

B.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Vermont, 1986

M.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Vermont, 1990

Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, 1995

Publications

2000-present and while at APL-UW

Mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets from 1992 to 2020

Otosaka, I.N., and 67 others including I. Joughin, M.D. King, B.E. Smith, and T.C. Sutterley, "Mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets from 1992 to 2020," Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 1297-1616, doi:10.5194/essd-15-1597-2023, 2023.

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20 Apr 2023

Ice losses from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have accelerated since the 1990s, accounting for a significant increase in the global mean sea level. Here, we present a new 29-year record of ice sheet mass balance from 1992 to 2020 from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE). We compare and combine 50 independent estimates of ice sheet mass balance derived from satellite observations of temporal changes in ice sheet flow, in ice sheet volume, and in Earth's gravity field. Between 1992 and 2020, the ice sheets contributed 21.0±1.9 mm to global mean sea level, with the rate of mass loss rising from 105 Gt yr−1 between 1992 and 1996 to 372 Gt yr−1 between 2016 and 2020. In Greenland, the rate of mass loss is 169±9 Gt yr−1 between 1992 and 2020, but there are large inter-annual variations in mass balance, with mass loss ranging from 86 Gt yr−1 in 2017 to 444 Gt yr−1 in 2019 due to large variability in surface mass balance. In Antarctica, ice losses continue to be dominated by mass loss from West Antarctica (82±9 Gt yr−1) and, to a lesser extent, from the Antarctic Peninsula (13±5 Gt yr−1). East Antarctica remains close to a state of balance, with a small gain of 3±15 Gt yr−1, but is the most uncertain component of Antarctica's mass balance.

Weekly to monthly terminus variability of Greenland's marine-terminating outlet glaciers

Black, T.E., and I. Joughin, "Weekly to monthly terminus variability of Greenland's marine-terminating outlet glaciers," Cryosphere, 17, doi:10.5194/tc-17-1-2023, 2023.

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5 Jan 2023

Seasonal terminus-position variability of Greenland's marine-terminating outlet glaciers is superimposed on multidecadal trends of glacier retreat. To characterize this seasonal variability, we manually digitized terminus positions for 219 marine-terminating glaciers in Greenland from January 2015 through December 2021 using Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mosaics. We digitized at a monthly frequency for 199 glaciers and at a 6 d frequency for 20 glaciers. We found that nearly 80 % of glacier termini in Greenland vary significantly on a seasonal basis. For these seasonally varying glaciers, on average, seasonal retreat typically begins in mid-May, and seasonal advance generally commences in early October. The timing of the initiation of the retreat period may be related to the timing of the onset of ice-sheet surface melt. The rate of retreat events peaks in late summer and reaches a minimum in late winter and early spring. The median magnitude of terminus-position seasonality, the difference between glacier length at the dates of peak advance and retreat, is about 220 m. We find a stronger correlation between this magnitude and glacier velocity than between magnitude and glacier width. Terminus-position seasonality can influence longer-term glacier dynamics and, consequently, ice-sheet mass balance. This study contributes to our understanding of terminus-position seasonality for individual glaciers and collectively for glaciers around the entire Greenland Ice Sheet.

TermPicks: A century of Greenland glacier terminus data for use in scientific and machine learning applications

Goliber, S., and 22 others including T. Black and I. Joughin, "TermPicks: A century of Greenland glacier terminus data for use in scientific and machine learning applications," Cryosphere, 16, 3215-3233, doi:10.5194/tc-16-3215-2022, 2022.

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12 Aug 2022

Marine-terminating outlet glacier terminus traces, mapped from satellite and aerial imagery, have been used extensively in understanding how outlet glaciers adjust to climate change variability over a range of timescales. Numerous studies have digitized termini manually, but this process is labor intensive, and no consistent approach exists. A lack of coordination leads to duplication of efforts, particularly for Greenland, which is a major scientific research focus. At the same time, machine learning techniques are rapidly making progress in their ability to automate accurate extraction of glacier termini, with promising developments across a number of optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite sensors. These techniques rely on high-quality, manually digitized terminus traces to be used as training data for robust automatic traces. Here we present a database of manually digitized terminus traces for machine learning and scientific applications. These data have been collected, cleaned, assigned with appropriate metadata including image scenes, and compiled so they can be easily accessed by scientists. The TermPicks data set includes 39 060 individual terminus traces for 278 glaciers with a mean of 136 ± 190 and median of 93 of traces per glacier. Across all glaciers, 32 567 dates have been digitized, of which 4467 have traces from more than one author, and there is a duplication rate of 17%. We find a median error of ~100 m among manually traced termini. Most traces are obtained after 1999, when Landsat 7 was launched. We also provide an overview of an updated version of the Google Earth Engine Digitization Tool (GEEDiT), which has been developed specifically for future manual picking of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

More Publications

In The News

UW polar bear expert appears in BBC-produced film about the Arctic

UW News, Hannah Hickey

A new production, "Arctic: Our Frozen Planet," narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, screens May 25 and 27 at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. Eric Regehr, a researcher at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory, appears in the film doing fieldwork on Wrangel Island, an island off the northeast coast of Russia that is home to the world’s highest concentration of polar bears.

23 May 2023

Parts of Greenland Warmer Now Than in 1,000 Years

Axios, Andrew Freedman

The new research offers the first conclusive evidence of human-induced long-term warming and increased meltwater runoff in the northern and central parts of Greenland, typically the coldest parts of the ice sheet. Ian Joughin comments that the warming has a clear linear trend, which will likely steepen with time.

19 Jan 2023

Here are 3 dangerous climate tipping points the world is on track for

NPR, Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Sommer

Climate tipping points won't be as abrupt as that term would suggest. Most will unfold over the course of decades. Some could take centuries. Some may be partially reversible or avoidable. But they all have enormous and lasting implications for the humans, plants and animals on Earth.

10 Nov 2022

More News Items

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