Our research activites encompass the measurement, analysis and interpretation of the Earth's response to forcings with a wide range of time scales. The `response' includes: Geodynamics associated with the convective circulation in the Earth's mantle; the isostatic adjustment of the Earth driven by the late Pleistocene glacial cycles and more recent ice-ocean mass transfers; and solid Earth (body) tides induced by luni-solar gravitational forcings.
|Sea-level change in response to the collapse of the WAIS computed by using (A) a standard sea-level theory (5), which assumes a nonrotating Earth, no marine-based ice, and shorelines that remain fixed to the present-day geometry with time, as well as (B) a prediction based on a theory (6) that overcomes these limitations. Mitrovica, Gomez and Clark, Science (6), 2009.|
The research combines theoretical descriptions and numerical predictions of the response of sufficiently general planetary models with relevant observational constraints. These constraints arise from sources as varied as geological reconstructions of lithospheric dynamics, and the remarkably accurate measurement techniques of space geodesy, particularly very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) and Global Positioning System (GPS) surveying.
The broad goal of the research is to develop a clearer understanding of the elastic and anelastic properties of the planet, to formulate a unified description of the multitude of surface features which originate from the Earth responses described above, and to consider the influence of these responses on global change processes.