Reconstructing Late Quaternary glaciation in the monsoon-influenced Himalaya to improve projections of future glacier change
This Master's project was designed for Solveig Toppe Tolaas who started the Master's program in Earth sciences, UiB, spring 2025. The Master's project is given by the research group Quaternary geology & paleo climate.
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Project description
Motivation: In the Central and Eastern Himalaya, glacier change is influenced by the interactions of regional weather systems鈥攖he Indian Summer Monsoon and the winter Westerlies鈥攁nd high-relief topography. Past changes in glaciation across this region are recorded by moraines that indicate past glacier extent and the timing of glacier changes. This project will use higher-order glacier modelling combined with observations of glacial geomorphology and geology to investigate the timing and style of Late Quaternary glaciation in this region. By making reconstructions of past glaciation using glacier modelling, we can discover the dynamic response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change (Saha et al., 2019). This project will combine a higher-order ice-dynamical glacier evolution model, iSOSIA (Egholm et al., 2012; Rowan et al., 2022) with surface mass balance modelling (Born et al., 2019) to make a series of experiments to explore the sensitivity of glaciers in Nepal and northern India to palaeoclimate change. Remote sensing data will be used to constrain and evaluate the model by observing present-day ice flow and glacier extents and the positions of icemarginal moraines. Training will be given in each of the methods and enthusiasm to learn is more important than prior experience.
Research questions:
- Does high-relief topography affect the response of glaciers to climate change in the monsoon-influenced Himalaya?
- Does the timing and extent of glacial maxima vary across this region?
- Have these glaciers undergone similar changes in response to climate change through the Late Quaternary?
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Proposed course plan during the master's degree (60 ECTS)
V氓rsemester 2025:
GEOV325A Glaciology (10 sp)
GEOV322 Master Level Field Excursion in Quaternary Geology (5 sp)
GEOV316 Practical Skills in Remote Sensing and Spatial analysis (10 sp)
贬酶蝉迟蝉别尘别蝉迟别谤:
GEOV222 Palaeoclimatology (10 sp)
GEOV230 Glacial geology and geomorphology (10 sp)
GEOV324 Polar palaeoclimate (5 sp)
V氓rsemester 2026:
GEOV225 Quaternary geology and palaeoclimate field course (10 sp)
Field-, lab- and analysis work
The project will use GIS and scripted programming languages (MATLAB and possibly Python) for data analysis and visualisation of model results. Familiarity with these methods is useful but not essential, as training and ongoing support will be provided.