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  • © 2021

Glaciers and Ice Sheets in the Climate System

The Karthaus Summer School Lecture Notes

  • Based on lectures from the renowned Karthaus summer school on glaciology
  • Comprises twenty chapters on diverse topics in glaciology and written by leading international experts
  • Serves as a primer on glaciological topics and their application to climate change
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (20 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxvii
  2. Slow  Viscous Flow

    • Ian Hewitt
    Pages 1-28
  3. Thermal Structure

    • Andrew Fowler
    Pages 29-45
  4. Sliding, Drainage and Subglacial Geomorphology

    • Andrew Fowler, Felix Ng
    Pages 47-78
  5. Tidewater Glaciers

    • Ian Howat, Andreas Vieli
    Pages 79-91
  6. Interaction of Ice Shelves with the Ocean

    • Adrian Jenkins
    Pages 93-130
  7. Polar Meteorology

    • Carleen Reijmer, Michiel van den Broeke, Willem Jan van de Berg
    Pages 131-159
  8. Mass Balance

    • Michiel van den Broeke, Rianne Giesen
    Pages 161-184
  9. Least-Squares Data Inversion in Glaciology

    • Doug MacAyeal
    Pages 219-240
  10. Firn

    • Christo Buizert, Michiel Helsen
    Pages 255-278
  11. Ice Cores: Archive of the Climate System

    • Hubertus Fischer, Thomas Blunier, Robert Mulvaney
    Pages 279-325
  12. Satellite Remote Sensing of Glaciers and Ice Sheets

    • Helmut Rott, Frank Paul
    Pages 327-348
  13. Geophysics

    • Olaf Eisen
    Pages 349-381
  14. Glacial Isostatic Adjustment

    • Pippa Whitehouse, Glenn Milne, Kurt Lambeck
    Pages 383-413
  15. Ice Sheets in the Cenozoic

    • Bas de Boer, Roderik van de Wal
    Pages 415-430
  16. Paleoglaciology

    • Arjen Stroeven, Clas Hättestrand, Krister Jansson, Johan Kleman
    Pages 431-457
  17. Glacier Fluctuations and Simple Glacier Models

    • Hans Oerlemans
    Pages 459-482
  18. Tropical Glaciers

    • Thomas Mölg, Georg Kaser
    Pages 483-495

About this book

Our realisation of how profoundly glaciers and ice sheets respond to climate change and impact sea level and the environment has propelled their study to the forefront of Earth system science. Aspects of this multidisciplinary endeavour now constitute major areas of research. This book is named after the international summer school held annually in the beautiful alpine village of Karthaus, Northern Italy, and consists of twenty chapters based on lectures from the school. They cover theory, methods, and observations, and introduce readers to essential glaciological topics such as ice-flow dynamics, polar meteorology, mass balance, ice-core analysis, paleoclimatology, remote sensing and geophysical methods, glacial isostatic adjustment, modern and past glacial fluctuations, and ice sheet reconstruction. The chapters were written by thirty-four contributing authors who are leading international authorities in their fields. The book can be used as a graduate-level textbook for a university course, and as a valuable reference guide for practising glaciologists and climate scientists.

Editors and Affiliations

  • MACSI, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Andrew Fowler

  • Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Felix Ng

About the editors

Professor Andrew Fowler is a Research Professor at the University of Limerick and Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He was an undergraduate and then graduate in mathematics at Oxford, and completed his thesis on glacier dynamics in 1977. Following this, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Trinity College Dublin and then an Assistant Professor at MIT. He returned to Oxford as a Lecturer in 1985 and was promoted to Professor in 2014. In 2007, he was appointed Stokes Professor at the University of Limerick, and was appointed a Research Professor there in 2012.

Dr. Felix Ng is a Reader in Theoretical Glaciology at the University of Sheffield. Having grown up in Hong Kong and attended middle school in the UK, he read the undergraduate degree in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. There, he subsequently completed his D.Phil. in Mathematical Glaciology at the Mathematical Institute in 1998. In the following years, he held postdoctoral research positions at Oxford, the University of Washington, and MIT. He was appointed a Lecturer in Glaciology at the University of Sheffield in 2005, before being promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2012, and to Reader in 2018.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access