Jonathan Bamber

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Jonathan Bamber in 2015 Jonathan Bamber, 2015.jpg
Jonathan Bamber in 2015

Jonathan Louis Bamber is a British physicist known for his work on satellite remote sensing of the polar regions and especially the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. He has authored more than 200 refereed scientific publications about the cryosphere and its interaction with the rest of the Earth System, and is recognised by the Institute for Scientific Information as a "highly cited researcher". [1] In 2019, he was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union "for pioneering satellite remote sensing in glaciology and building bridges to other disciplines of the geoscience community." [2] He is the first non-US scientist in the Cryosphere division to receive this honour.[ citation needed ]

Contents

Background

Bamber is the son of Helen Bamber, [3] who was a British psychotherapist and human rights activist, and Rudi Bamber, a first generation Holocaust survivor. [4] Rudi's testimony is held as part of the oral history of the Holocaust at the London Imperial War Museum, [4] where Helen also recorded her experiences of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after its liberation. [3]

Education

Bamber went to Creighton Comprehensive school in North London, before studying physics at the University of Bristol, earning a BSc in 1983 and a PhD from the University of Cambridge in glaciology and remote sensing in 1987. [5]

Research and appointments

Bamber spent eight years in the Department of Space and Climate Physics, University College London, before returning to the University of Bristol to the Department of Geography in 1996, where he has worked since. His focus has been on satellite observations of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, but he has also studied other parts of the cryosphere in the Arctic, Patagonia, and Himalaya. [5] In 2013, he published a paper on the discovery of the longest canyon in the world, buried beneath the Greenland ice sheet, [6] which has been dubbed the "Grand Canyon" of Greenland. [7] His work also looks at the different factors that influence contemporary sea level variations funded by the European Research Council [8] and the role of freshwater fluxes from Arctic land ice on ocean circulation. [1] His work on the ice sheets and sea level has been adopted in several Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, including the Assessment Report 4 and 5, Special Report 1.5, Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere, and has been highlighted by the World Economic Forum. [9]

Awards and honours

In 2007 Bamber was given the European Geosciences Union Service award "in recognition of his outstanding services with regard to the initiation and leading of the Division on Cryospheric Sciences and to the founding of the journal The Cryosphere ". [10] In 2015 he was given a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award. In 2015 he was elected as the president of the European Geosciences Union, serving for four years as president-elect and president. [11] In 2019 he was made a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. [2] In December 2020, the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee named a glacier in the Antarctic Peninsula after Bamber for his contribution to Antarctic research. [12]

Personal life

Bamber is a mountaineer, climber and long-distance runner. In 1990, he climbed the 1938 route on the North Face of the Eiger with Wil Hurford. He won his first major running race in 1991 at the Woodley 10 mile road race in a time of 54 minutes.

A year later in 1992, while climbing in the Indian Himalaya, close to the Pakistan border, he was hit by a rockfall and sustained life-threatening injuries to his left leg. It took six days to get him off the mountain, and he contracted gangrene and frostbite. [13] He spent almost four years on crutches before being able to take a few steps unaided. [13] His leg was 2 cm shorter, and his ankle fused.

Ten years after his climbing accident, two days before his 40th birthday, he ran and won a half marathon in Somerset. [14] Since then he has competed in races over various distances, winning a number outright and in his age category, [15] at distances of 5 to 50 miles. [16]

In 2018, he ran the Everest marathon, the highest in the world, placing as 2nd international runner.

In the next year, he teamed up with the first international runner from the Everest marathon to compete in the eight-day TransAlpineRun, covering 280 km and a 16,500 m ascent, starting in Germany and finishing in Italy. His running partner retired after the fifth stage, but Bamber continued and completed the course in a time of 41 hours, 57 minutes. [14]

In 2015, a team of three Swiss climbers made the first ascent of the mountain Tupendeo, which Bamber had attempted 23 years earlier. They made a movie about their ascent and Bamber's ordeal that premiered at the Kendal Mountain Festival in 2016 [17] and was subsequently shown at other outdoor film festivals across Europe. [18] It was also aired on German and Swiss television. [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cryosphere</span> Earths surface where water is frozen

The cryosphere is an umbrella term for those portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form. This includes sea ice, ice on lakes or rivers, snow, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground. Thus, there is a overlap with the hydrosphere. The cryosphere is an integral part of the global climate system. It also has important feedbacks on the climate system. These feedbacks come from the cryosphere's influence on surface energy and moisture fluxes, clouds, the water cycle, atmospheric and oceanic circulation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ice sheet</span> Large mass of glacial tulips

In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi). The only current ice sheets are the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers. Masses of ice covering less than 50,000 km2 are termed an ice cap. An ice cap will typically feed a series of glaciers around its periphery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Antarctic Ice Sheet</span> Segment of Antarctic ice sheet

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies well below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice shelves. The WAIS is bounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the Ronne Ice Shelf, and outlet glaciers that drain into the Amundsen Sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antarctic ice sheet</span> Earths southern polar ice cap

The Antarctic ice sheet is a continental glacier covering 98% of the Antarctic continent, with an area of 14 million square kilometres and an average thickness of over 2 kilometres (1.2 mi). It is the largest of Earth's two current ice sheets, containing 26.5 million cubic kilometres of ice, which is equivalent to 61% of all fresh water on Earth. Its surface is nearly continuous, and the only ice-free areas on the continent are the dry valleys, nunataks of the Antarctic mountain ranges, and sparse coastal bedrock. However, it is often subdivided into East Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS), West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS), and Antarctic Peninsula (AP), due to the large differences in topography, ice flow, and glacier mass balance between the three regions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greenland ice sheet</span> Vast body of ice in Greenland, Northern Hemisphere

The Greenland ice sheet is an ice sheet which forms the second largest body of ice in the world. It is an average of 1.67 km (1.0 mi) thick, and over 3 km (1.9 mi) thick at its maximum. It is almost 2,900 kilometres (1,800 mi) long in a north–south direction, with a maximum width of 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) at a latitude of 77°N, near its northern edge. The ice sheet covers 1,710,000 square kilometres (660,000 sq mi), around 80% of the surface of Greenland, or about 12% of the area of the Antarctic ice sheet. The term 'Greenland ice sheet' is often shortened to GIS or GrIS in scientific literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Geosciences Union</span> International science society

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is a non-profit international union in the fields of Earth, planetary, and space sciences whose vision is to "realise a sustainable and just future for humanity and for the planet". The organisation has headquarters in Munich, Germany. Membership is open to individuals who are professionally engaged in or associated with these fields and related studies, including students, early career scientists and retired seniors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pine Island Glacier</span> Large ice stream, fastest melting glacier in Antarctica

Pine Island Glacier (PIG) is a large ice stream, and the fastest melting glacier in Antarctica, responsible for about 25% of Antarctica's ice loss. The glacier ice streams flow west-northwest along the south side of the Hudson Mountains into Pine Island Bay, Amundsen Sea, Antarctica. It was mapped by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) from surveys and United States Navy (USN) air photos, 1960–66, and named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) in association with Pine Island Bay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ice stream</span> A region of fast-moving ice within an ice sheet

An ice stream is a region of fast-moving ice within an ice sheet. It is a type of glacier, a body of ice that moves under its own weight. They can move upwards of 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) a year, and can be up to 50 kilometres (31 mi) in width, and hundreds of kilometers in length. They tend to be about 2 km (1.2 mi) deep at the thickest, and constitute the majority of the ice that leaves the sheet. In Antarctica, the ice streams account for approximately 90% of the sheet's mass loss per year, and approximately 50% of the mass loss in Greenland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Totten Glacier</span> Glacier in Antarctica

Totten Glacier is a large glacier draining a major portion of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, through the Budd Coast of Wilkes Land in the Australian Antarctic Territory. The catchment drained by the glacier is estimated at 538,000 km2 (208,000 sq mi), extending approximately 1,100 km (680 mi) into the interior and holds the potential to raise sea level by at least 3.5 m (11 ft). Totten drains northeastward from the continental ice but turns northwestward at the coast where it terminates in a prominent tongue close east of Cape Waldron. It was first delineated from aerial photographs taken by USN Operation Highjump (1946–47), and named by Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) for George M. Totten, midshipman on USS Vincennes of the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–42), who assisted Lieutenant Charles Wilkes with correction of the survey data obtained by the expedition.

Radioglaciology is the study of glaciers, ice sheets, ice caps and icy moons using ice penetrating radar. It employs a geophysical method similar to ground-penetrating radar and typically operates at frequencies in the MF, HF, VHF and UHF portions of the radio spectrum. This technique is also commonly referred to as "Ice Penetrating Radar (IPR)" or "Radio Echo Sounding (RES)".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Antarctic Ice Sheet</span> Segment of the continental ice sheet that covers East Antarctica

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) lies between 45° west and 168° east longitudinally. It was first formed around 34 million years ago, and it is the largest ice sheet on the entire planet, with far greater volume than the Greenland ice sheet or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), from which it is separated by the Transantarctic Mountains. The ice sheet is around 2.2 km (1.4 mi) thick on average and is 4,897 m (16,066 ft) at its thickest point. It is also home to the geographic South Pole, South Magnetic Pole and the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.

The Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling (CPOM) is a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre of Excellence that studies processes in the Earth's polar environments. CPOM conducts research on sea ice, land ice, and ice sheets using satellite observations and numerical models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand Canyon (Greenland)</span> Large subglacial canyon in Greenland

The Grand Canyon of Greenland is a tentative canyon of record length discovered underneath the Greenland ice sheet as reported in the journal Science on 30 August 2013, by scientists from the University of Bristol led by Jonathan Bamber, University of Calgary, and University of Urbino, who described it as a mega-canyon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Konrad Steffen</span> Swiss glaciologist (1952–2020)

Konrad "Koni" Steffen was a Swiss glaciologist, known for his research into the impact of global warming on the Arctic.

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is a Danish palaeoclimatology professor and researcher at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Her primary field is the study of ice and climate, specifically the reconstruction of climate records from ice cores and borehole data; ice flow models to date ice cores; continuum mechanical properties of anisotropic ice; ice in the solar system; and the history and evolution of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jemma Wadham</span> British glacial biogeochemist

Jemma L. Wadham is a British glacial biogeochemist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terry Wilson (scientist)</span> International leader in the study of present-day tectonics in Antarctica

Terry Jean Wilson is an international leader in the study of present-day tectonics in Antarctica. She has led large, international efforts, such as Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET), to investigate the interactions between the Earth's crust and the cryosphere in Antarctica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Pattyn</span> Belgian glaciologist

Frank Jean-Marie Léon Pattyn is a Belgian glaciologist and professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He is best known for developing ice-sheet models and leading model intercomparisons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julienne Stroeve</span> American climatologist

Professor Julienne Christine Stroeve is a polar climate scientist known for her research on remote sensing of ice and snow. She is Professor of Polar Observation & Modelling at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University College London, Senior Canada-150 Research Chair in Climate Forcing of Sea Ice at the University of Manitoba, and a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). She is also a member of the American Geophysical Union and an ISI highly cited researcher.

Isabella Velicogna is a geoscientist known for her work using gravity measurements from space to study changes in the polar ice sheets and water storage on Earth.

References

  1. 1 2 "Jonathan Bamber's Publons profile". publons.com. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  2. 1 2 "Union Fellows | AGU". www.agu.org. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  3. 1 2 "Bamber, Helen Rae (Oral history)". Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  4. 1 2 "Bamber, Rudi (Oral history)". Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  5. 1 2 Bristol, University of. "Professor Jonathan Bamber - School of Geographical Sciences". www.bristol.ac.uk. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  6. ↑ "Giant Canyon Discovered Under Greenland Ice Sheet". Archived from the original on 24 September 2019. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  7. ↑ "Maphead: The Grand Canyon of Greenland". cntraveler.com. 24 February 2014. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  8. ↑ "GlobalMass – Attributing global sea level rise to its component parts". www.globalmass.eu. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  9. ↑ "Jonathan Bamber" . Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  10. ↑ "Past and present awardees". European Geosciences Union (EGU). Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  11. ↑ "Union Council". European Geosciences Union (EGU). Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  12. ↑ "2020 Antarctic Place-Names mark 200th Anniversary of the Discovery of Antarctica" . Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  13. 1 2 "Tupendeo – One Mountain, Two Stories". Sidetracked. 21 October 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  14. 1 2 Buhne, Tabitha (October 2020). Der Mann, der uberlebte. Running magazine. pp. 34–37.
  15. ↑ "Athlete Profile". www.thepowerof10.info. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  16. ↑ "2017". Butcombe Trail Ultra. 3 September 2017. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  17. ↑ "Tupendeo – one mountain, two stories | Trento Film Festival" . Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  18. ↑ "Torelló Mountain Film". torellomountainfilm.cat. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  19. ↑ Zeitung, Jungfrau (4 March 2017). "Filmpremiere einer Bergsteiger-Tragödie". Jungfrau Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 3 July 2020.
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