Weddell Sea and Dronning Maud Land (WSDML) and Amundsen and Bellingshausen Sector (ABS) Regional Working Groups Welcome New Co-Chairs

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The Weddell Sea and Dronning Maud Land (WSDML) RWG are delighted to welcome Dr Stefanie Arndt as co-chair. Stefanie joins Markus Janout in co-chairing WSDML. The working group would like to thank Dr Sebastien Moreau who was co-chair from 2018 to mid-2021 when he was selected as the new SOOS Vice Chair. 

Dr Stefanie Arndt is a sea ice physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven. She also lectures in the sea ice physics master’s programme at Universität Hamburg. She was born in Berlin in 1988, and studied meteorology in Berlin and Hamburg, as well as Arctic geophysics in a master’s block course on Spitsbergen. In 2017 she completed her doctorate at the University of Bremen and the AWI on seasonal Arctic and Antarctic surface properties and their influence on the under-ice light field. During her doctorate she spent three months at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), University of Tasmania, in Hobart, Tasmania. As a research associate in the AWI’s sea ice physics section, she coordinates, among other things, the sea ice programme at the German Antarctic research station Neumayer III, as well as the section’s field work in the ice-covered Southern Ocean. To date, Arndt has participated in nine ship-based and two land-based expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, including the MOSAiC expedition, in which she led the international sea ice team on board during the third leg of the expedition. She is also active in various national and international networks, including as German representative at the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS), the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) and the international working groups Antarctic Fast Ice Network, and Antarctic Sea Ice Processes and Climate (ASPeCt). In the latter she is also a member of the executive committee. Furthermore, she invests significant time and energy in scientific communication.

The Amundsen and Bellingshausen Sector (ABS) RWG also welcomes a new co-chair,  Dr Pierre Dutrieux. Pierre joins Prof. Patricia Yager co-chairing ABS. The working group would like to thank Dr Bastien Queste, the inaugral co-chair of ABS, co-chairing from 2019 till mid-2021. 

Dr Pierre Dutrieux received his PhD in Oceanography from the University of Hawaii in 2009. His PhD work investigated tropical ocean circulation and dynamics with a particular focus on meso-scale eddy variability. Since then he directed his attention to the interaction between the oceans and the polar ice sheets, first at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS, until 2015), at the Polar Science Center, APL-UW, at the LAmont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and now back at BAS. Using pioneering autonomous platforms (Autosub 3) to roam under at least 300 m thick ice for tens of kilometers, his research demonstrated that warm waters >3° above the in situ freezing point reaches the grounding line (where the ice sheet comes afloat and eventually extends into an ice shelf) of Pine Island Glacier, in West Antarctica. This water efficiently melts the ice shelf, reduces its buttressing effect on the flow of grounded ice into the ocean, and is now shown to be a key driver of a wide-spread glacial acceleration and retreat in the Amundsen Sea, West Antarctica, with important contributions to sea level rise, the freshwater budget of the Southern Ocean and possible impacts on the global thermohaline circulation and local primary production. Using autonomous platforms, ship-borne ocean observations, ground-based and airborne radar observations, satellite observations and numerical modelling, Pierre further demonstrated that in this setting glacial melt is strongly modulated in time by remote climatic sources, and that the spatial distribution of melt is complex, varying at meters to kilometers scales, and carving and interacting with intriguing landscapes under the ice. Developing new observational tools and integrating new understanding into predictive models, Pierre continues his work to shed light on the processes controlling the oceanic melting of glacial ice and its implications for the climate system.