Main tasks within ice2sea: Involvement in W2
Description of institution: The Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland was established July 1st, 2004 when the Nordic Volcanological Institute and geology and geophysics sections of the Science Institute, University of Iceland, merged. The new institute is dedicated to academic research and graduate studies within the Earth sciences with a main focus on the unique geological features of the Iceland region. Iceland’s location in the North Atlantic is ideal for various studies aimed at reconstructing the dynamics of past environmental and climatic variability in order to understand interactions between components of the global system. Iceland’s glaciers are indicators of the response of the cryosphere to climate warming, ideal for the coupling of field studies and numerical modeling of the response of glaciers to climate change. The glaciers are also important analogues to warm-based Pleistocene ice sheets.
Department name: Not applicable
Staff member: Dr. Throstur Thorsteinsson
Profile of staff member: Throstur Thorsteinsson has worked as a glaciologist since 2000, and is now a researcher at the Institute of Earth Sciences (since 2002). After completion of his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 2000, he worked as a post doc there for couple of years. His research has covered a range of topics, including anisotropy of ice, modeling of particulate matter pollution, the role of till in the sliding of ice streams, and the surface topography of ice streams. Throstur is an active member in several science societies, and a reviewer for a number of journals. Throstur has organized several research projects, and was the chairman of the local organizing committee for the IGS meeting “Ice-volcano interactions: Terrestrial and extraterrestrial” in Reykjavik June 2006. Throstur teaches several courses at the University of Iceland, including a course on water science, continuum mechanics, and glaciology.
Selected references:
Throstur Thorsteinsson and C. F. Raymond. Sliding versus till deformation in the fast motion of an ice stream over a viscous till. Journal of Glaciology, 46(155): 633 – 640, 2000.
Throstur Thorsteinsson. An analytical approach to deformation of anisotropic ice-crystal aggregates. Journal of Glaciology, 47(158): 507-516, 2001.
Throstur Thorsteinsson. Fabric development with nearest-neighbor interaction and dynamic recrystallization. Journal of Geophysical Research, 107(B1): ECV 3-1 to ECV 3-13, 2002.
Throstur Thorsteinsson, C. F. Raymond, G. H. Gudmundsson, R. Bindschadler, P. Vornberger, and I. Joughin. Bed topography and lubrication inferred from surface measurements on fast flowing ice streams. Journal of Glaciology, 49(167): 481-490, 2003.
Throstur Thorsteinsson, E. D. Waddington, and R. C. Fletcher. Spatial and temporal scales of anisotropic effects in ice-sheet flow. Annals of Glaciology, 37: 40-48, 2003.
Throstur Thorsteinsson, E. D. Waddington, Kenichi Matsuoka, Ian Howat, and Slawek Tulaczyk. 2005. Survey of flow, topography and ablation on NW-Mýrdalsjökull, S-Iceland. Jökull, 55: 155 – 162.
Durand, Gaël, O. Gagliardini, Throstur Thorsteinsson, Anders Svensson, Sepp Kipfstuhl, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen. Ice microstructure and fabric: an up-to-date approach for measuring textures. Journal of Glaciology, 52(179): 619-630, 2006.
Pettit, Erin C., Throstur Thorsteinsson, H. Paul Jacobson, Edwin D. Waddington. The role of crystal fabric in flow near an ice divide. Journal of Glaciology, 53(181), 2007.
