Dr Dan Lowry
As many of you already know, Huw Horgan has departed the shores of Aotearoa to head to the mountains of Switzerland where he and his family have settled in Davos. Huw’s partner and our ASP friend and colleague Ruzica Dadic has taken up a fantastic new role as Head of the Snow and Atmosphere Research Unit at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF. While Huw has stepped down from his Co-Principal Investigator role of the Antarctic Ice Dynamics (AID) project, he will continue working with us as a Co-Chief Scientist on SWAIS2C. I acknowledge this note is overdue, but it is never too late to acknowledge Huw’s major contribution to our work thus far.
Huw’s leadership and scientific input have been critical to the success of the AID. He drove and co-lead two major expeditions to the Siple Coast where our team successfully melted a hole through the Ross Ice Shelf and accessed the ocean cavity near the grounding zone of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Data from moorings deployed at the sites and information from geophysical surveys and short sediment cores continue to provide key new insight into the processes that occur at this critical interface between ice and ocean. His support for our young scientists and students has set us up to continue our world-class research into Antarctic geophysics and glacial dynamics. Thanks Huw – your knowledge, expertise and dry humour will be missed. Good luck to you and your whānau as you embark on your new adventure.
New Zealand scientists drilling through Antarctic ice discovered an underwater ecosystem 500 metres down. Photo: Craig Stevens/NIWA
As Huw moves on, Dr Dan Lowry from GNS Science steps in to fill the void. It gives us great pleasure to introduce the new Co-PI of the AID project. Dan is an ice sheet modeller working to understand the impacts of climate changes on ice sheet dynamics in the past, present, and future. In the Antarctic Science Platform, he has investigated the influence of emissions scenarios in projections of the Antarctica ice sheet’s future sea level contribution and used models to help interpret geologic records of past ice sheet change. Dan has already exhibited his willingness to lead and was a contributor the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project 6 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report Chapter on Cryosphere, Ocean, and Sea Level Change. Dan is excited to continue working with field scientists across the platform to better integrate models and observations for improved projections and informed policy. Welcome Dan – there is much work to be done and we are thrilled you are ready to help!