The Royal Society of Tasmania – 2014 Launceston Lecture Series
Dr Guy Williams
ARC Future Fellow
will present
Antarctic Ocean/Ice Interactions: New Insights from Biotagging and Autonomous Platforms
in the Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk
2.00 pm Sunday 28th September 2014
Admission: $5 General Public, $3 Friends of the Museum, $2 Students
Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania
To assist us with the organization of this event
RSVP by Thursday 25th September 2014:
Email bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798
Antarctica’s input to the Southern Ocean is one of the major thermodynamic engines of the Earth climate system. Our understanding is formed by our observations, which act to evaluate and validate our ability to monitor the system with satellites and predict future states with numerical models. But the Antarctic margin of the Southern Ocean is a harsh environment and there are non-trivial limitations to the observational datasets we’ve struggled to achieve so far. Recent technological advances in the miniaturisation of sensors for biologging and the application of autonomous robotics are dramatically enhancing the spatial and temporal coverage of our observations. This talk will examine recent outcomes from both areas that are having a dramatic impact on polar climate science
Dr Guy Williams moved to Tasmania in 1998, translating a confused background in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Sydney into an Honours project at UTAS, modelling the dynamics of Heard
Island glaciers. Thereafter he completed a PhD in observational physical oceanography, falling deeply in love with the production of cold, salty Antarctic Bottom Water. Completing post-doctoral positions
in Hobart, Sapporo and Paris, Guy returned to the ACE CRC in 2011 to successfully lead an ‘Autonomous Underwater Vehicle under Sea Ice’ project in October 2012. A veteran of 7 polar research voyages
and nearly a year at sea, he now resides at IMAS as an ARC Future Fellow, happy to let Elephant seals and robots collect data for him.
