Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Anthropogenic climate change and its associated threat to all life on Earth is one of the greatest challenges facing humankind in the coming decades and centuries. The research proposed here will study two aspects of this challenge: sea-level rise due to melting of the polar ice sheets (Greenland and Antarctica), and changes in the distribution and availability of surface and ground water across Canada. Through the development and testing of computer models used to simulate the underlying processes, improved estimates of these environmental changes will be produced. These estimates will be used, in turn, to inform ongoing risk assessments of coastal flooding and water security that are required to plan and implement timely and effective mitigation and/or adaptation procedures in Canada and beyond. The proposed research will also improve our knowledge of solid Earth structure beneath Canada. This knowledge will be used to better understand past changes in the ice sheets that once covered Canada and how the land continues to move in response to the melting of these ice sheets many 1000s of years ago. These on-going changes in land height are also important for forecasting future sea-level changes: some parts of coastal Canada are sinking, adding to anthropogenic sea-level rise. They are also important for defining height reference systems used in land surveying and the interpretation of geodetic data sets used to monitor global change. As part of this proposal, students at all university levels (undergraduate to PhD) will be recruited and trained. Efforts will be made to recruit students from underrepresented groups in Science and Engineering. The recruited students will develop a range of transferable skills that are desired in the current job market. For example, students will learn a range of quantitative procedures, including machine learning which is an important component of the rapidly growing field of Data Science.