The East African Institute for Fundamental Research (EAIFR) wishes to invite you to our next GEO@EAIFR webinar. This seminar will take place on November 13, 2025 and will be broadcast live on ZOOM. It will also be recorded and later posted on the ICTP-EAIFR YouTube channel, where one can find all previous  GEO@EAIFR webinar recordings. Below are the details:

Speaker: Dr. Claudia Cenedese, Senior Scientist, The Physical Oceanography Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MA, USA)

Title: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Icebergs Melting*
(*But Were Afraid to Ask)

When: November 13, 2025 at 4:00 pm (Kigali time).

Register in advance for this meeting by clicking here.

All are very welcome.

Abstract: 

Iceberg calving accounts for half of the mass discharge from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Through their displacement and progressive melt, icebergs can impact both the regional and large-scale ocean circulation and marine ecosystems. Notwithstanding their importance, our understanding of where and how icebergs melt is limited and their representation in ocean and climate models is over-simplistic. As a result, model-based predictions of iceberg melt rates, of the fate of the melt-water, and of its impact on the ocean are highly uncertain. The focus of this lecture will be on laboratory experiments investigating the influence of the ambient flow, the icebergs’ aspect ratio, the sediments within the iceberg and the Earth rotation on iceberg melting.

Biography:

Dr. Claudia Cenedese is a Senior Scientist in the Physical Oceanography Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MA, USA), an adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), a faculty of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Summer School, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She earned a PhD at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge (UK) after a MS+BS in Environmental Engineering at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.
The focus of her research is to improve our understanding of how mesoscale and submesoscale processes such as buoyant plumes generated by melting glaciers and icebergs, microplastic transport and burial, buoyancy driven surface and bottom currents, turbulent mixing and entrainment, river plumes and mesoscale vortices influence and modify the general circulation of the ocean. Her principal goal is to improve our understanding of the underlying dynamics, leading to a more reliable and accurate representation of these processes in ocean and climate models. She has been involved in several Oceanographic Research Cruises in Greenland, Antarctic and Equatorial waters. During her career she won a number of awards and advised numerous international undergraduate and graduate students.