Brent Minchew

I study how glaciers and ice sheets respond to climate change. I am most interested in understanding the mechanisms that will govern rates of sea-level rise in the coming decades and centuries. I am drawn to this work in large part because it is important and challenging and allows me to see nature at its most elegant, both fragile and resilient, stately and responsive. My research spans scales from atomic to continental, laboratory to glacial, seconds to centuries, and I use a variety of tools ranging from satellite radar to mathematical theory. 

I lead an interdisciplinary group of geophysicists, glaciologists, mechanicians, and geodesists who study the interactions between the climate, the cryosphere, and the solid earth using a combination of geodetic observations—primarily interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR)—and physical models. Occasionally, we take short breaks from glacier mechanics to develop remote sensing tools and applications that can be used to help mitigate natural and anthropogenic environmental hazards—like characterizing marine oil spills and monitoring wildfires.