Chris Miele, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geological Sciences came to the University of Idaho in search of new opportunities in research and travel.
Originally from Canada, Miele received his bachelor’s in mathematics and a minor in philosophy. He traveled to Iceland to work on his master’s degree, studying environmental management along the coastal line.
His thesis brought him to Germany, where he learned about various research opportunities with UI Glaciologist and Assistant Professor Timothy Bartholomaus.
“I was thinking about what to do next, and I was on Facebook one day and a friend of mine, somebody that I knew through a field school that I’d done previously in Alaska, was at UI and he was one of Tim’s grad students,” Miele said. “I thought I might as well just apply and get in contact with Tim, and so I reached out and we had a really good fairly long online conversation. I’ve never been to Idaho or even honestly thought about it, but I decided to go full out and just apply for it, and I found out a couple of months later that I got accepted and pretty much moved straight to Idaho.”
Although Miele didn’t do a lot of glaciology before coming to UI, Bartholomaus has seen him develop an independent sense of the field. In the two years they have been working together, Bartholomaus has witnessed his confidence working research into the broader scientific conversation. .
With Miele’s background in mathematics, Bartholomaus said he is naturally disposed to tackling hard, complicated differential equations and is excited about digging into the gory details of how glaciers move and flow. Bartholomaus said he has a clear, logical mind that follows curiosity, challenging famous glaciologists’ research wrote 30 years ago. That takes a “certain amount of boldness to be able to ask those questions.”
What sparked Miele’s passion in glaciology was a field school in Juneau, Alaska, called the Juneau Icefield Research Program. In the two months he was there, he learned everything from the ground up about how glaciers work and to help people study the subject.
“I just totally fell in love with the landscapes and yeah just decided from that point that I really wanted to get into studying places like those,” Miele said.
Miele tends to gravitate toward theoretical and mathematically based questions. Within his research, he tends to ask questions related to processes that drive things going on. This includes fracturing, iceberg detachment and iceberg calving to get a sense of what stresses cause this and if people can predict at what rate the ice is going to break.
Iceberg calving is when a glacier is at sea level, typically in colder climates. When the glacier interacts with seawater, chunks of ice, or icebergs, rip off the ice sheets falling right into the water. Dramatic videos of ice cracking off a glacier landing in an ocean are examples of iceberg calving.
This process is responsible for the fracture in ice but isn’t well understood. Miele wants to understand what is going on mechanically about these interactions taking place between ice, the ocean and rheology. Rheology can take place in different ways, including how the mantle is moving around deep below the surface of Earth. In his work it is the way ice deforms, flows and breaks under different circumstances.
Finishing his master’s in Germany, Miele researched glacier dynamic groups and developed an open global glacier model to give a rough idea on how glaciers will change over time on a global basis. He worked under fellow Ph.D. students to make the model which outlined every glacier in the world that could be run under climate scenarios and incorporate iceberg calving.
His most recent research has been at the Turner Glacier in south Alaska, understanding glacier surging.
When the team first got out to the glacier, Miele was a great help understanding satellite images sent from outer space, Bartholomaus said. He had experience working with and processing satellite data and was able to help build the team’s confidence in pulling the research adventure off. With his help, they were able to locate the glacier, know how fast it was moving and that it was surging.
“I think he is really developing an independent sense of the field and growing in his confidence in his ability to communicate how things work, how his research ties into the broader scientific conversations,” Bartholomaus said. “And that’s what I really want to see in a Ph.D. student.”
Emily Pearce can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @Emily_A_Pearce
This article was edited to account for a misspelling in a source’s name.