Surface Processes and Coupling with Planetary Interiors

Scientists boarding D/V JOIDES Resolution off New Jersey in 1993. Sea level in an ice-free world would be 66 meters (216.5 feet) higher than now—shoulder-high to the Statue of Liberty. Image credit: Kenneth G. Miller, James V. Browning, and Gregory S. Mountain

How do surface processes shape the environment we live in, and how do they interact with the solid Earth interior, with implications for planetary evolution and habitability?

My work on surface processes and interior-surface coupling focuses on:

• The interplay among sea level change, cryosphere, and the solid Earth (Bao et al. In preparation; Lucas et al. Revision Under review at Nature Climate Change; Coulson et al. In preparation)

Predicted (left) and observed (right) sea levels caused by melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). A statistically significant correlation between the two fields (P < 0.001) provides an unambiguous observational detection of the near-field sea level fingerprint of recent GrIS melting in our warming world. Graphic: Coulson, et al., 2022 / Science

• Volatile cycling among different spheres of the Earth system over billions of years (Bao et al. In preparation)

Related Work

1.

Bao, Xiyuan, Sophie Coulson, Natasha Valencic, Jerry Mitrovica, Sönke Dangendorf, Mostafa Mousavi, and Andrew Lloyd. In preparation. “Inverting sea level fingerprints for ice mass changes using neural operators: How much can we recover and how unique is it?”

2.

Lucas, Erica, Fred Richards, Gabriel Cederberg, Xiyuan Bao, Mark J. Hoggard, Stephen R. J. Tsuji, et al. Revision Under review at Nature Climate Change. “Emergence of antarctic mineral resources in a warming world.”

3.

Coulson, Sophie, Andrew Lloyd, Xiyuan Bao, Jerry X. Mitrovica, Sönke Dangendorf, Linda Pan, et al. In preparation. “Inverting sea surface height data for greenland ice mass changes (1993-2019): A proof of concept.”

4.

Bao, Xiyuan, Zebin Cao, Kenneth Christopher Gourley, Sara Gutierrez, Yuanyuan Liang, Dongyuan Zhou, et al. In preparation. “Coupled evolution of earth’s hydrogen distribution and thermal history.”