Presentation in San Francisco next stop for RU polar ice research team

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Rhett Herman, professor of physics, gets the ice drill started on the Arctic Geophysics research trip in Barrow, Alaska.

Radford University's glacial ice research expedition to Alaska will culminate in San Francisco, California, on Dec. 15-19 at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Presenting the team's paper and research at the AGU Fall Meeting will be four current RU students, an RU alumnus and Professor of Physics Rhett Herman. Along with Herman, Cameron Baumgardner, Melissa Brett, Jordan Eagle, Sarah Montgomery, and Corey Roadcap '14 will discuss the results of the team's two-week effort to measure ice depth and surface ice temperature on the Chukchi Sea in February/March 2014.

"I am proud to be accompanied by the representatives of this high-powered group," said Herman, who led the 18-person team. The team's research is abstracted in a paper, titled "A Possible Correlation between the Surface Temperature and Thickness of Arctic Sea Ice" that will be one of 21 poster presentations featured in the Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Properties and Processes Session and as part of the Cryosphere section at the convocation of the largest Earth and space science meeting in the world.

The AGU Fall Meeting brings the entire Earth and space sciences community together for discussions of emerging trends and its technical program will include presentations on new and cutting-edge science. The RU Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship will sponsor the travel and presentation opportunity for the undergraduate researchers.

The team's research is a geophysical survey of sea ice that was conducted just offshore from the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory in Barrow, Alaska. Multiple surveys were conducted along 200-meter lines using a capacitively coupled resistivity array, a thermal sensor array and an ice drill. For more information, visit the Classroom at the Top of the World homepage.

Dec 9, 2014