Gwenn Elisabeth Flowers

The 2006 Outstanding Young Scientist Award is awarded to Gwenn Elisabeth Flowers for outstanding contributions to our understanding of the dynamics of the terrestrial cryosphere: glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets.

Gwenn Flowers is a talented environmental earth scientist who is making outstanding contributions to our understanding of the dynamics of the terrestrial cryosphere – Earth’s glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets. Her research focuses on the physics of water flow beneath ice sheets and on how the operation of the subglacial water system governs the processes that promote fast changes in ice flow and the catastrophic release of subglacial water. These processes become especially prominent when ice masses melt rapidly, as they did at the end of the last Ice Age and as they are expected to do as climatic warming proceeds. Her research has immediate relevance to past and future climate change, to the pace of sea-level rise and to contemporary flood hazards.