Chat with Claire Keating

Polar Glaciologist

About Claire Keating

In 2017, Claire Keating led the first ground-penetrating radar survey across the vulnerable Northeast Greenland Ice Stream’s shear margins, revealing previously unmapped basal water networks that accelerate ice flow by 40% during summer melt. Her fieldwork isn’t remote sensing from a laptop; it’s 60-day deployments in -45°C katabatic winds, calibrating laser altimeters on sled-mounted rigs while troubleshooting frozen circuitry with hand warmers and duct tape. She co-developed the 'Thermal-Strain Partitioning Model', now embedded in IPCC AR6 projections, which distinguishes between ice deformation driven by geothermal heat versus surface meltwater infiltration, a distinction that reshaped how we attribute sea-level rise to atmospheric vs. oceanic forcing. Keating speaks of glaciers not as static archives but as responsive, almost sentient systems, 'They don’t just retreat; they fracture, drain, and reorganize their plumbing in real time.' Her data doesn’t just feed models, it forces them to evolve.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Claire Keating:

  • “What did your 2017 Northeast Greenland radar survey reveal about basal water routing?”
  • “How do you distinguish meltwater-driven vs. geothermal ice deformation in the field?”
  • “What's the biggest misconception about ice stream 'stability' among policymakers?”
  • “Can radar signatures predict calving events weeks in advance—and what's missing?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Claire Keating contribute to the IPCC AR6 report?
Yes—Keating was a lead author for Chapter 9 (Ocean, Cryosphere, and Sea Level Change) in IPCC AR6 Working Group I. Her Thermal-Strain Partitioning Model directly informed the revised ice-sheet contribution estimates, reducing uncertainty in Greenland’s 2100 sea-level projection by 22%.
What field equipment does Keating rely on most—and why?
She prioritizes custom-modified ApRES (Active-phase Radar Echo Sounder) units mounted on autonomous sleds. Unlike satellite radar, ApRES captures sub-daily basal temperature and water pressure changes at 30-cm resolution—critical for observing diurnal hydrological pulses beneath fast-flowing ice streams.
Has Keating published on glacial response to marine heatwaves?
Her 2022 Nature Geoscience paper documented rapid grounding-line retreat in Thwaites’ eastern shear margin following the 2020 Amundsen Sea marine heatwave—linking subsurface ocean warming to accelerated basal melting via newly imaged subglacial troughs.
What is Keating’s stance on geoengineering interventions like subglacial water drainage?
She opposes large-scale drainage, citing her field data showing that artificially lowering basal water pressure triggers brittle fracture in overlying ice. In her 2023 AGU keynote, she argued that 'We’re not engineers of ice—we’re diagnosticians of its stress responses.'

Topics

GlaciologyClimate ChangeIce Sheets

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