October 14, 2024
An interview with Meghana Ranganathan, Assistant Professor in Geophysical Sciences
In July 2024, Meghana Ranganathan joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences. Meghana, who grew up in Dallas, Texas, was previously a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, working in their Ice + Climate Group led by Dr. Alexander Robel. The focus of her work was uncovering couplings between brittle and ductile behaviors of ice and their implications for ice sheet change. During that time, she spent three months doing fieldwork in Antarctica. We interviewed Meghana about her interests and experiences.
Why did you choose the University of Chicago?
I came to the University of Chicago because I was really excited by the culture of fundamental inquiry and the interest in interdisciplinary work. My favorite thing about my work is that I get to intersect with so many different disciplines, and UChicago seemed like a fantastic place to conduct that kind of work.
Please describe your primary research interests for a general audience.
I am interested in understanding how ice sheets (Antarctica and Greenland) respond to changes in the climate and in improving how we model ice sheet change. Currently, the large models that project future sea-level rise rely on many assumptions about ice sheet behavior, and these assumptions create a wide range of uncertainty in future sea-level change. This uncertainty makes adaptive decision-making very challenging. My aim is to replace those assumptions in ice sheet models with physically-driven theories and models of how ice deforms, breaks, and responds to climate across scales—from the atomic scale to the ice sheet scale. Ultimately, this work should directly improve the physical fidelity of ice sheet models and, therefore, sea-level rise projections.
What is the most interesting thing that you are working on right now?
Understanding how ice breaks is one of the most fundamental questions in glaciology (the study of glaciers and ice sheets). Ice sheets display this fascinating property of being both a viscous fluid—that is, ice can flow much like honey—and a brittle solid—that is, ice can break—at the same temperatures and stresses. I’m really intrigued by how these properties affect each other. How does the rate of viscous ice flow affect the potential for fracture? How does the accumulation of cracks affect how fast the ice can flow? Right now, I’m incorporating theories in metallurgy, materials science, and rock mechanics with ice sheet models to answer these questions!
What is one big question in your field that you hope gets answered in your lifetime?
Is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet likely to collapse? The West Antarctic Ice Sheet describes the western half of the Antarctic ice sheet and is well-known to be potentially unstable because it sits on bedrock that is below sea level and is in contact with rapidly warming ocean waters. There is a theory known as the Marine Ice Sheet Instability, which posits that if glaciers begin retreating in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, it may trigger an instability that could collapse the whole West Antarctic Ice Sheet, adding 3–5 meters of sea-level globally. There’s a lot of uncertainty still in this theory, which lies in gaps in our understanding of fundamental ice sheet dynamics, too few observations of key features of the ice sheet, and uncertainties in future climate forcing. Since this is such a high-risk scenario, it’s a question at the forefront of glaciology and needs to be addressed in order to identify how ice sheets will contribute to climate effects.
What PSD research outside of your own lab excites you?
There are so many amazing research groups at the University, it’s hard to pick just a few! I’m very motivated by the work that Pedram Hassanzadeh’s group is doing to unite AI and machine learning tools with climate science, and in general, the Data Science Institute is doing some amazing work at uniting data science, machine learning, and fundamental science.
What do you enjoy about being part of the PSD community?
The breadth of research being done!
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I grew up hating math and vowing to never have to touch it after I graduated high school. It felt very disparate from my everyday life, and I am very motivated by working on things that I feel have a direct (positive) impact on the world. Then, I went to college, and I took a math class in which the professor described how we can use math as a language to describe the world around us. As a kid who loved writing and reading, thinking of math as a language really clicked for me. Now, I like to think of math as my primary language in my work, but not the only one! I do still love to read and write, and I am also really engaged in the storytelling and narrative aspect of climate science and climate change.
Who inspires you?
My favorite part of being in a university setting is interacting with students and trainees, from high school students to postdocs.
What does diversity and inclusion mean to you?
I think diversity and inclusion are part of the everyday experience of being a scientist. It is the lens with which I view being a researcher, a mentor, and a teacher. It means creating an equitable and supportive environment in the classroom and in my own research group. It means critically examining the fields we are in, the questions we ask, and distribution of opportunities in our communities.
What hobby or activity do you spend the most time on outside of work?
Reading, everything from literary fiction to nonfiction. I also love to cook and bake, and I’ve been trying to take up crocheting to varying degrees of success.
What do you wish you had more time for?
There are too many things I want to learn. Everything from wanting to know more about specific aspects of climate science to wishing I could dedicate a block of time to learning how to make really good baguettes.