
Luke Trusel is an Earth system geographer whose research focuses on understanding the impacts of climate variability and change on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Motivated by the potentially profound consequences of cryospheric change, Dr. Trusel’s work seeks to better understand how the ice sheets are responding, and will continue to respond, to ongoing climate change.
His work focuses on assessing ice sheet surface mass balance and hydrological processes and seeking to advance the understanding of high-latitude environments as coupled ice-ocean-atmosphere systems. This research takes an interdisciplinary approach while combining remotely sensed observations, ice core-derived climate records, and output from regional and global climate models. These efforts are aimed at generating distinct, yet complementary perspectives into spatially-extensive processes today, but with a critical temporal perspective bridging the past and the future. His recent research demonstrates that Greenland ice sheet melting has accelerated in response to Industrial-era warming, reaching intensities that are unprecedented for centuries or millennia, and that atmospheric warming over this century may threaten the viability of Antarctica’s fringing ice shelves.
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Recent Publications
Evaluating the impact of enhanced horizontal resolution over the Antarctic domain using a variable-resolution Earth system model
Datta, R. T., Herrington, A., Lenaerts, J. T. M., Schneider, D. P., Trusel, L., Yin, Z. & Dunmire, D., Sep 6 2023, In: Cryosphere. 17, 9, p. 3847-3866 20 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Repeated Tidally Induced Hydrofracture of a Supraglacial Lake at the Amery Ice Shelf Grounding Zone
Trusel, L. D., Pan, Z. & Moussavi, M., Apr 16 2022, In: Geophysical Research Letters. 49, 7, e2021GL095661.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Projected land ice contributions to twenty-first-century sea level rise
Edwards, T. L., Nowicki, S., Marzeion, B., Hock, R., Goelzer, H., Seroussi, H., Jourdain, N. C., Slater, D. A., Turner, F. E., Smith, C. J., McKenna, C. M., Simon, E., Abe-Ouchi, A., Gregory, J. M., Larour, E., Lipscomb, W. H., Payne, A. J., Shepherd, A., Agosta, C., Alexander, P., & 64 others , May 6 2021, In: Nature. 593, 7857, p. 74-82 9 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Abrupt Common Era hydroclimate shifts drive west Greenland ice cap change
Osman, M. B., Smith, B. E., Trusel, L. D., Das, S. B., McConnell, J. R., Chellman, N., Arienzo, M. & Sodemann, H., Oct 2021, In: Nature Geoscience. 14, 10, p. 756-761 6 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Future Sea Level Change Under Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 and Phase 6 Scenarios From the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets
Payne, A. J., Nowicki, S., Abe-Ouchi, A., Agosta, C., Alexander, P., Albrecht, T., Asay-Davis, X., Aschwanden, A., Barthel, A., Bracegirdle, T. J., Calov, R., Chambers, C., Choi, Y., Cullather, R., Cuzzone, J., Dumas, C., Edwards, T. L., Felikson, D., Fettweis, X., Galton-Fenzi, B. K., & 44 others , Aug 28 2021, In: Geophysical Research Letters. 48, 16, e2020GL091741.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Antarctic supraglacial lake identification using landsat-8 image classification
Halberstadt, A. R. W., Gleason, C. J., Moussavi, M. S., Pope, A., Trusel, L. D. & DeConto, R. M., Apr 1 2020, In: Remote Sensing. 12, 8, 1327.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
A benchmark dataset of in situ Antarctic surface melt rates and energy balance
Jakobs, C. L., Reijmer, C. H., Smeets, C. J. P. P., Trusel, L. D., Van De Berg, W. J., Van Den Broeke, M. R. & Van Wessem, J. M., Apr 1 2020, In: Journal of Glaciology. 66, 256, p. 291-302 12 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Antarctic supraglacial lake detection using landsat 8 and sentinel-2 imagery: Towards continental generation of lake volumes
Moussavi, M., Pope, A., Halberstadt, A. R. W., Trusel, L. D., Cioffi, L. & Abdalat, W., 2020, In: Remote Sensing. 12, 1, 134.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Experimental protocol for sea level projections from ISMIP6 stand-alone ice sheet models
Nowicki, S., Goelzer, H., Seroussi, H., Payne, A. J., Lipscomb, W. H., Abe-Ouchi, A., Agosta, C., Alexander, P., Asay-Davis, X. S., Barthel, A., Bracegirdle, T. J., Cullather, R., Felikson, D., Fettweis, X., Gregory, J. M., Hattermann, T., Jourdain, N. C., Kuipers Munneke, P., Larour, E., Little, C. M., & 10 others , Jul 23 2020, In: Cryosphere. 14, 7, p. 2331-2368 38 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
ISMIP6 Antarctica: A multi-model ensemble of the Antarctic ice sheet evolution over the 21st century
Seroussi, H., Nowicki, S., Payne, A. J., Goelzer, H., Lipscomb, W. H., Abe-Ouchi, A., Agosta, C., Albrecht, T., Asay-Davis, X., Barthel, A., Calov, R., Cullather, R., Dumas, C., Galton-Fenzi, B. K., Gladstone, R., Golledge, N. R., Gregory, J. M., Greve, R., Hattermann, T., Hoffman, M. J., & 27 others , Sep 17 2020, In: Cryosphere. 14, 9, p. 3033-3070 38 p., 14-3033-2020.Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review
Global environmental consequences of twenty-first-century ice-sheet melt
Golledge, N. R., Keller, E. D., Gomez, N., Naughten, K. A., Bernales, J., Trusel, L. D. & Edwards, T. L., Feb 7 2019, In: Nature. 566, 7742, p. 65-72 8 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Industrial-era decline in subarctic Atlantic productivity
Osman, M. B., Das, S. B., Trusel, L. D., Evans, M. J., Fischer, H., Grieman, M. M., Kipfstuhl, S., McConnell, J. R. & Saltzman, E. S., May 23 2019, In: Nature. 569, 7757, p. 551-555 5 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Antarctic surface hydrology and impacts on ice-sheet mass balance
Bell, R. E., Banwell, A. F., Trusel, L. D. & Kingslake, J., Dec 1 2018, In: Nature Climate Change. 8, 12, p. 1044-1052 9 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Climate and surface mass balance of coastal West Antarctica resolved by regional climate modelling
Lenaerts, J. T. M., Ligtenberg, S. R. M., Medley, B., Van De Berg, W. J., Konrad, H., Nicolas, J. P., Van Wessem, J. M., Trusel, L. D., Mulvaney, R., Tuckwell, R. J., Hogg, A. E. & Thomas, E. R., Jul 1 2018, In: Annals of Glaciology. 59, 76pt1, p. 29-41 13 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Modelling the climate and surface mass balance of polar ice sheets using RACMO2 - Part 2: Antarctica (1979-2016)
Melchior Van Wessem, J., Jan Van De Berg, W., Noël, B. P. Y., Van Meijgaard, E., Amory, C., Birnbaum, G., Jakobs, C. L., Krüger, K., Lenaerts, J. T. M., Lhermitte, S., Ligtenberg, S. R. M., Medley, B., Reijmer, C. H., Van Tricht, K., Trusel, L. D., Van Ulft, L. H., Wouters, B., Wuite, J. & Van Den Broeke, M. R., Apr 20 2018, In: Cryosphere. 12, 4, p. 1479-1498 20 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review