Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences

Brown researchers recently published a study examining how salt levels in these oceans affect the growth of icy shells on several distant moons in our solar system. According to Nina Gilkyson, DEEPS PhD student and the paper's first author, while habitability of these icy worlds is still a largely unknown area, “seeing water on other worlds is always so exciting” because of the vital role it plays in supporting life on Earth.

A new study by DEEPS Professors Colleen Dalton, Chris Huber, Tim Herbert, and Senior Research Associate Weimin Si explores how variations in global mean sea level over millions of years originate from changes in both the climate and solid Earth systems.

Ice sheet melt has been shown to increase volcanic activity in subglacial volcanoes elsewhere on the globe. DEEPS PhD candidate Allie Coonin and her team ran 4,000 computer simulations to study how ice sheet loss affects Antarctica’s buried volcanoes, and they found that gradual melt could increase the number and size of subglacial eruptions.