Dr. Evan J. Gowan

I'm advertising x2 PhDs through this scheme 🛰️ ❄️ 🇦🇶 🇬🇱

"The Role of Landfast Sea Ice in Antarctic Ice Shelf Stability: Integrating Earth Observation with Low-Carbon AI Modelling"

"Thawing Greenland, Powering Tomorrow: Dynamic ice sheet hydrology for Sustainable Energy"

Seeking a strong applicant for Aberystwyth University PhD Funding scheme 'AberDoc', on the topic: 'Novel biogenic carbonates for luminescence dating of the entire Quaternary period'.
Our lab also welcomes PhD applications for other luminescence dating projects for the same AberDoc funding round.

I mean, there was a reason I left and have never come back. I rarely see Earth science jobs in Canada that are widely advertised.

As someone who left Canada many years ago, though, this program could lure me back. It depends whether or not what I am doing fits with the narrow categories they have set for the program.

A man kneeling on a glacier and working on a laptop next to a stupid, fallen-over weather station, and with a US Army Blackhawk helicopter in the background.

I'll be on sabbatical starting January 1, 2026, and if anyone is looking for a guest speaker for department seminars, I'm happy to discuss possible dates. Reskeet widely! 🧪⚒️

It's happening! Canada launched two programs to recruit international researchers.

Canada Impact+ Research Chairs (1 million/yr for 8 yrs +)
Canada Impact+ Emerging Leaders.

I will do my best to facilitate the process for those interested. Hit me up.

www.canada.ca/en/impact-pl...

Why learn how to add and multiply when you can use a calculator? Because there is value in experiencing the process to get the result.

After taking (too) many pictures of scales we finally have our new study out: Identifying escaped farmed salmon from scales using deep learning: academic.oup.com/biomethods/a...
The model works well and covers the major Atlantic salmon rivers in Norway. Could be adpated to other fish and places!

I am going to have to revise my class on tsunamis on Thursday.

Miyagi looking like tsunami arrival time in 20 minutes.
(9:50 EST)

Cuts at Natural Resources Canada put critical environmental protections at risk and weaken public services <p>More than 200&nbsp;PSAC members&nbsp;at Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)&nbsp;received&nbsp;notices this week&nbsp;warning&nbsp;they may lose their jobs&nbsp;as the federal government&nbsp;pushes a...

So much for federal job cuts being just attrition

psacunion.ca/cuts-natural...

Who killed the hobbit? 💀🐘🦴⛰️🌧️☀️🪨⛏️

Our new paper out today in Communications Earth and Environment reveals the role of a major drought in the disappearance of the diminutive hominin Homo floresiensis.

theconversation.com/the-hobbits-...

Everyone thought that Mastodon was too hard to use, though!

Also, how is Achraf doing? We used to have lots of great discussions when I was doing my PHD at ANU.

I am willing to bet that limited excess LGM ice volume is the culprit here, as that seems to be the case all around Antarctica. Not everyone agrees with me, though!

Six panels showing maps with model estimates of uplift and circles showing gps point estimates of uplift

Pleased to share Achraf Koulali's new paper suggesting low rates of GPS uplift of the Trans Antarctic Mountains

We show previous estimates were pushed high by surface mass balance deficits causing elastic uplift 1/2

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

I like this, and have seen this with my hobby, which is a website discussing the Super Nintendo video game system. Next month will mark the 25th anniversary of the website, but its updates come in bursts followed by long periods where I do nothing. I never wanted it to be an obligation.

The Harvest Will Come I spent most of my twenties believing that purpose was something you found once and then held onto. A winning lottery ticket you kept in your wallet forever. The self-help industry reinforced this: find your passion. Discover your why. Land on the thing that makes you leap out of bed

A message much better stated than I could say it, but which I try to give to ECRs I work with. There are seasons in research and sometimes it is harvest time, but sometimes the seeds are just sitting in the ground resting and waiting for Spring. www.joanwestenberg.com/the-harvest-...

M7.0 earthquake strikes Alaska-Canada border Aftershocks suggest an unmapped fault beneath the Hubbard Glacier

Yesterday, a M7.0 earthquake struck the Alaska-Canada border, directly beneath the Hubbard Glacier. Aftershocks reveal an unmapped fault in this already complex area.

Read our post for more, & also:

What happens when a fault offsets a glacier?
Is the glacier named after one of my ancestors?

⚒️ 🧪

Thanks for writing a detailed explanation of the strange looking moment tensor solution. I was wondering about that.

Do you think there will be any landslide induced tsunamis from this quake? I was going over the Lituya Bay tsunami in one of my classes a couple of weeks ago, it would be interesting to discuss it more.

Hammer seismics is one of the standard experiments done in intro applied geophysics. It is crazy no one had previously thought to use it to map out the soils. It looks like you and your colleagues were just as amazed.

Over a pint in Oxford, we may have stumbled upon the holy grail of agriculture | George Monbiot I knew that a revolution in our understanding of soil could change the world. Then came a eureka moment – and the birth of the Earth Rover Program, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

1. Some good news at last. This week’s column is about the amazing thing a couple of us stumbled into three years ago, which we’ve now developed into a global research programme. It doesn’t change everything, of course, but it could help change quite a lot. + 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Given the ways Elsevier has acted, it doesn't really seem like they care much about science.

Time series showing the mass balance for the Greenland Ice Sheet from April 2002 to July 2025. There is a gain in the mass of ice when there is precipitation, and a loss when snow and ice melt and when icebergs break off from the ice sheet’s major outlet glaciers. The difference in these mass changes over a glaciological year (September-August) is called the total mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Shown here is the month-by-month mass change measured in gigatonnes, Gt (1 Gt is 1 milliard (UK) or 1 billion (US) tonnes or 1 cubic kilometer of water). The data is obtained from the GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites. Over the last 23 years, the ice sheet has lost about 5200 gigatonnes of ice. This has led to a sea level rise of 1.5 centimetres.

New GRACE data available on the Polar Portal. From April 2002 to July 2025, the Greenland Ice Sheet has lost roughly 5200 gigatonnes (=km³). This has contributed 1.5 cm to global sea level rise and would be enough to cover Denmark with 121 m of water.

polarportal.dk/en/greenland...

You are pumping out a Master's thesis worth of writing every week it seems. Take care not to work too hard!

I don't know, the president of the student union when I was at the University of Manitoba ended up being a long time MP for the Conservatives. He was definitely not leftist though, lol.

Prince and Briner present a new sea level curve for the southern Nares Strait in Greenland. They find an GIA induced exponential lowering of relative sea level from the highstand of 85 m at about 9000 years ago. doi.org/10.1017/qua....

When I went to my old stomping grounds at GSC in Victoria last year, I did not get that feeling. I guess they must have moved their geodetic and seismology to other institutes?

IMO, I think this whole pipeline thing is just political theatre and that the Liberals do not expect the pipeline to get built. If they were serious, they would be doing the risk assessments.