Natalya Gomez’s research is a testament to the power of modern, interdisciplinary Earth systems science. In her earliest work, she overturned decades of established thinking by bridging ice age sea level theory with glaciology to demonstrate that treatments of large-scale isostatic deformation are insufficient to predict the evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Prior to her first seminal 2010 article, few, if any, glaciologists had appreciated how the changes in Earth's gravitational field driven by ice sheet mass flux could drive significant changes in local sea levels. Moreover, none had connected that near-field effect to the dynamics of the ice sheet itself: a shrinking ice sheet will lead to a local drop in sea level, reducing ice flux across the grounding line, thereby introducing a previously unrecognized stabilizing process. In more recent, follow-on work, she has demonstrated the importance of incorporating three-dimensional viscoelastic mantle structure into coupled sea level-ice sheet models, both in reconstructing Antarctic Ice Sheet evolution across the glacial cycle and in projecting this evolution into the future of a progressively warming world. Furthermore, her deep insight into the complex, global fingerprint of ice age sea level change has led to further breakthroughs, including the recognition that “far-field” sea level changes associated with Northern Hemisphere ice mass flux exerted a surprisingly strong control on the ice age geometry of Antarctic ice cover.

These achievements would have been impossible without breaking through disciplinary boundaries. Natalya’s discoveries have been accelerated by her breadth of expertise, including theoretical mastery of solid Earth mechanics, elegant numerical work, and, more recently, geodetic surveying. Beyond her paradigm-shifting contributions to ice sheet modeling, Natalya’s body of work spans a dizzying range of applications, including the development of low-cost Global Navigation Satellite Systems interferometric reflectometry (GNSS-IR) devices for real-time sea level monitoring, studies deciphering the source of Meltwater Pulse 1a, establishing a new estimate of global mean sea level rise following the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and even applications to Martian shorelines and valley networks.

She is also no stranger to bringing her skills to bear for the benefit of society. In addition to selfless service in numerous scientific leadership positions; summer schools; and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, she has been a long-standing contributor to efforts to understand sea level changes and their effects on Indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic.

— Christian Schoof
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
 

Thank you to Christian Schoof for these kind words; Andrea Dutton, Helen Fricker and Frederik Simons for supporting letters; and the selection committee for their generous service. I am truly humbled to be recognized with this medal and deeply appreciative of the extensive efforts behind the honors process. This recognition reflects collective support and contributions from many colleagues and mentors. Firstly, I could not have gotten to where I am now without the exceptional mentorship of my Ph.D. adviser, Jerry Mitrovica. Generous collaborators David Pollard and Rob DeConto introduced me to the study of ice sheet dynamics, and they and other coauthors and collaborators have been crucial for understanding interactions between the cryosphere, solid Earth and sea levels. I also share this honor with my research group, whose brilliant contributions have shaped our work in new directions and made the day to day in academia exciting and enjoyable.My department at McGill and the broader university have provided a nurturing environment and a collegial and inspiring home base in which my research group and I have been able to flourish. My academic journey, including my time at the University of Toronto, Harvard, New York University, and a sabbatical at the University of Bergen, has been enriched by countless individuals who have fostered my growth and proven invaluable in helping me to navigate and enjoy my time in academia. I have also grown immensely from the meaningful experience of sharing time and space with the Advanced Climate Dynamics Courses (ACDC summer schools) lecturers and students over the years. In addition to support and collaboration from those in my formal circles, I am overwhelmed by the generosity of individuals and communities, including the Snowflakes group, who have mentored and supported me and others, enriching our community.My area of research highlights that understanding future sea level change and coastal resilience relies on characterizing the interconnected nature of the Earth system, which in turn requires opportunities to connect, share understanding, and collaborate across disciplines and diverse perspectives. I would like to recognize all those who are working to foster more globally inclusive, collaborative and cross-disciplinary research and training environments. This work is critical to the future of our field and to meeting societal needs in the face of climate-driven challenges.Above all, my family; partner, Éric; dear friends; and fellow dancers have been my bedrock, allowing me to pursue my goals while staying grounded and resilient through the ups and downs of academic life.— Natalya Gomez, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Natalya Gomez received the 2019 Cryosphere Early Career Award at AGU’s Fall Meeting 2019, held 9–13 December in San Francisco, Calif. The award is for “significant early career contributions to cryospheric science and technology.”  

Natalya Gomez’s research is a wonderful example of the power of interdisciplinary thinking in deepening our understanding of the Earth’s climate system. Her earliest work as a graduate student in Toronto and at Harvard focused on sea level change in response to future melting of grounded, marine-based sectors of polar ice sheets. She derived an elegant generalization of ice age sea level theory, and her application to projected melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) yielded predictions of far-field sea level rise significantly higher than standard “fingerprint” calculations, a result with profound implications for the coasts of the United States and Europe.

But Natalya pushed further and was the first to recognize that the combined gravitational and deformational effects that produced a fall in sea level at the grounding line of a retreating, marine-based ice sheet would introduce a self-stabilizing feedback on the ice sheet—a fundamentally new twist on the marine ice sheet instability hypothesis. Working with David Pollard and others, she has coupled ice sheet and sea level models to explore the impact of the feedback on ice age dynamics of the AIS and Northern Hemisphere ice cover and projections of AIS evolution in a warming world. The latter, tour-de-force calculations incorporate the complex variability in Earth structure below the AIS. Most major groups active in this area of cryosphere research have contacted her seeking input or collaboration and have begun incorporating her results into their models. She has, in this regard, given a long list of lectures at conferences, workshops, and universities and is a generous contributor to summer schools, notably, the annual Advanced Climate Dynamics Course in Norway. Natalya and her group are currently exploring a range of problems related to ice sheet stability, sea level, glacial isostatic adjustment, and ocean tides in the ice age Earth and the modern world. In collaboration with David Holland, she has actively moved into field-based research, using GPS measurements in Greenland to monitor sea level changes in Disko Bay and ice loss in the Jakobshavn Glacier. In all this work, she combines the insights of a geophysicist with an interdisciplinary philosophy that is, to quote Walt Whitman, “loos’d of limits and imaginary lines.” She is an impeccable choice for the Early Career Award of the Cryosphere section of AGU.

—Christian Schoof, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; and Jerry X. Mitrovica, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

I am deeply moved and honored by the generous words from Christian, Jerry, and others who assembled the nomination. Thank you to the nomination committee for honoring my work with this award. I am incredibly thankful to my many supporters and collaborators. Some people have helped in large and very obvious ways, and I am eternally grateful for them. My deeply caring and supportive Ph.D. advisor, Jerry Mitrovica; generous collaborator and mentor David Pollard; my postdoc advisor, David Holland; the faculty and staff in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and beyond at McGill; numerous researchers in the international community who have mentored and made space for me; my peers in graduate school and beyond; and my research group, who continually amaze me with their abilities. Equally important are the people who have silently contributed or offered encouragement and wisdom along the way. I also thank my family and friends, who have been so supportive through it all, keeping me grounded and bringing care, lightness, and perspective when I most needed it. I am awestruck by the remarkable progress that the cryosphere science community, including the connected areas of sea level, solid Earth, and climate research, has made since I began, and I believe much of this has come through boldly interdisciplinary initiatives. We are constantly open to jumping in temporal and spatial scales, and between data and modeling in different disciplines, to see interconnections and understand things better. I would like to recognize the massive amount of organizational work that has been done to facilitate these advances. We cannot do it alone in cryosphere science, and it has been so exciting to do it together! Now, more than ever, it is important to cross disciplinary, cultural, and socioeconomic boundaries. We need to fiercely support each other and a diverse, inclusive, next generation of scientists who are taking on some of the most complex and critical problems of our day in the face of ongoing and future climate change. I feel fortunate to have had so many senior scientists, peers, students, and youth set an inspiring example for me on this front, and I am dedicated to continuing to find ways to pay it forward in the next chapters of my career. —Natalya Gomez, McGill University, Montreal, Que., Canada