Dr. Tilly Woods
Postdoc
I am a postdoc in Elisa Mantelli’s Glaciology group (part of Geophysics) at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the LMU Munich, where started in November 2024. Before then, I studied for 8 years at the University of Oxford, where I completed an integrated masters in Mathematics (MMath, 2016-2020) followed by a DPhil (PhD) in Mathematics (2020-2024), supervised by Ian Hewitt.
Internal
- Organiser of Icy Fluid Dynamics meetings.
External
- Co-organiser of the Mathematics on Ice Forum
- 2023 IMA Lighthill-Thwaites prize (shortlisted). Awarded for preprint of Woods and Hewitt 2023. Early-career researcher paper competition.
- 2021 Runner-up in the student oral presentation competition at the International Glaciological Society British Branch Meeting 2021.
Research
I am interested in applying numerical and analytical mathematical techniques to environmental problems, particularly in glaciology. My research focusses on modelling the fluid mechanics and thermodynamics of ice sheets, ranging from large-scale ice-sheet dynamics to surface and basal processes.
© Elisa Mantelli
Ice-stream dynamics
Ice streams are fast-flowing river-like regions of ice within an ice sheet, responsible for the vast majority of mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet. Ice streams “turn on and off” over time, and form patterns of alternating fast- and slow-flowing ice in space. In this project, I investigate that role that instabilities at the ice-sheet bed play in these temporal and spatial oscillations. In particular, I focus on instabilities arising from ‘subtemperate sliding’ at the bed – where ice can slide even when the temperature is below the melting point. I use a combination of mathematical theory and numerical modelling using the ice-sheet modelling software Elmer/Ice.
Funded by PHAST (ERC project): https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101076793
Photo of a weathering crust. | © Ian Stevens
Ice-sheet surface processes
My PhD work focussed on ice-sheet surface processes. I studied a structure found at the surface of ice sheets and glacier, called the ‘weathering crust’. The weathering crust is a near-surface layer of porous ice through which surface meltwater flows and in which microbial communities live. The weathering crust and its interaction with microbes impacts how much the surface melts and where that meltwater ends up. I explored this behaviour by developing and using a mathematical model for the evolving weathering crust and microbial activity.
Woods, T. and Hewitt, I. J.: Modelling the evolution of an ice sheet’s weathering crust, IMA Journal of Applied Mathematics, hxae031, https://doi.org/10.1093/imamat/hxae031, 2024.
Woods, T. and Hewitt, I. J.: A model of the weathering crust and microbial activity on an ice-sheet surface, The Cryosphere, 17, 1967–1987, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-1967-2023, 2023