Dr Anna Crawford

Lecturer in Physical Geography

Biological and Environmental Sciences Stirling

Dr Anna Crawford

Contact details

About me

I joined the Division of Biological and Environmental Sciences in 2023 as a Lecturer in Physical Geography. I am a glaciologist who employs 3D models to investigate the processes that drive iceberg calving at marine-terminating glaciers. I also monitor those icebergs through remote sensing and field work to then conduct analyses of their drift and deterioration. This work contributes to improved ice-sheet modelling and iceberg forecasting.

I am a member of the five-year GIANT (Greenland Ice sheet to AtlaNtic Tipping points) project, which is a large international collaboration of 17 partners led by the British Antarctic Survey and funded by the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA). Using 3D glacier models, Dr Iain Wheel and I at Stirling focus on how the outlet glaciers that drain the Greenland Ice Sheet fracture and generate icebergs within these fiords. This will contribute to GIANT's overarching objective to understand how much meltwater is released from Greenland’s glaciers and how it enters the North Atlantic Ocean, influencing ocean circulation and the global climate system.

I currently hold a Royal Society Research Grant and a Royal Society of Edinburgh Personal Research Fellowship. These are supporting the development of the Canadian Ice Island Drift, Deterioration and Detection (CI2D3) Database and research of iceberg deterioration.

Before joining BES, I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow with the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. I initially came to the UK to join the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration as a post-doctoral research assistant based at the University of St Andrews.

My first post-secondary degree is in Biology. It was while taking this program at Lakehead University in central Canada that I was introduced to biogeography and Polar Regions science. This drove me to explore geography and Arctic-based research during my post-graduate work. I completed my MSc and PhD programs at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where my research focused on "ice islands" (large and tabular icebergs) in the Canadian Arctic. This is a topic that I am circling around to yet again as I initiates my research program at Stirling.

You can find out more about my work (and some nice photographs) at anna-crawford.com.

Research projects (1)

Ice Island Detection and Deterioration in Sea Ice
PI: Dr Anna Crawford
Funded by: Royal Society
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Outputs (25)

Article

Calving Dynamics and the Potential Impact of Mélange Buttressing at the Western Calving Front of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica

Crawford A, Åström J, Benn DI, Luckman A, Gladstone R, Zwinger T, Robertsén F & Bevan S (2024) Calving Dynamics and the Potential Impact of Mélange Buttressing at the Western Calving Front of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 129 (10), Art. No.: e2024JF007737. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024jf007737

Article

Journey of an Arctic Ice Island

Crawford A, Wadhams P, Wagner T, Stern A, Abrahamsen P, Church I, Bates R & Nicholls K (2016) Journey of an Arctic Ice Island. Oceanography, 29 (2), pp. 254-263. https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2016.30

Article

Wind‐driven upwelling around grounded tabular icebergs

Stern AA, Johnson E, Holland DM, Wagner TJW, Wadhams P, Bates R, Abrahamsen EP, Nicholls KW, Crawford A, Gagnon J & Tremblay J (2015) Wind‐driven upwelling around grounded tabular icebergs. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 120 (8), pp. 5820-5835. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015jc010805

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