Thanh-Son Pham

In September 2022, I was awarded the Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council (ARC). The DECRA scheme will provide focused research support for me over the next three years at RSES, ANU. I will pursue my interest in Antarctic seismology using the correlation techniques developed during my PhD.

PROJECT TITLE Probing Antarctic Ice Sheet by Correlation Seismology

A) Today’s observational methods on the ice and in the ocean. ApRes: Autonomous Phase‐Sensitive Radio echosounder can be mounted on aircraft or pulled by a snowmobile; AXCTD: Airborne eXpendable Conductivity Temperature Depth probe; ADCP: acoustic Doppler current profiler; AXBT: Airborne EXpendable BathyThermograph. This figure is modified from Noble et al. (2020). B) Observational infrastructures ever deployed over the surface of Antarctica. Magenta triangles denote passive seismic stations accessed via the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Data Centre; yellow circles indicate automatic weather stations accessed via the Space Science & Engineering Centre (SSEC), and green squares represent the GPS stations, accessed via the UNAVCO Data Centre. The background maps the BedMachine ice thickness dataset (Morlighem et al. 2020).

Summary. This project aims to advance research on the internal structure and temporal change in the Antarctic ice sheet by analyzing seismic ground motion records of natural sources, including ambient noise. This approach expects to complement existing satellite and airborne methods to resolve glacial structures over large areas and detect changes hidden under snow cover. The intended outcome is new knowledge of the ice sheet’s stratification, its long-term variation due to climate change, and its rapid response to local weather events. The benefits include improving the reliability of ice sheet evolution modelling and sea-level rise prediction, unlocking a polar gateway to study Earth's deep interior, and preparing for space missions to icy worlds.

National Interest Statement. Advanced monitoring of the Antarctic ice sheet, a part of Australia's research priority to monitor environmental changes, will play a critical role in environmental sciences in the following decades. This project will deploy and further develop an arsenal of cutting-edge seismological methods, which have proved remarkably successful in monitoring environmental changes elsewhere, to analyze the valuable Antarctic seismic dataset collected via extensive national and international collaborations. It will advance knowledge about the internal structure of the ice sheet and its responses to climate change and short-term weather events. These results will increase the reliability of ice-sheet evolution modelling and related sea-level rise prediction, which will help preparations against the risk of inundation along the Australian coastline in the following decades as ice melts. Further, cutting-edge research on the Antarctic ice sheet will attract public interest, enhance climate change awareness in the Australian community, strengthen the presence of Australia and protect its national interest in the continent.

Supported Research Outputs

Journal Articles

Waszek L., J. C. E. Irving, T.-S. Phạm, and H. Tkalčić, Seismic insights into Earth's core, Nature Communications, 14 (1), 6029, doi:10.1038/s41467-023-41725-5, 2023.
Costa de Lima T., T.-S. Phạm, X. Ma and H. Tkalčić, An estimate of absolute shear-wave speed in the Earth’s inner core, Nature Communications, 14 (1), 4577, doi:10.1038/s41467-023-40307-9, 2023.

Conference talks

Phạm T.-S., -TBD-, INVITED TALK, Study of the Deep Earth’s Interior (SEDI) Meeting, Great Barrington (MA), USA, 2024.
Phạm T.-S., Probing anisotropic stratification and interannual variations of the Greenland ice sheet by teleseismic P-wave coda autocorrelation, Workshop in Subglacial Hydrology and Geology, Maydena (Tasmania), Australia, 2023.
Phạm T.-S., A. Sanjayan, H. Tkalčić. Probing the Greenland ice sheet by teleseismic P-wave coda autocorrelation, The 28th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), Berlin, Germany, 2023.
Phạm T.-S., H. Tkalčić, T. Costa de Lima, X. Ma. New seismological constraints on the Earth’s inner core from direct seismic and late-coda correlation wavefields, INVITED TALK, The 28th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), Berlin, Germany, 2023.

Departmental seminars

Hanoi University of Science (Vietnam), Faculty of Mathematics, Mechanics, and Informatics, 2023.

(funded accommodation and domestic travel expenses)

University of Cambridge (UK), Bullard Laboratories, 2023.

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