Dr Andrew Mackintosh

The New Zealand Snow and Ice Research Group (SIRG) is now a
regional branch of the International Glaciological Society. The programme
and abstracts from the 2007 workshop held at Mt. Ruapehu are available
at the following link (PDF). For further information about
SIRG, please join our email list at http://lists.vuw.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/sirg

Images

Measuring residual snow accumulation (about 10 m/yr!), Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand (March 2005)

Installing the highest climate station in New Zealand on Dome Shelter (2672 m), Mt. Ruapehu

Postgraduate Supervision

Please contact me if you are interested in a PhD, Masters or Honours degree. I will gladly supervise any topic concerning glaciers and climate and I will encourage you to develop research questions and hypotheses. Current field sites include the Brewster, Franz Josef and Tasman Glaciers in the Southern Alps and Mt. Ruapehu in the North Island. Antarctica is a possibility too.

It may be desirable to set up a co-supervised project with another staff member from the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences. For example:

Glaciology - Dr. Brian Anderson;
Ice sheet history and modelling in Antarctica - Prof. Peter Barrett and Assoc. Prof. Tim Naish;
Quaternary geology in New Zealand - Dr. Gavin Dunbar;
Glaciology in New Zealand or Antarctica involving an ice core component - Dr. Nancy Bertler;
Geochronology of glacial deposits - Dr. Uwe Rieser and Assoc. Prof. Joel Baker;
Mountain geomorphology - Prof. Mike Crozier, Dr. Nick Preston or Prof. Tim Stern.

We have strong international partnerships with the Universities of Edinburgh and Bristol (UK), Chicago and Maine (USA) and PhD projects may involve a period of study abroad.

Topics could be based around the following key words: New Zealand, Antarctica, glaciology, numerical modelling of glaciers, mountain climate, Holocene climate change, ice sheet stability, climate change, glacial geomorphology, Quaternary climate change, dating methods (cosmogenic exposure, tephrochronology, OSL, other isotopes), predicting glacier retreat and sea level rise, glacier mass balance and climate change, the Little Ice Age, ice radar surveys, ice velocity studies... and many more!

Supervision themes at Masters and Honours level to date have included:

Glacial history of Boulder Lake, Kahurangi National Park, NZ (Andrew McCarthy);
Subglacial hydrology and climate of the Brewster Glacier, NZ (Alexandra Winter Billington, co-supervised by Dr. Wendy Lawson at Canterbury University);
Glacier retreat on Mt. Ruapehu, NZ (Tom Paulin);
Ice core studies of the Victoria Lower Glacier in Antarctica (Nora Patterson).

Publications

Journal articles

to be submitted:

(pdf available)

B. Anderson, A. Mackintosh, D. Stumm, L. George, T. Kerr & A. Winter-Billington. 2006. Climate sensitivity of a high-precipitation glacier in New Zealand. Journal of Geophysical Research.
McCarthy, A. and Mackintosh, A. 2006. Glacier and climate reconstruction indicates significant MIS 4 ice advance in the Tasman Mountains, New Zealand. Arctic and Alpine Research.

published:

Mackintosh, A. White, D., Fink, D. Gore, D. Pickard, J. and Fanning, P. 2007. Exposure ages from mountain dipsticks in Mac.Robertson Land, East Antarctica, indicate little change in ice sheet thickness since the Last Glacial Maximum. Geology 35 (6), 551-554. (PDF)
- Bierman, P. 2007. "Cosmogenic glacial dating, 20 years and counting". Research Focus, Geology 35(6), 575-576. (PDF)
- New Scientist, 25th June 2007, pg 15: "Antarctic Bastion reveals Achilles heel. (PDF)
- Research Hightlight in Nature. "Cryosphere: Sheet Stability." Nature Reports Climate Change, Volume 2, July 2007, pg 19 (PDF)
- Article by Ray Lilley, Associated Press, 26 June 2007: "World's biggest ice sheet stable and not yet posing threat to ocean levels: researchers". Published by > 80 newspapers worldwide (PDF)
Mackintosh, A., Barrows, T., Colhoun, E, and Fifield, I. 2006. Exposure dating and glacial reconstruction at Mt. Field, Australia identifies MIS 3 and MIS 2 glacial advances and climatic variability. Journal of Quaternary Science 21(4) 363-376. (PDF)
Anderson, B. and Mackintosh, A. 2006. Temperature change is the major driver of late-glacial and Holocene glacier fluctuations in New Zealand. Geology 34(2) 121-124. (PDF)
Anderson, B. and Mackintosh, A. 2005. Comment on "Synoptic climate change as a driver of late Quaternary glaciations in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere" by H. Rother and J. Shulmeister. In Climate of the Past Discussions, 1, S161-S167, 2005 www.climate-of-the-past.net/cpd/1/S161/ European Geosciences Union. (PDF)
Mackintosh, A., Dugmore A, and Hubbard, A. 2002. Holocene climatic changes in Iceland: evidence from modelling glacier length fluctuations at Sólheimajökull. Quaternary International 91(1), 39-52. (PDF)
Mackintosh, A. and Dugmore, A. 2000. Modelling Holocene glacier fluctuations and climatic change in Iceland. Geolines 11, 142-146.
Mackintosh, A., Dugmore, A., and Jacobsen, F. 2000. Ice thickness measurements on Sólheimajökull, southern Iceland, and their relevance to its recent behaviour. Jökull 48, 9-15.

Conference abstracts

The following talks were presented at the international workshop 'Global Land Ice Measurements from Space' (GLIMS) between 6-10th February, 2006, Twizel, New Zealand. They provide a good idea of the scope and range of our work in New Zealand, including M.Sc. projects and show our successful collaboration with Otago University (Stumm, George and Fitzsimons).

Mackintosh, A. and Anderson, B. 'The sensitivity of New Zealand glaciers to climate change.'
Anderson, B., Mackintosh, A., Kerr, T., George, L., Stumm, D., Fitzsimons, S. and Lawson, W. Annual-scale mass and energy transfers at Brewster Glacier, New Zealand.
Winter-Billington, A., Mackintosh, A., Anderson, B. and Lawson, W. 'The subglacial drainage of Brewster Glacier, Southern Alps, New Zealand/Aotearoa in relation to ice surface velocity.'
Paulin, T., Mackintosh, A., Anderson, B. and Keys, H. 'Understanding the cause of contemporary glacier retreat on Mt Ruapehu, New Zealand.'
George, L., Fitzsimons, S., Anderson, B. and Mackintosh, A. 'Annual mass balance measurements on the Brewster Glacier, NZ.'
Stumm, D. Fitzsimons, S., Anderson, B. and Mackintosh, A. 'Spatial and temporal relationships at three glacier mass balance sites in the Southern Alps of New Zealand.'

International conferences (2002-2006)

Mackintosh, A. and Anderson, B. The response of New Zealand glaciers to climate change. International Symposium on Cryospheric Indicators of Climate Change. Cambridge, UK, August 2006. (PDF)
Mackintosh, A., Anderson, B. 2006. The sensitivity of New Zealand glaciers to climatic change: evidence from the last 13,000 years. Australian and New Zealand Geomorphology Group. 12th Meeting - Taipa Bay, North Island, New Zealand, 12-17th February 2006.
Patterson, N., Bertler, N., Mackintosh, A. and Naish, T. 2004. Twentieth Century hydrogen and oxygen isotopic fluctuations from a coastal Antarctic ice core, Victoria Land, Antarctica. SCAR meeting, Bremen, Germany, July 2004.
Bertler, N., Barrett, P., Mayewski, P, Naish, T, Patterson, N., Morgenstern, U., Kreutz, K, Mackintosh, A. Climate variability in McMurdo Dry Valleys during the last two millennia - causers and drivers. Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) meeting, Bremen, Germany, July 2004.
Mackintosh, A., Gore, D. and Fink, D., White, D, Pickard, J. and Fanning, P. 2003. Late Quaternary fluctuations of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet in the Framnes Mountains. Abstract in Proceedings of the Symposium on the Quaternary History of the Antarctic Ice Sheets from the Geochronology of Marine and Terrestrial Glacial Deposits. The XVI International Quaternary Association (INQUA) Congress, Reno, USA. July 23 - 30, 2003
Mackintosh, A., Gore, D. and Fink, D. 2002. Late Quaternary evolution of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet from 60-90º E: empirical evidence and modeling studies. Extended abstract. ACE Antarctic Paleoclimate and Ice-Sheet Modeling Workshop, Northampton, Massachusetts USA, May 31-June 2, 2002.

Public lectures

Mackintosh, A. The sensitivity of New Zealand glaciers to climatic change. Waiarapa Geological Society, October 2006.
Mackintosh, A. All glaciers are equal but some glaciers are more equal than others. Geological Society of New Zealand and Geology Section, Wellington branch, Royal Society of New Zealand. Science House, Turnbull St, Thorndon, April 2004.

PhD thesis

Mackintosh, A. 2000. Glacier fluctuations and climate change in Iceland. Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, UK. (PDF)

Personal Profile

Andrew originates from Melbourne, Australia and he received a B.Sc. in Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne in 1993 and BSc Honours in Geography and Geology (first class) at The University of Newcastle, Australia in 1994. Eric Colhoun helped foster his early interest in glaciers and this led to an ORS Award, Edinburgh Postgraduate Studentship and a PhD in Glaciology from the University of Edinburgh in 2000 under David Sugden. During this time he carried out fieldwork in Iceland, visited glaciers in the European Alps and Norway and lectured in Geomorphology at Edinburgh University in 1999. The EISMINT glaciology summer school in Karthus, Italy, and an EISMINT exchange grant led to an EU-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU) in The Netherlands under Hans Oerlemans and Wouter Greuell from 2000-2001 and he visited the Greenland Ice Sheet in the process. In the southern summer of 2001/2002 Andrew participated in an Australian ANARE expedition to the Framnes Mountains, Antarctica (near Mawson Station) to study the history of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet with ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al exposure dating, working with David Fink (ANSTO, Australia) and Damian Gore (Macquarie University, Australia).

Andrew joined the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at VUW in April 2002 as a lecturer in the Geography and Geology programmes. He was promoted to senior lecturer in 2006 and now leads a glaciology group which includes Dr. Brian Anderson (VUW post-doctoral fellow) and about 6 postgraduate students. Collectively, the group aims to improve our understanding of the relationship between glaciers and climate change with numerical modelling and empirical studies. The group has a close relationship to the Antarctic Research Centre at VUW and with New Zealand researchers such as Sean Fitzsimons and Dorothea Stumm (Otago University), Wendy Lawson and Tim Kerr (Canterbury University) and internationally with George Denton (University of Maine, USA), Ray Pierrehumbert (University of Chicago, USA) and Alun Hubbard (University of Edinburgh, UK). We are aligned with the Central South Island Glacial Geomorphology Project (http://maps.gns.cri.nz/website/csigg/) and aim to reconstruct past glaciations in New Zealand by modelling the moraine limits evident in these wonderful new maps.

Outside of office hours, Andrew enjoys ascending mountains and skiing down them or riding one of his three bikes. He also loves tramping and adventurous travel (which has taken him to every continent) and hanging out at Mikonui on the West Coast of the South Island with Brian and Lynley.