Robert Jacobel

Science Investigator

Bob Jacobel is a Professor of Physics at St. Olaf College where he teaches physics and also is Director of the Environmental Studies Program. His research interests are geophysical studies of ice and climate, and this work takes him to glaciers in the temperate latitudes, as well as to Antarctica and Greenland. His educational background has been primarily in physics, but a strong interest in nature and the outdoors led him to apply this training to environmental problems.

His current projects involve a number of undergraduate students in the Glacier Research Group at St. Olaf College. Members in the group utilize two remote sensing techniques to study ice dynamics and climate history: satellite images, and ice-penetrating radar. The radar they have developed is towed along the surface and depicts the bedrock beneath the ice. More importantly, it also gives echoes from internal layers within the ice which result from atmospheric deposits. Jacobel has been to Antarctica on a number of previous occasions, most of them involving ice-penetrating radar and satellite images in the study of ice motions.

Jacobel's contribution to the ITASE project will be making maps of the internal structure of the ice which can be used to generalize spatially the observations made from the ice cores. The radar results will also enable investigators to depict the ice flow patterns around each of the core sites, information which is helpful in interpreting climate. He has two children, ages 7 and 10 who will be closely following progress of the expedition on this web site.

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