Dr Ann Rowan
BSc, PhD
Department of Geography
Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow
+44 114 222 7975
Full contact details
Department of Geography
Room C13b
Geography and Planning Building
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND
- Profile
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Ann Rowan has a BSc in Environmental and Resource Geology (2007) and a PhD in Earth Science (2012) from the University of Manchester. After her PhD, she was a Research Fellow in Glaciology at Aberystwyth University and briefly worked at the British Geological Survey.
Ann joined the University of Sheffield in 2014 as an Ice and Climate Research Fellow and remained as a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow from 2015. In 2020, she was awarded a prestigious Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship by the Royal Society.
- Research interests
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- Glacial geomorphology as an archive of palaeoclimate change
- Geomorphology and dynamics of mountain glaciers
- Resolving uncertainties in glacier–climate modelling
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Perspectives on being a field-based geomorphologist during pregnancy and early motherhood. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.
- The role of differential ablation and dynamic detachment in driving accelerating mass loss from a debris‐covered Himalayan glacier. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 126(9).
- Seasonal cold-wave propagation into the near-surface ice of debris-covered Khumbu Glacier, Nepal. Frontiers in Earth Science, 9.
- Using climate reanalysis data in conjunction with multi-temporal satellite thermal imagery to derive supraglacial debris thickness changes from energy-balance modelling. Journal of Glaciology, 67(262), 366-384. View this article in WRRO
- Continuous borehole optical televiewing reveals variable englacial debris concentrations at Khumbu Glacier, Nepal. Communications Earth & Environment, 2. View this article in WRRO
- Seasonally stable temperature gradients through supraglacial debris in the Everest region of Nepal, Central Himalaya. Journal of Glaciology. View this article in WRRO
- Morphology and evolution of supraglacial hummocks on debris‐covered Himalayan glaciers. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.
- Hydrology of debris-covered glaciers in High Mountain Asia. Earth-Science Reviews, 207, 103212-103212. View this article in WRRO
- Instruments and methods: hot-water borehole drilling at a high-elevation debris-covered glacier. Journal of Glaciology, 65(253), 822-832. View this article in WRRO
- Surface and subsurface hydrology of debris-covered Khumbu Glacier, Nepal, revealed by dye tracing. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 513, 176-186. View this article in WRRO
- Polythermal structure of a Himalayan debris-covered glacier revealed by borehole thermometry. Scientific Reports, 8. View this article in WRRO
- Variations in near‐surface debris temperature through the summer monsoon on Khumbu Glacier, Nepal Himalaya. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 43(13), 2698-2714. View this article in WRRO
- Mountain glaciers under a changing climate. Geology Today, 34(4), 134-139. View this article in WRRO
- The sustainability of water resources in High Mountain Asia in the context of recent and future glacier change. The Himalayan Cryosphere: Past and Present, 462. View this article in WRRO
- Supraglacial Ponds Regulate Runoff From Himalayan Debris-Covered Glaciers. Geophysical Research Letters, 44(23), 11894-11904. View this article in WRRO
- Temporal variations in supraglacial debris distribution on Baltoro Glacier, Karakoram between 2001 and 2012. Geomorphology, 295, 572-585. View this article in WRRO
- Quantifying ice cliff evolution with multi-temporal point clouds on the debris-covered Khumbu Glacier, Nepal. Journal of Glaciology, 63(241), 823-837. View this article in WRRO
- Heterogeneous water storage and thermal regime of supraglacial ponds on debris-covered glaciers. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. View this article in WRRO
- A beryllium-10 chronology of late-glacial moraines in the upper Rakaia valley, Southern Alps, New Zealand supports Southern- Hemisphere warming during the Younger Dryas. Quaternary Science Reviews, 170, 14-25. View this article in WRRO
- Spatial variability in mass loss of glaciers in the Everest region, central Himalayas, between 2000 and 2015. The Cryosphere, 11(1), 407-426. View this article in WRRO
- The 'Little Ice Age' in the Himalaya: A review of glacier advance driven by Northern Hemisphere temperature change. Holocene, 27(2), 292-308. View this article in WRRO
- Changes in glacier surface cover on Baltoro glacier, Karakoram, north Pakistan, 2001–2012. Journal of Maps, 13(2), 100-108. View this article in WRRO
- Modelling the feedbacks between mass balance, ice flow and debris transport to predict the response to climate change of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalaya. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 430, 427-438. View this article in WRRO
- The southernmost Quaternary niche glacier system in Great Britain. Journal of Quaternary Science, 30(4), 325-334. View this article in WRRO
- Late Quaternary glacier sensitivity to temperature and precipitation distribution in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 119(5), 1064-1081. View this article in WRRO
- Little Ice Age glaciers in Britain: Glacier–climate modelling in the Cairngorm Mountains. The Holocene, 24(2), 135-140.
- Warming and glacier recession in the Rakaia valley, Southern Alps of New Zealand, during Heinrich Stadial 1. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 382, 98-110.
- Drainage capture and discharge variations driven by glaciation in the Southern Alps, New Zealand. Geology, 41(2), 199-202.
- Optically stimulated luminescence dating of glaciofluvial sediments on the Canterbury Plains, South Island, New Zealand. Quaternary Geochronology, 8, 10-22.
- Perspectives on being a field-based geomorphologist during pregnancy and early motherhood. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.
- Current research projects
Rethinking ice-marginal moraines as a palaeoclimate archive (Royal Society funded)
Glaciers fluctuate in response to climate change. Typically, a cooling climate causes glaciers to expand and a warming climate causes glaciers to shrink. Changes in glacier size are recorded by spectacular glacial landscapes in locations such as the European Alps, New Zealand, the Andes and the Himalaya.
Geomorphologists are only beginning to understand how glaciers shape the landscape in response to climate change, and many exciting research questions will be addressed by this project, such as: How fast can glaciers expand and shrink? Why do glaciers not always respond to climate change as expected? What can glacial landscapes tell us about climate in the geological past?
If you are looking for a PhD or research project that addresses these questions, please get in touch.
EverDrill: Accessing the interior and bed of a Himalayan debris-covered glacier to forecast future mass loss (NERC funded)
The EverDrill project (https://everdrill.org) used pressurised hot-water drilling to make boreholes through the world’s highest glacier—Khumbu Glacier, Nepal. The EverDrill team gathered visual footage of the interior of each borehole and measured ice temperatures and deformation from the glacier surface to its bed.
Borehole data, combined with numerical glacier modelling, provide an unprecedented insight into the physical structure and dynamics of a high-elevation debris-covered glacier and the processes that operate englacially and at the bed to control how Himalayan glaciers respond to climate change.