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Colin R. Meyer

Assistant Professor of Engineering

Academic Cluster: Changing Polar Regions

Short Talks on Big Ideas: Colin Meyer on Worlds of Ice and Snow (See full video on Vimeo)

Research Interests

Fluid dynamics; snow and ice mechanics; glaciology; icy satellites; applied mathematics

Education

  • BS, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley 2012
  • MASt, Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, Cambridge University 2013
  • PhD, Applied Mathematics, Harvard University 2017

Selected Publications

Courses

Videos

Dartmouth Engineering Professor Colin Meyer

The Power of Fieldwork in Education

Glacier Sliding Controlled by Subglacial Water Flow (Seminar)

Research Quick Takes

Aleah Sommers

Jun 27, 2024

Glacier Surges & Floods

Research Scientist Aleah Sommers (pictured) and Professor Colin Meyer won a two-year ~$180,000 NASA grant to work with international collaborators in Pakistan to study the influence of water flowing at the base of glaciers in High Mountain Asia. "Improved understanding of subglacial drainage has great potential benefit for hazard prediction and water resources, in terms of how they are likely to change with continued warming," says Sommers.

Photo by Meyer of Greenland's Heim glacier, taken from a helicopter.

May 23, 2024

Understanding Glacier Sliding

Professor Colin Meyer and Luce Fellow Julia Bellamy Th'23 co-authored "Subtemperate regelation exhibits power-law premelting," selected for the cover of Proceedings of the Royal Society A. Meyer and Bellamy worked with collaborator Alan Rempel (Oregon) on wire regelation, or cold ice, which is important for glacier motion as they slide over sediments and bedrock. "We developed a model for the cold data and found excellent agreement between a power-law model and the laboratory data. These results advance our understanding of the role of temperature in glacier sliding by providing a link between the water, temperature, and friction," he said.

Hydrology model of Helmheim Glacier

Jun 29, 2023

Subglacial Hydrology & Ice Dynamics

Research Scientist Aleah Sommers and Professor Colin Meyer applied a simpler form of the SHAKTI subglacial hydrology model to the Helmheim Glacier in Greenland to predict high water pressure and other variables in seawater movement under glacial ice. Their model improves upon current models by reducing reliance on unconstrained parameters, which have posed challenges to reproducing results. Their findings were published in the Journal of Glaciology.