Gary Clow is a senior research scientist at INSTAAR specializing in the use of ultra-high precision temperature measurements and numerical heat-transfer modeling to better understand both climate changes and natural processes in the polar regions. Professional interests include establishing the magnitude of past climate changes in the polar regions, determining the heat flux from the earth’s crust into the base of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets to help assess their stability, documenting the current rates of Arctic warming, and projecting the effects of future warming on Arctic landscapes. Clow has over 30 years of scientific field experience in Antarctica, Greenland, and arctic Alaska. He has served as the chair of the National Science Foundation’s Borehole Logging Working Group, the Chief Scientist for Borehole Geophysics on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – Divide project, and as the U.S. representative to the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost. Before joining INSTAAR, Dr. Clow was a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in the Planetary Sciences, Climate Change, and Geology and Environmental Change science teams. He has been awarded the Antarctic Service Medal of the United States, the Superior Service Award by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and has an island named after him in recognition of superior scientific contributions in Antarctica. Clow has dozens of publications in the planetary, cryospheric, and climate change fields.
