Anna Ruth Halberstadt: Assistant Professor

August 26, 2024

Anna Ruth “Ruthie” Halberstadt joined the Jackson School of Geosciences in fall 2024 as an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Halberstadt is a glaciologist. She specifically studies Antarctica’s warm periods, and how this history can provide insights on future ice sheet changes as the climate continues to change.

Antarctica’s ice sheet responds very slowly to climate conditions, Halberstadt said; Many of the ice sheet changes that we are currently observing were activated by the world’s climate thousands of years ago.

“The world we’re in currently is so unprecedented, and the ice sheet we have today is not the ice sheet that’s stable under the modern conditions,” she said. This is why it’s key to look to the past for clues about Antarctica’s future, and the implications for global sea level rise.

Halberstadt has done field work in Antarctica three times, once camping in the McMurdo Dry Valleys for several weeks while conducting research on ice sheet climate sensitivity during the Miocene epoch, about 14–17 million years ago — the last time that the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels were significantly higher than they are today.

There has historically been a bit of a divide between scientists collecting data and scientists using numerical models to understand ice sheet stability; Halberstadt’s niche is that she uses both geologic data and climate and ice sheet modeling in her research.

“My goal is to bridge that divide — anchoring the models in something true, and making the data something that’s actually useful for models, which is not straightforward, it turns out,” she said.

Halberstadt is teaching GEO 416W, “Climate, Water, and the Environment” in the fall. She said that she is looking forward to being part of a vibrant geoscience and higher education community that is engaged in new ideas.

Halberstadt said she is also excited by the potential for collaboration. She did her doctoral work alongside Benjamin Keisling, a research assistant professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. She’s also admired Professor Ginny Catania’s research on glaciers from afar for years.

“As everyone probably knows, the Jackson School is well-renowned. It’s a dream job,” Halberstadt said.