My name is Will Harcourt and I am an Independent Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen. The research of our group focuses on understanding the cryosphere using Earth Observation (EO) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. Geographically, we primarily work in the Arctic in locations such as Svalbard and Greenland. We welcome anyone who is interested in our research topics to get in touch, we’ll be more than happy to discuss potential synergies and research opportunities. For prospective undergraduate / postgraduate taught students interested in undertaking dissertations with us, please get in touch and we can discuss potential ideas. We’ll also be more than happy to discuss possibilities of internships, developing a PhD project and postdoctoral research with us (e.g. PDRAs, fellowships). We are also happy to host PhD students and more senior academics to initiate new collaborations.
This website provides details of our groups activities. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want to find out more.
Our photo gallery can be found here: https://williamharcourt.co.uk/gallery/
Details of our outreach activities can be found here: https://williamharcourt.co.uk/outreach/
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Fieldwork Blog Day 1!
A team of us are currently on a Polar expedition to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the high Arctic. We are studying Borebreen which is a tidewater glacier around 40 km from the main settlement, Longyearbyen. Borebreen is a surge-type glacier which means it undergoes periods of fast and slow flow in a cyclical manner.… Read more
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New Paper in Annals of Glaciology!
We have a new paper out in Annals of Glaciology! This is an invited contribution as part of a special issue in the Annals entitled ‘New Cryospheric Research Directions from IGS Global Seminars’. In our paper, we discuss the benefits of using real-aperture radar systems operating at 94 GHz for glacier mapping. We place an… Read more
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My new role as an Interdisciplinary Fellow!
Today, Monday 15th May 2023 , marks the first day of my new role here at the University of Aberdeen. I am delighted to say that I have taken up a role as an Interdisciplinary Fellow and will be leading a 5-year project to develop a digital twin of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GreenlandTwin). I’m… Read more
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EGU23
Will Harcourt presented work on using ICEYE radar satellites to understand the dynamics of ice melange at the terminus of Helheim Glacier in Greenland, in collaboration with the University of Kansas. We studied the texture of ice melange and investigated methods to segment features such as icebergs within the melange matrix. We also looked at… Read more
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Radar monitoring of snow in Scotland…during a pandemic!?
In March 2021, myself and colleagues from the universities of St Andrews and Aberdeen undertook fieldwork in the Scottish Highlands to map snow-covered terrain using a new, ground-based millimetre-wave radar. We collaborated with the Scottish Avalanche Information Service (SAIS) to assess the capabilities of this new instrument in evaluating snow-associated hazards such as avalanches. This… Read more
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My Views on the ‘EGU2020: Sharing Geoscience Online’ Virtual Conference
In May 2020, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly was held as a massive online virtual conference in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new format would serve as a large scale experiment to understand the pro’s and con’s of virtual conferencing, potentially changing the nature of academic conferences forever. In this blog post,… Read more
Research Page: William D. Harcourt 