Maria del Carmen Domínguez Álvarez, also Karmenka, (born 1969) is a Spanish glaciologist,

polar explorer This list is for recognised pioneering explorers of the polar regions. It does not include subsequent travelers and expeditions. Polar explorers * Jameson Adams * Stian Aker * Valerian Albanov * Roald Amundsen * Salomon August Andrée * Piotr F ...

and mathematician. She is a co-founder of the Glackma Project which since 2001 has networked the measurement of glacier discharge in the polar regions. She has undertaken over 60 polar expeditions in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

, Patagonia, Iceland,

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

and

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

. Her work is considered to have contributed significantly to the understanding of

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

Biography

Born in

Oviedo Oviedo (; ast, Uviéu ) is the capital city of the Principality of Asturias in northern Spain and the administrative and commercial centre of the region. It is also the name of the municipality that contains the city. Oviedo is located ap ...

, Domínguez studied mathematics at the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; nl, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen in ...

and the University of Salamanca where she now teaches. Keen to use mathematics for practical applications, in 1997 she became interested in glaciers after hearing the geologist Adolfo Eraso's talk about Argentina's Perito Moreno Glacier. She joined him in investigating glaciers in the polar regions in 1997. In 2001, together with Eraso, she founded the Glackma project which set out to study the discharge of glaciers as a component of global warming. For almost two decades, the hourly amount of glacier discharge (i.e. the amount of ice which has melted) has been measured in seven different polar regions of the Arctic and Antarctica. Domínguez has revealed that over the first 13 years the amount of water discharged doubled and over the next four years it doubled again.

References

External links

Glackma project (in Spanish)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dominguez, Carmen 1969 births People from Oviedo Spanish glaciologists Spanish women scientists 20th-century Spanish mathematicians Spanish women mathematicians Spanish polar explorers Academic staff of the University of Salamanca University of Groningen alumni Living people Women glaciologists 21st-century Spanish mathematicians