Projects

Current Projects

Center for Ice-sheet and Sea-level Predictions (CISP)

This project is funded by a grant from the NOVO Nordisk Foundation in Denmark as part of their Prediction of Climate Change and Effect of Mitigating Solutions program. Current ice flow models are limited by the processes they capture and the observations they use to initialize and constrain the ice sheet initial state. This project will design and use the next generation data-driven ice sheet models to improve projections of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets evolution. We will resolve the impact of key dynamic processes using recent advances in high-resolution reconstructions of subtle changes in inland ice elevation and speed over the past three decades and improve our understanding of interactions between models of ice sheet and solid Earth.

Collaborators: Abbas Khan (DTU Space, Denmark), Kurt Kjaer (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and William Colgan (GEUS, Denmark)

Designing Antarctic Ocean forcing for ISMIP7 by combining remote sensing data and numerical modeling

This project is funded by a grant from NASA’s Cryospheric Science program. There is a clear consensus that the current mass loss of Antarctica is driven by ice-ocean interactions, however it remains unclear how these interactions should be represented in ice sheet numerical models. This project aims at improving remote-sensing spatio-temporal estimates of sub-ice shelf melt rates and use them to evaluate sub-ice shelf melt parameterizations currently used in ice flow models. We will revise Antarctic mass loss projections and identify the ice shelves most vulnerable to ocean changes.

Collaborator: Alex Gardner (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Exploring the dynamic response of West Antarctica to Ocean Variability

This project is funded by a grant from NASA’s Cryospheric Science program. It aims to investigate the evolution of marine terminating glaciers in the Amundsen seas by combining remote sensing observations with ice and ocean models. The main anticipated outcomes are a better identification of factors that have most effect in modifying ice-shelf and tributary glacier flow and configuration, enhanced understanding of the combination of factors that can result in ice flow instability, and improved scenarios of glaciers evolution in the Amundsen Sea Sectors over the coming century.

Collaborator: Yoshihiro Nakayama (University of Hokkaido, Japan)

Global Changes, Local Impacts: Study of glacial fjords, ecosystems and communities in Greenland

This project is funded by a Collaborative Research Grants from NSF’s Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) Program. This project will target improved understanding of the physical, biological, and human processes that sustain ecosystems in glacial fjords and, in particular, the balance between oceanic subsidies vs in-situ dynamics, including sources of nutrients, zooplankton, and fish larvae that sustain the rich food web and Indigenous communities. Studies of the natural environment will be integrated into a detailed comparative analysis of the interplay of climatic, ecosystem, and societal forces at the local and national level.

Collaborators: Fiamma Straneo and James Holte (SIO-UCSD), Chris Little (AER), Mark Carey (Univ. Oregon), Mattias Cape and Paty Matrai (Bigelow), Lorenzo Ciannelli (Oregon State Univ.), Donald Slater (Edinburgh Univ.), Lorenz Meire (GINR/NIOZ) and Caroline Bouchard (GINR)

Previous Projects

The Stochastic Ice Sheet Project (StISP)

The Stochastic Ice Sheet Project is funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation. This project aims to answer two main scientific questions:

  1. What is the uncertainty in projections of future sea level rise from ice sheet melt due to natural fluctuations in climate and ice sheet processes?
  2. To what extent can we attribute recent ice sheet evolution to climate change?

To answer these questions, we will develop a first-of-its kind stochastic ice sheet model, in which the detailed simulations of surface mass balance, ocean melt, and calving are replaced by noisy representations based on observations and high-fidelity models. This framework will then be used to simulate an ensemble of possible scenarios for ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet, during the recent past and into the future. The results will be two-fold: the first systematic assessment of uncertainty in sea level projections due to natural fluctuations in ice sheet and climatic processes, and the first attribution study disentangling the role of climate change from natural variability within the Earth system in causing the rapid increase in ice loss from Greenland observed over the last several decades.

Collaborators: Alex Robel (GeorgiaTech) and Andrew Thompson (Caltech)

ISMIP6 (Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison for CMIP6)

The primary goal of ISMIP6 is to improve projections of sea level rise via simulations of the evolution of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets under a changing climate, along with a quantification of associated uncertainties (associated with both uncertainty in climate forcing and in the response of the ice sheets). ISMIP6 brings together a consortium of international ice sheet models and coupled ice sheet-climate models to fully explore the sea level rise contribution from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Website: ISMIP6 website