Three-dimensional Stokes grounding line dynamics with the open community JPL/UCI Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM).

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

EAGER funding is to be used to open, to the wider academic community in the US and abroad, the source code for a maturing numerical ice-sheet modeling tool. The JPL Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM) is intended as a numerical modeling tool for the representation of the earth's ice sheets, and to be capable of large-scale satellite and other data assimilation. ISSM has high spatial resolution capable of resolving both continent wide (Antarctica) and local (down to ~100's meters) ice flow dynamical features, along with full resolution of Stokes equation ice flow projections. Opening up the source code of the model is a logical step towards its coupling with other earth systems modeling efforts, such as global circulation atmospheric and ocean models intended to include a full range of cryosphere ocean and atmosphere processes. A specific focus goal of the EAGER proposal, is the development and testing of a new solver to study the three-dimensional simulation of the evolution of the Pine Island Glacier grounding lines. Housing of this effort at UC Irvine will involve UCI undergraduate and graduate student training and use, along with participation of scientists and students from other academic institutions taking part in planned ISSM workshops. As recognized in the most recent reports from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR-4), current scientific uncertainty as to the future mass changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, and possible accelerations in ice sheet flow into a warming ocean remains a major source in uncertainty in projections for global and local sea-level rise over the coming century. Uncertainty of sea-level rise, on a notably rapid time scale of decades to centuries, is a matter of some societal and economic relevance.