West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Workshops 2017-2018 - A Forum for WAIS Research and the Thwaites Program

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) meetings provide an annual forum for scientists seeking to understand past and present ice-sheet behavior. The meetings are focused on West Antarctica, an area of critical importance to understanding how Earth's ice sheets evolve, and to past, present, and future sea level. This award provides partial support for the WAIS meetings in 2017 and 2018. Goals for the 24th and 25th WAIS meetings are to: (1) engage students and early-career scientists, and promote input from under-represented groups or scientists with related but under-represented scientific backgrounds; (2) consider new technologies for geophysical measurements and process observations, new modeling approaches, and new sites for coordinated study; (3) encourage data submission and good metadata practices for field-acquired data, and (4) discuss science objectives and research plans for the Thwaites Program, a multidisciplinary study of the Thwaites-Amundsen region of West Antarctica that will be supported by the National Science Foundation and the UK Natural Environment Research Council. In addition to discussing the ongoing evolution of West Antarctica, participants will engage in themes such as WAIS paleoclimate, geophysical boundary conditions that describe the ice sheet, climate-ice-ocean processes that govern ice-sheet mass balance, and regional climate and coupled-system models.