Open AccessA Community Ice Sheet Model for Sea Level Prediction: Building a Next‐Generation Community Ice Sheet Model; Los Alamos, New Mexico, 18–20 August 2008
Author(s) -
Lipscomb William,
Bindschadler Robert,
Bueler Ed,
Holland David,
Johnson Jesse,
Price Stephen
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2009eo030004
Subject(s) - ice sheet , ice sheet model , national laboratory , climatology , sea ice , climate model , climate change , fact sheet , antarctic ice sheet , future sea level , greenland ice sheet , cryosphere , environmental science , meteorology , ice shelf , geology , geography , oceanography , engineering , engineering physics , computer science , database
Recent observations show that ice sheets can respond to climate change on annual to decadal timescales and that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. The current generation of ice sheet models cannot provide credible predictions of ice sheet retreat, as underscored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007). The IPCC provided neither a best estimate nor an upper bound for 21st‐century sea level rise because of uncertainties in the dynamic response of ice sheets. In response to this need, a workshop was held at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The workshop was sponsored by the LANL Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, with additional support from the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. The workshop's goal was to create a detailed plan (including commitments from individual researchers) for developing, testing, and implementing a Community Ice Sheet Model (CISM) to aid in predicting sea level rise. This model will be freely available to the glaciology and climate modeling communities and will be the ice sheet component of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM), a major contributor to IPCC assessments.